Painting hall floorboards

[WentworthMillerMad]

Am inspired by recent hallway improvements. Plan to lift and remove hall carpet that we inherited. It's a Victorian house. Floorboards in good condition. It's a dark hall and would love to paint white / light.
Must I sand them?
Can I get away with good quality primer and floor paint? Thanks

I've done that in both my bedrooms. I just washed them carefully with sugar soap and slapped on undercoat and white gloss. May have finished it off with some kind of top coat but not sure now. This was well over ten years ago and they've worn well. They looked good IMO but definitely not neat or perfect because the boards were gappy in places.

Sanding is a hell of a job - I would definitely try to avoid doing it.

A hallway will get more wear so you might want to look carefully at the paint. I think these days you can get specialist floor paint.

I would lightly sand to give a key to the paint. A hall is a high traffic area and its worth doing the prep or the paint will flake and lift.

With our victorian flat as soon as we moved in we used farrow and balls "all white" paint on both the floorboards/walls in each room (we used the floor paint for the floors). The floorboards had not been varnished for a long time, so painting directly onto them was fine but if they have been varnished recently i would sand them (not too much, just to remove the top layer of varnish). Go for it, we love our white floorboards, much better than carpets, easy to mop/sweep when the kids have been doing arts/crafts.

Why not sand them (hire a sander ) and varnish with clear varnish.

It seems a shame to cover up lovely floorboards.

Painted floorboards are a bit IMHO.