What's the best treatment for wooden floorboards?

[MortaIWombat]

I have a room with wooden floors that I'd like to stain dark brown, but what's the best way to seal it once we've achieved the colour? Wax? Varnish? Oil? I have no idea - but I don't want the dc skidding around everywhere, and I don't want to have masses of upkeep, if posible.
Help please!

[MortaIWombat]

bump

[PlanetEarth]

Ours are painted cream, not stained. But anyway, on top of the paint are several coats of matt varnish (I think it may have been Colron, something specifically for floors). It looks great, is very hardwearing and not particularly slippy.

Warning though, if you have any of those kiddie-floor tiles (the ones like big square jigsaw puzzles, sometimes with letters etc cut into them, not sure what they're made of), after they've been on hard floors and you take them up, the floor where they were is really slippy for some reason. (Went splat myself in this way so just thought I'd warn you!)

[SlightlyFoxed]

I used this place who did a great job of turning yellowy pine boards into dark wood, waxed floors.

not very slippery but if you run with socks you could probably make a decent slide out of it (this has not yet occurred to ds but will I'm sure)

[cassell]

I used this on our floors, not at all slippery and has good stain resistance (can spill pretty much anything on it and it cleans up well)

[PlanetEarth]

Cassell, looking at your link I think our varnish may have been Ronseal too, I remember it being "Diamond Hard".

[MortaIWombat]

Thanks, everyone! I wonder if I could use the Ronseal stuff over a dark stain (the shades are all quite light)?

[cassell]

Yes I would expect that would work fine. My floorboards were all varying shades (as varying ages!) and it took well on all of them and brought them to a relatively uniform colour. However I would say that the shades look lighter on the website - I have the oak one and as you have to do 3 coats it comes out reasonably dark. The wax will give you a less shiney finish than the varnish - but it's personal preference.

[tootootired]

I've used Osmo Polyx oil - used to be called Hardwax Oil - on several floors now and it's bullet proof. It simply doesn't scuff off like varnish can. Osmo do compatible products to tint the wood first. It smells really great as well. Well worth the price IME.

[MortaIWombat]

That stuff looks good, tootootired. Thanks!