Would you use osmo oil?

[Rainyshowers]

I am having pine floors sanded and stained this week. I need to choose an oil or varnish. I am tempted by the osmo polyx oil but it would be for our entrance hallway and living room pine floor. The hallway is very high traffic with bikes, prams, shoes and toddler mess. The floor gets very dirty and needs regular mopping.

Is osmo oil hard-wearing and good with dirt?

Can you mop the floor regularly?

[Inchyragirl]

I have no experience of Osmo Oil but I do love the effect. Having said that, I was advised to varnish on high traffic areas which were like to get wet / dirty from shoes. The varnish certainly is easy to clean. I’m not sure if it was the right decision though, as it does scratch -and where you could just reapply the oil (I think?), I won’t be able to with varnish.

[MyOtherProfile]

We use it on our wooden kitchen work tops and it works well there but I've never tried mopping them!

[ElanorGamgee]

Yes, we used it throughout our farmhouse. Replaced all floorboards upstairs and down.

Mopped frequently, muddy frequently. Will use it wherever we go. Big selling point for me is that when/if it needs another cost in future years you don’t have to resand.

[Rainyshowers]

@ElanorGamgee so you were able to mop the oil with water and the floor was still okay? Have you noticed mud and dirt stains in the high traffic areas?

[Haint]

We used it. It’s been brilliant. It was about 6 years ago and we’ve not had to re do it yet

[whiskyowl]

How's your heating? If your room is 20 degrees, a coat might dry in 24 hours. If it's below that, it could take eons. I am still waiting for some I used to coat cedar before Christmas to dry.

[ElanorGamgee]

Yes there was wear but anything would wear in our house, no pavements for miles, mud, stones, gravel, pets, children, etc., etc..

I used a vax mop thing, two tanks, one for clean water, one for dirty water with brushes in the bottom.

We are not precious about much in our house!

[MrBennOfFestiveRoad]

We inherited an engineered wood floor in our kitchen when we bought our house, which seemed to be unsealed because anything dropped on it marked, water included. We had some Osmo left from our worktops so I decided to oil a few planks to test and it’s great now - nothing dropped marks and it’s a very traffic area because it’s the only way to access some of our rooms. I’m now gradually doing all of the planks - any difference in colour doesn’t notice as they’re already variable in colour/finish.

[Girlwhowearsglasses]

We did our floors with osmo eight years ago.

It’s brilliant. This is a high traffic bit of the landing - hallway is the same. We have it all through the House and not regretted for a second. If we’d had carpets I reckon we’d have changed them twice by now. I have three boys and animals too.

[Rainyshowers]

So are you all mopping it regularly (I'm thinking weekly) and it's fine?

[ElanorGamgee]

More than weekly, very hot water with whatever I feel like putting in it, I.e. nothing special. The vax thing doesn’t seem to be available any more but it scrubs with brushes, rinses and sucks the dirty (filthy in our case) water into a separate tank to the clean water leaving the floor fairly dry.

[TheNecroscope]

We have oiled oak floors oiled with osmo oil. Flooring is only 2.5 years old but looks perfect still. We don’t usually mop with water though, just hoover and use a spray and mop thing filled with wooden floor cleaner. Very very occasionally would mop if the floor was totally filthy.

[Girlwhowearsglasses]

Yes mopping with hot water, floor cleaners of various types and also a steam cleaner sometimes. You can get an osmo floor cleaner but ours ran out years ago.

I seem to remember we used way more than we calculated we’d need.

So much better than varnish

[MrBennOfFestiveRoad]

I sometimes use the Oslo worktop cleaning spray to spot clean if my DC have dropped something particularly messy and I'm in a hurry but otherwise hoover as needed and use Method wood floor cleaner when it's looking dirty .

[MrBennOfFestiveRoad]

"Osmo" not Oslo!

[Cheatabix]

I use Osmo oil on my oak floors. The best thing about it is that when you have scratches and gouges in your floor you just rub a little oil in them and it's gone (well, it's still there but blends with the rest of the floor). I also use it on the floors in a rental which gets a lot of traffic and the floors look great.