Most people ask two questions before they book floor sanding: how long will it take, and what will living through it actually be like. Both are fair questions, because unlike a lot of refurbishment work, floor sanding happens in a room you are still using, produces a lot of noise and dust, and — in a mansion block — is audible to the flat below. This is a walk-through of what the process actually involves, so you can plan around it rather than be surprised by it.
Before the sander arrives: what gets checked first
A competent job starts with an inspection, not a machine. The floor gets checked for three things that decide almost everything else about the job:
- How much wood is left to sand. Solid boards can usually take several sandings over their life; engineered boards have a thin wear layer and there is a real limit to how many times they can be refinished before you are through the veneer. This is the point where the difference between engineered and solid wood flooring stops being theoretical and starts deciding whether sanding is even the right job.
- Movement and gaps. Squeaks, springy boards and gaps between them are usually fixed as part of the same visit rather than afterwards, because the sander needs a stable, flat surface to work on. If you have been putting off a squeaky floorboard for months, this is the natural point to have it sorted.
- What the floor actually is. Parquet, herringbone and block flooring behave differently to strip boards under a sanding machine, and older parquet in particular often needs a specialist approach rather than a standard drum sander — our separate page on parquet restoration covers what that involves.
This is also the point where price gets fixed. Wood flooring work on our wood flooring services is priced from £30/m² excluding VAT, with the final figure depending on the condition of the floor and the finish you choose — that gets confirmed before anything is booked, not adjusted on the day.
The sanding itself: coarse, medium, fine
The actual sanding happens in passes, moving from a coarse grit that strips off the old finish and levels the boards, through progressively finer grits that remove the scratch pattern left by the previous pass. Skipping a stage shows up later as visible swirl marks once the finish goes on, which is one of the more common corners cut by less careful contractors. Edges and corners the drum sander cannot reach — against skirtings, under radiators — are done separately with a smaller edging machine, and this is usually where the finish quality of a job is easiest to judge.
Dust: what to actually expect
Traditional sanding produces a great deal of fine dust that settles on every surface in the room and drifts under doors into the rest of the flat. Dust-extraction sanders, connected to a vacuum unit as they work, capture the large majority of it at source rather than after the fact, which matters if you are staying in the property or have furniture and soft furnishings you would rather not have coated. It is worth confirming with whoever you book which method they are using and what they expect you to move or cover beforehand — curtains, rugs and anything on open shelving are the usual casualties if nobody asks.
Finish: stain, oil or lacquer
Once the boards are sanded and vacuumed, the finish goes on — most commonly a hardwax oil or a lacquer, with or without a stain beforehand to alter the colour. Each has a different drying and curing time, and this is the stage that most affects your timeline: a lacquered floor is typically walkable sooner than an oiled one is fully cured, and both need longer before rugs or furniture go back down than before you can walk on them in socks. If you have a completion date in mind — a tenancy start, a house move, a sale — this is the detail to confirm at quote stage rather than assume.
Living around the work: noise, hours and neighbours
In a purpose-built mansion block or converted period building, sanding is loud enough to be heard through the floor structure, and the finishing stages can carry fumes for longer than most people expect in a small flat with limited ventilation. A few things are worth checking before work starts, not during it:
- Working hours. Many Central London buildings and boroughs restrict noisy work to set hours on weekdays and Saturdays, and this varies by council — our guide to working hours restrictions in Westminster sets out what that typically means in practice.
- Freeholder or block consent. Some leases specify what floor coverings are permitted, particularly where hard flooring replaces carpet — see our page on floor noise rules in mansion blocks for how this is usually approached, and licence to alter requirements if you are changing the floor build-up rather than refinishing what is already there.
- Acoustic requirements. If you are replacing rather than refinishing a floor, Building Regulations set standards for sound insulation between dwellings, and many leases add their own underlay specification on top. Our page on acoustic underlay requirements in flats covers what that typically involves, and it is worth checking before boards go down, not after a complaint from downstairs.
How long it actually takes
For a single room, sanding, gap-filling and one coat of finish is often a one- to two-day job; a whole flat, multiple rooms, staining, or an oiled finish that needs several coats with drying time between each will run longer. The honest answer is that it is quicker to get a fixed timeline against your specific floor than to rely on a rule of thumb, because board condition and finish choice move the number more than square footage does.
When sanding isn't actually the answer
Occasionally an inspection turns up a floor that has been sanded close to its limit, boards that are too damaged to level, or a subfloor issue that sanding will not fix regardless of finish. In those cases the honest advice is to talk about new wood flooring rather than spend money refinishing a floor that will need replacing within a couple of years anyway — which is exactly the decision our separate guide on floor sanding versus new flooring is built to walk through.
If you have a floor that needs attention, send a photo through our quote form or over WhatsApp and we'll tell you honestly whether it is a sanding job, a repair job, or a replacement job before anyone books anything.