Image : Design Soda
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Nothing says chic to me quite like a white floor and alongside polished cement and Moroccan tiles it is a staple of good taste in flooring choice for me. White floors are amongst the most versatile of flooring because there are so many looks that can be projected and changed around it without loosing it’s edge or integrity. One of the most beautiful elements of this flooring is how it projects light onto the ceiling whilst blanketing the floor in a foamy cleanliness mirroring the delight of snow.
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Image : Design Soda
I have always dreamt of having white wooden bedroom flooring, they have been in vogue for a good decade and have eluded me for various practical reasons. So, when it came to moving into the spare room and converting it into our bedroom white flooring had become a non- negotiable of the design brief. It seems everything interiors is still washed in tones of Scandi chic, and I cannot help but be a little persuaded by the Scandinavian style of white washing floorboards.Whitewashed floors are something the Scandinavians do very well and it appealed to me to still be able to see the grain of the wood. I think rooms are balanced best when there is an element of bringing the outside in, whether by choosing paint made with natural pigments from the landscape as with heritage paints, or putting some natural history on display, displaying a bunch or flowers, a Christmas tree or making the timber a feature of the room. With whitewashed floors you get the best of both worlds as they are more rustic than their matt white sister boards but cleaner and crisper than their untreated brother boards.
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Image : Design Soda
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You can buy oak floorboards that are pre-whitewashed but this is an expensive option but doing it d.i.y can be slightly daunting. There is a lot of complex and slightly baffling advice on the best techniques used to achieve a whitewashed floor and I was quite nervous of the shortcuts I took having no idea of how it would quite turn out. With the baby’s arrival imminent I couldn’t risk the fumes of high Voc paints or stains which took days and in some cases weeks to dry (let alone keeping the cat out of the room for that long!). When you look up whitewashed floor tutorials there is painstaking advice of repeatedly bleaching the wood followed by producing your own stain to treat the wood in blues or purples to neutralise the natural tones of the wood. This all sounded a little beyond both my patience and my baby addled brain. Maybe I was lucky but these shortcuts produced the exact flooring I had in mind and it was so pain free to do I thought id share with any other lazy d.i.y.ers in search of the same advice.
We were starting with brand new pine floors after our previous floor was too far gone to be sanded by anything more industrial than hands. My husband and brother in law spent a ludicrously physical weekend pulling up the old floor and laying new slats but my did it look good. I was a little nervous about taking a punt on our new floor and free styling when the floor had just cost several hundred pounds to buy. I worked on the assumption that the floor was really no different to some grey shelves I’d painted with this technique and would only require extra sealant to make it sufficiently hard wearing but I couldn’t be sure of the blend on such a large scale but I crossed all fingers and toes and went for it.
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Image : Design Soda
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The Method:
For my recipe you will need just three ingredients
1. White emulsion
2. Water
3. Water based polyurethane sealant
I made my white mixture up of roughly two parts paint to one part water after testing on a spare board, a fifty fifty ratio also works quite well but you will see more grain than white at a quick glance. Once the boards are sanded to get a key (mine only required mild sanding as they were new but if you have old boards you will of course need a good industrial sanding) paint the first of three layers of white (this is apparently an ideal task in the final stages of pregnancy as scrubbing floors helps to get baby ready for labour?!). If you are happy to achieve a rustic effect like me don’t be too precious about the application, I sloshed mine on rather roughly and then blended with a paintbrush from one end of the board to the other. I allowed about 2 hours drying time in between applications so this job is quite do-able within a day. However I did wait overnight before I started to apply the sealant. I chose water based polyurethane as oil based has a tendency to yellow over time. I was super happy with the result, it is my favourite floor in the house and actually so much nearer to my hearts desire than true white would have been as whitewashed boards give you the compliment of clean bright flooring while being able to decipher the natural knots and grain of the wood.
Image: Design Soda
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Looks great! Did this stay looking good and wear well? Im about to embark on a similar journey
Thanks!
Hi Delaine,
Thanks so much, yes, can honestly say it lasted, we have now moved but lived with it for about 18 months, no wear and tear at all, and best of all was how easy it was to spot dirt when hoovering so it was always properly clean when finished 🙂 good luck x
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This is the perfect ‘lazy’ tutorial I have been looking for! Thank you.
Ah thank you, glad you found it helpful 🙂
Hi. What was the name/make of the sealant you used? I’m about to embark on a similar project and am struggling to work out what to buy!
Hi Anna
Thanks for dropping by. I bought mine in Homebase, I’m afraid I don’t still have the tin but if you ask for water based varnish you should be able to find one with polyurethane in it reasonably easily. Good luck x
Hi there. Your tips are very very handy. I did mine slightly different to your steps.i cleaned the wooden floor boards to make sure they were free of any dirt. Then I sealed them with a clear pva. Let that dry for a full day. Then painted the floor with a white emulsion. Let that dry for a day. Then I took a hand Sander with very rough grit and sanded the white back to expose the wooden floors.look fantastic
Ooh, that sounds fantastic, thanks for the method, would love to see the result x
Hey, I have been doing the same thing but have been having problems when applying the polyurethane top coat, it takes away a lot of the colour? Did you have similar problems?
Thanks
Are you using water based Josh? I didn’t find any colour alteration on mine but I’m wondering if oil based would yellow them? X
I am using water based contact white emulsion paint and water based sealant. Did you rub the paint in at all with a cloth etc?
Hmm, that is perplexing. No I didn’t rub it in at all, the water in the mix meant that it sank into my boards pretty well so no need to rub
I know!! Haha. Which white paint you use exactly and the same with the sealant? Wondering if paint or sealent has anything to do with it :/
The white paint I used was Dulux trade white, I’m afraid as it was 3 years ago now I don’t recall the sealant but I believe I bought it in B&Q if that helps…
If it was on old floor boards, they may not have been as absorbant – I had this issue years ago when staining mutliple floors with different aged boards, also, whether they are treated boards or not can affect absorbancy… but also, Ruthie, thanks for the tips, I am now onto another floorboard jobbie in my new place and likewise with baby on the way and looking for an easy solution for some fairly old pine boards, i’m going to give this a shot on a tester piece first, hope it works out and thanks for the advice! x
Yes absolutely, I can imagine that even with deep sanding that may be the case. Good luck with both the floorboards and the baby 🙂 xxx
Hi, was it Matt emultion you used please? M
Hi there, yes it was 🙂
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Hi Ruthie, I am moving soon and have been trawling the web to find an easy and cheap way to colour wash the floorboards in my new place. Finally I have a way which is do-able. Thank you so much.
Ah thank you for your kind comment, good luck with the move and the floors xx
Hi there currently doing your exact process myself! White layers are done by two seeing how many coats of the sealant you did please?
Thanks so much
Jess
Hi Jess, oh fab, I hope you’re pleased with how they look, I did three coats 🙂
Hi Ruthie,
like you I’m looking to whiten new pine floor (fitted by myself) my question is did you need to use knotting compound to prevent the natural resin in wood from seeping out? I’m getting conflicting advice on this. I very happy that my son and I managed to lay floor as complete novices and dont want to mess up finish, thanks
Wildfoodmary
Hiya, no we didn’t use knotting, and the floor didn’t yellow for us, however I have had a bit of yellowing with old boards in the upstairs hallway of our house so it may be a good idea to use it to be on the safe side! Xx
Hi! This tutorial was so useful, thank you!! I followed advice for the whitewashing part and am really happy with it but now I’m about to apply the polyeurothene and I wondered if you had any advice on the application? I have bona mega and it recommends a bona floor roller but I don’t really want to splash out £20 on a roller I’ll only use once! So wondering what you used to apply it? Thanks so much !! 🙂
Hi there, apologise my reply is so late, I’ve only just seen this, I’m sure this is past the point where it’s useful but I used a standard roller xx