Stupid questions about painting a wooden floor

[Wiggy29]

In the house we're purchasing (touch wood all goes well), it has beautiful wooden floors throughout (but will need sanding etc). At first I just assumed I'd sand and varnish them but I love the look of painted floors but (here come's the stupid questions...)

If you paint a wooden floor is a nightmare to remove the paint if you change your mind?

Do you have to keep repainting regularly due to fading in areas of heavy foot fall?

I'm scared that I'll paint the floors then change my mind and have a nightmare removing it. I have one room in my current home with a painted floor and I love it but it's the smallest room and not used very often so even though I love the look, I worry I'd tire of it if I had it in a main living area.

Anybody had any experience of this?

[Boardingblues]

In one of our old houses, all of the floors were painted. It was a very old house (1671) and the floors had been painted for years in most of the rooms. I liked the wear that you got on the floor, but we did paint over it once it got a bit too warn. We were told not to sand because to get the floor evenly stripped would take too much wood off and would ruin the authentic boards. I suppose that my advice is that the "undo-ability" of painting depends a lot on your floor boards and is probably impossible in most cases because of the paint going into the grain and each join between boards. If you get feed up of it, then carpeting or perhaps turning each floor board over onto its unpainted side would be your only options! Personally, I loved it. Our floors were painted dark colours and it was very striking.

[lolalotta]

We painted our pine boards in our 1930s house as when we stripped them the tone of individual boards were too different to leave them natural. We used Farrow and Ball floor paint/ primer and knot sealer. It seems hard wearing so far though it has only been three months since I painted them.

[Twiddlebum]

We painted our bedroom floorboards white. We used ronseal diamond hard floor paint. The only thing I would say is that it does look tatty quite quickly. We live in an old cottage so our floor looks 'shabby chic!' But if you don't like that look I would stay well clear from painting a light colour

[Wiggy29]

Thanks for advice. I think I may leave it at first and decide how it looks after we've painted walls etc. Maybe I'll just start off painting spare room and work from there- I certainly don't fancy flipping all the floor boards if I regret it!

Thanks again for advice.