calling all mumsnetters with engineered wood flooring - waxed, oiled or lacquered?

[lelf79]

I'm looking into low(ish) maintenance engineered wood flooring for our kitchen/diner/snug but am getting confused between the benefits of all the different finishes

Which one did you choose and why?

My parents have beautiful lacquered engineered oak flooring.
However, it dents and marks soooo easily. I think I would go for waxed as the light won't catch the marks so much?

I have oiled. It will scratch if mistreated, but the scratches can be dealt with. There's a Dr Beckmann cleaner that deals with light scuffs, and anything else can get a wipe with floor oil.

I chose oiled as the floor had been lacquered originally and was badly scratched from the previous owners. I had the floor sanded professionally as there didn't seem to be anything else possible for a lacquered finish, and I didn't want to be stuck with that mess again. We're a shoes-off house with pads under chair legs etc and the oiled floor is holding up fine.

We've got an oiled engineered floor and we chose this because I believe laquering is quite toxic. We've got a rustic oak floor and it looks like new...chairs are pulled over it all the time and I'm quite relaxed about it all.

We have uv lacquered and it hasn't scratched at all - only been down for 9 months though. Chose this as its what our floor fitter showed me on his own house.

I think ours is lacquered
I knew we wouldn't find the time to reoil it regularly

We have waxed which looks really lovely (it's a white wax on oak so very pale). The main problem is that it gets water marks and stains v easily - particularly in the kitchen and around dd's chair.

It feels lovely to walk on and is fab in the sitting room where the wear isn't so heavy.

Think the uv lacquer gives the floor a beautiful Matt finish and keeps the colour from fading/darkening in the sun.

I spent ages deciding this too, I went for oiled, for me it seemed more durable and can easily be fixed if there is an accident. Looks great too!

thanks for all your replies!

Basically, wax feels nicer underfoot, lacquer sounds less less maintenance in the long term but shows scratches and dents easily, oil is easy to repair in case of accidents but needs regular reoiling...
Now i have more questions

How do you go about cleaning your floors? Anyone use a wet mop/steam mop?

So those of you with oiled; i know you are meant to reoil about once a year but how often do you realistically do this? and if you don't is it a big deal?

those of you with lacquer; do the dents and scratches add to character if you don't mind them or are they really noticeable as such?

Lastly, if you didn't have "UV protection", did your floors fade much? and if you could do it again would you add UV protection?

I have uv lacquer and so far can't see any scratches. Our fitter told us not to use a steam mop. I have a 123 Spray Mop which I fill with Bona wooden floor cleaner - works a treat

Mine is lacquer and has not dented! This would take something pretty heavy to drop on it as it is more about the quality of the veneer than the top coat finish. Go for the thickest veneer you can afford. Solid wood not so readily available these days. We have Matt lacquered but it was pre finished by Kahrs. It is great and needs minimal cleaning with a vacuum cleaner and a mop from time to time with a wood cleaner in the water. Ours is in the lounge though. The manufacturers usually recommend how to clean and maintain their products.

We have oiled and all the suppliers we spoke to said that yearly was completely unnecessary and we probably wouldn't need to re-oil for many years.

I keep our floors cleaned with my irobot Braava but before I had him I used to vacuum and wipe with a microfibre cloth. Love the hygiene factor of hard flooring.

no isea what the surface on my bamboo is
but
its 6 years old and comes up fine when I can be bothered to polish it, but normally its just a matt finish that gets mopped once a week and swept every day

Do not use a steam mop or any kimd of mop for that matter, engineered wood floors don't like the wet.

Get a spray and one of those specialist wood floor mops and just use that, mine was about £6 from Dunelm.

Mine was the oiled and we've been told it won't need oiling again.

One thing to consider, what ever finish you go for, is the thickness of the boards, we went for a thick one so if we ever need to in years to come we can hire a sander and sand it all down.

my floor gets mopped and steamed with no ill effects
its 13mm thick so yes, we have the sanding option after another 5/10 years