Prefinished Versus Unfinished Hardwood Flooring

Calgary’s Best Hardwood Floor Installers Explain the Difference

Installing hardwood flooring in your Calgary home is an excellent choice. Not only will it add warmth and charm to your spaces, but wooden flooring is also highly durable and easy to clean and maintain. While selecting the wood type, shade, grain pattern, and plank width, you will also need to decide whether you want to install unfinished or prefinished hardwood.

While both options have their advantages and disadvantages, the hardwood floor installers at Bull Tough Flooring offer some insights.

Pros and Cons of Prefinished and Unfinished Hardwood Floors

When prefinished hardwood flooring comes in factory packed boxes, it is already sanded, stained and coated with polyurethane, and simply has to be cut and nailed to the subfloor. Unfinished flooring is raw hardwood, which the installers will sand and refinish on site.

Here are some of the pros and cons of each option:

Installation Time: Prefinished hardwood flooring has minimal downtime. Not only is it quicker and easier to install, but you can place furniture or walk over the flooring immediately after installation. For unfinished hardwood flooring, the installation may run into several days due to the multiple steps involved in sanding on site. There is also a post-installation wait time before you can put furniture back on the floor or allow your pets to run around in that space.
Installation Process: While prefinished floors involve a straightforward unpack and install process, unfinished flooring requires extensive sanding and application of an oil-based polyurethane. With unfinished hardwood, you may have to deal with dust, mess, intense chemical smells, and longer downtimes.
Post-Installation Look: Since they are factory-finished, each plank of the prefinished hardwood features a beveled edge, which means once you install it, there will be a groove between each board. Unfinished hardwood has no beveling. Due to the onsite sanding and finishing, the completed look is perfectly smooth and flat with no visible lines or grooves. There is something truly beautiful about unfinished hardwood finished onsite, especially if you bring in experienced hardwood flooring professionals for installation.
Finishing Options: Unfinished floors offer a wide range of wood species, innumerable stain colors, and a host of possibilities in the finishes. In comparison, prefinished floors have a much narrow set of options to choose from.
Cleaning: The beveled edges of prefinished floors may act as a trap for dirt, dust and grime which can be slightly more difficult to clean than the smooth, leveled floors that you get with unfinished hardwood finished on-site.
Existing Floor Matching: Adding wooden flooring to select spaces in the home and wish to match that to other existing hardwood floors? Unfinished hardwood with on-site finishing by Calgary’s best hardwood floor installers will allow you to get an exact match for the wood type, stains or colors, and finishing.

Expert Hardwood Flooring Installations in Calgary

For an extensive range of reliable and affordable hardwood flooring services in Calgary, look no further than Bull Tough Flooring. From installation and maintenance, to repairs and refinishing, we cater to all aspects of the wooden flooring lifecycle. Our team consists of the best hardwood floor installers in Calgary with decades of experience in floor preparation, installation and finishing for prefinished as well as unfinished hardwood. We usually complete installation projects under 500-square feet within two days and projects averaging around 1000-square feet in three to five days. Our expert crew ensures quality finishes and a thorough post job cleanup.

Happy homeowners in and around Calgary vouch for our quality workmanship, timely project completion, and consistent customer service.

Looking for the best hardwood floor installers near you? Count on the professionals at Bull Tough Flooring. Call 403-975-2579 to learn more about hardwood flooring installation in Calgary or contact us to request an instant quote.