Painted floorboards are predicted to be one of the “hot” decorating trends in coming years, according to a recent article in House Beautiful magazine.
Painting your floor can be a really fun project, and result in something truly stunning and unique, but as a professional decorator I would urge you to be realistic in your expectations; floors get a lot of wear and tear, so to reduce the chances of your new paint getting scuffed and damaged, you need to follow the best process, and use the best products, specifically developed for this type of job.
Choosing the right paint is important. You need something that will look great, obviously, but also a paint that will stand up as much as possible to wear and tear, and also be able to “flex”, as the floorboards naturally expand and contract with changes of temperature. For those reasons, choosing a paint that has been developed specifically for this type of project is highly recommended.
Fortunately, help is at hand. In this blog we’re going to look at the best paints to use for wooden floors – primers, top coats and clear varnishes to add extra protection. Feel free to skip ahead if you just need my product recommendations. I’ve been completely genuine based on my own experience.
Click here if you need step-by-step guide to the best process for painting floorboards.
Best Primers for Wooden Floors
To answer this question fully, we need to know what your chosen top coat paint is (because some don’t actually require a separate primer), what your floor is made of, and what (if anything) it has been treated with before.
If your floor is made of MDF (unusual, but possible), then an MDF-specific primer, such as Johnstone’s Trade MDF primer, is the best product for the job.
If your floor is plywood, or unpainted/unvarnished natural wood floorboards, then a water-based wood primer, such as Johnstone’s Trade Wood Primer, will work well. However, if you have new, untreated wooden floorboards, there will probably be a lot of knots in them. These should be treated first by “spot priming” with a shellac-based primer such as Fiddes Full Stop.
If your floorboards have an existing coat of varnish on them, and you haven’t been able to remove the old varnish, you will need a good adhesion primer to help your paint to stick. Varnishes are naturally very smooth surfaces, so there’s nothing there for your paint to “get a grip of” – an adhesion or “grip” primer will overcome this issue.
With a good primer, there is therefore less need to worry about trying to sand off all the old varnish – just give it a sand to remove any loose or flaking patches, and roughen the surface a bit (provide a “key”), and your primer will do the rest for you. There are loads of great adhesion primers around these days – some of my favourites include Bedec All Prime and Crown PX4.
If the floorboards have been treated with a stain, I’d recommend a good adhesion primer with stain-blocking properties, to stop the colour of the stain bleeding back through and discolouring your top coat.
Zinsser Cover Stain is ideal for this sort of job – it’s solvent-based though, so you will need to ventilate the room well while you’re priming the floor, and you’ll need white spirit or clean spirit to clean your brush afterwards. But the primer dries in a couple of hours, so you won’t be sitting around for long waiting. If you’re unsure whether the floorboards are stained, varnished, or both, this is the product I would use.
What to Look For in a Paint for Wooden Floors
The key attributes your “finish paint” should have include the following:
- Durability – especially in high traffic areas like hallways or kitchens. A more durable paint will stand up better to everyday wear and tear, which is inevitable with people walking on the floor. If your paint isn’t ultra-durable, you can overcome this with a couple of coats of clear varnish for added protection (see below); this is also a good idea in rooms like bathrooms and kitchens where there is greater humidity and more chance of water splashes on the floor.
- Flexibility – a paint that is designed specifically for wooden floorboards (or at the very least, specifically for use on wood) will have some flex in it, so that it moves with the natural expansion and contraction of the wood.
- Finish – are you looking for a matt, satin or gloss finish? If your chosen paint ticks all the other boxes but isn’t available in the finish you want, don’t despair, because this can be overcome with a couple of coats of clear varnish in the right finish.
- Slip resistance – this isn’t a frequently mentioned feature in many paints, but if you’re concerned about slipping on the floor (perhaps more of an issue in a bathroom or kitchen?), maybe seek out a floor paint with this feature built in
- Drying time/VOC levels/odour/environmental concerns – if these factors are important to you, then look for a water-based floor paint rather than a traditional solvent-based one.
The Best Paints for Wooden Floors
Having sorted out the primer (if needed), and looked at the factors you should consider when choosing a paint for your floorboards, let’s look at a few specific recommendations. I’ve divided these up into three sections – best water-based floor paints, best solvent-based paints for wooden floors, and best designer paints for floorboards:
Best Water-Based Floor Paints
For lower-traffic areas, or if you have environmental concerns about using solvent-based paints, then this water-based product is a fantastic choice.
Bradite Floor-It is a great little product. Obviously it’s designed specifically for use on floors, it’s very low odour, non-yellowing and quick-drying. You should have no problem getting two coats of this on in a day, although you should wait for a full day after your final coat before subjecting it to any unnecessary traffic.
As well as Light and Dark Grey “off the shelf”, you can get it tinted to any RAL or BS colour via a specialist online outlet such as Rawlins Paints. Only available in “mid-sheen” (about 35% sheen level).
Best Solvent-Based Paints for Wooden Floors
Dulux Trade Floorshield is of course available in Dulux’s wide range of colours, in a hard-wearing mid-sheen finish. It’s a single-pack product (some of the really heavy-duty industrial floor paints are two-pack products which you have to mix together) that will stand up to normal household traffic, occasional spillages and regular cleaning.
I love this paint. It’s very forgiving while you’re applying it, so it’s easy to achieve a good finish.
Best Designer Paints for Wooden Floorboards
If the high-end designer look is your thing, and you crave those rich, intense colours, these two options should have your floors looking like something from your favourite magazines:
Little Greene Intelligent Floor Paint gives you the choice of all those stunning LG colours in a water-based paint that is really easy to use. Low-odour, child-, pet- and environment-friendly and durable, it dries quickly so you can get two coats on in a day. Available in a mid-sheen finish (30-40% sheen level).
The thing I like most about Little Greene is the depth of colour (which is why I’m recommending it here). That’s why you pay more for a designer paint, and that’s exactly what Little Greene delivers. You can genuinely tell the difference between this and a standard trade option when using it in tinted colours.
The Best Top-Coat Varnishes for Wooden Floors
If you want to play it safe, particularly in hallways, stairs, kitchens or bathrooms, you should consider protecting your newly painted floorboards with a top coat of clear, non-yellowing varnish. This will give your floor added durability without changing the colour.
What it will also allow you to do though, is to change your sheen level. If the paint colour you chose is only available in a mid-sheen finish, and you were hoping for a flat matt look (for example), then this is the solution; just by a flat matt clear coat varnish to go on top. Or gloss, whatever you fancy.
There are loads of great water-based options around these days – water-based varnishes won’t yellow, are quick drying and low odour, and it’s much easier to clean your brushes and rollers out after use too.
One of the best products around is Polyvine’s Heavy Duty Floor Varnish. It pretty much does exactly as you’d expect – it’s a polyurethane-based varnish for use on interior floors, and is available in 100ml, 1L, 2L and 4L sizes, in either satin or dead-flat matt finishes. It only takes a couple of hours to dry between coats, so you can get 2-3 coats done in a day – and it’s fully cured in only 16 hours, so you can get your furniture moved back in only a day or so after you’ve finished the project.
One little “quirk” to be aware of; to get the hardest-wearing result with the dead flat matt variant, they recommend applying two coats of the satin first, followed by one coat of the matt. I don’t know why, but they’ve obviously done the research and found out that that’s what works best, and who am I to argue?
Final Thoughts
I hope that all helps, and that you’re feeling not only inspired, but now a bit better prepared to start your floor-painting project. It’s not rocket science, but as a professional decorator I always find your best chance of success is to use the best products available, and follow the best process (see the companion blog, “how to paint wooden floors”). Hopefully the information shared above will give you some pointers as to the best primers, paints and varnishes to use when painting your wooden floor.
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