How Dark Wooden Floor Is Made

Dark wooden flooring is currently an extremely popular choice in both modern and traditional interiors.  Natural wood flooring colours range from light maple and beech tones to walnut and ipe, which are almost black in their natural state. Exotic woods like walnut and ipe, by their very nature, however tend to be more expensive than the likes of oak.  So if you want the characteristic dark look of these exotic woods, but find that the real thing is outside your budget, how you can make your wooden floor dark?

Wooden flooring, such as oak is a perfect base to create an exotic hardwood look for a fraction of the price.  The nature of oak is such that it lends itself to colouring with a whole range of stains, oils and specialist treatments.

The main ways to make your oak wooden floor dark on a DIY basis are:

Staining. Staining is arguably one of the most straightforward DIY methods you can use to achieve a dark colouration on your oak flooring.  That said, due to the intensity of the result, it may well be a process you choose to leave to the professionals.  For wood staining to be successful, it should ideally be carried out on a floor which is freshly sanded, once with a coarse paper and then with a finer paper.  Some experts then recommend adding a light covering of water to the floor to assist the stain absorption process (but check with the manufacturer if you are in any doubt).  In order to achieve a rich dark colour, the whole process is likely to take up to 3 coats of stain, each with a 12-hour drying period in between.  Thereafter, you’ll need to finish off with a couple of coats of varnish for a hardwearing finish.

Oiling. Like staining, oiling is a suitable method of darkening your oak wooden floor yourself, but again not for the feint-hearted.  Oiling is the method preferred by anyone who wants a natural looking floor.

And the methods best left only to the professionals:

Fuming or smoking is definitely not a floor darkening DIY option because it involves putting the oak into an enclosed environment in which ammonia is introduced into the atmosphere (and not applying ammonia to the wood as is commonly thought).  This enclosed environment might be a closed tank, a tent or a container into which a small amount of ammonia is introduced.  The effect of the ammonia in the atmosphere is that the colour of the wood is changed.   The ammonia makes the tannins in the wood come to the surface, in turn darkening the colour of the wood.  In effect, the longer the wood is in the ammonia-laden atmosphere, the darker the end result.

Baking or thermo treating is a further, non-DIY process which can be used to darken wooden floor colouring as well as giving the wood improved durability.