Anyone got a painted wood floor?

[CountessDracula]

We have recently moved house and inherited a cream carpet which is no longer cream due to muddy paws and meddling brat! We are having an extension next year and the floor will be changed then, so we need to to a cheapie quick fix in the meantime. A friend who has a flooring company has said the boards are in good nick and the cheapest way to do this is to paint the floorboards.

We live in quite a high-ceilinged Edwardian house which currently has cream walls (flipping cream everywhere bleargh) and we don't plan to re-paint the walls until after the building work, so we need to choose a colour that will look ok with that. We have mainly dark furniture so don't want anything too dark.

So, my question is, if you have a painted wood floor, what colour is it and what effect does it give? Don't want to look too swedish or new england so no white.

Yes, I have painted wooden floor. Inherited it as pale green which looked good but had to redecorate which meant changing it. I mixed 2 colours together (also didn't want white, I'm not deomesticated enough) Found a 'gun-metal grey' (don't know if that's teh technical term) and mixed that into teh white to get a pale grey. Looks very nice, lightens up the room BUT don't make the mistake I made of mixing up the paint and it not being enough to do 2 coats. Had to, very carefully, try to get exact shade again for the rest of the floor. I used International but think B&Q do their own floor paint. Imagine you could use other paints and put a matt varnish over the top. But did this one a year ago and hasn't come off at all.

CD, sanded and varnished floorboards come out a lovely piney colour. Messy job though.

Another vote for international floor paint. I have it in the room I use for my office. Two coats look fantastic after two years. And I don't regret going for white, it cleans very easily. I'm sure they do other colours. Beware though, takes up to a week to go completely hard.

Farrow and Ball do all their gorgeous colours in floor paint so am going to go for one of those I think. www.farrowandball.co.uk/main.php?terr=uk is the link - go to shop and paints and then farrow and ball and you can see them there.

We were thinking maybe Farrow's cream or Hay.

Janh we were going to do the sanded boards but it takes a lot of work to get them to a suitable state, so we are doing this as interim measure and then getting them done properly after our building work - couldn't bear to spend loads of time getting the floor looking lovely only to have the builders trash it! Also will prob go for an old oak floor in the end.

Oh and anyone know how it stands up to dog's toenails?

I think it looks fantastic if you do the first layer of paint in one colour and the second in another, eg we have duck egg blue underneath and white on the top, it means as the white 'weathers' you get the duck egg coming through and I think it looks lovely.

However, I am getting rid of them altogether soon as can't resist the lure of good quality woollen carpet...

our house came with 2 painted wooden floors- one navy blue which is v nice, and in our room there is a cream floor - they're both quite worn now,but somehow look ok, kind of distressed looking ! We've changed the colour of the walls and somehow the floors have just blended in (the blue floor has Dulux Sexy Pink to contend with !)

CD we have 2 painted floors and they do not stand up to dogs skidding around on them very well, just my experience. We have a completey sanded floor in the hall and the dining room and it doesnt show scrathes half as much and if the floorboards are fairly clean and in good nick a quick sand and varnish is usually enough

sorry just read you didnt want sanded, whoops

What about a woodstain and several layers of hard wearing varnish? Do your boards have a dark brown edge with the natural colour in the middle like most old houses seem to have?

Our bedroom has a sanded/varnished wooden floor stained a dark reddish brown (Mahogany maybe?). As it's a natural colour, it seems to go with most things.