What is the difference between prefinished and unfinished wood flooring?
Prefinished wood flooring has a factory applied finish. No sanding is required after installation, avoiding the mess and jobsite delays of a sand-and-finish wood floor. Prefinished floors can be solid or engineered and typically carry 25 year wear-through warranties in residential applications. These warranties come with a lot of fine print, but call attention to the finish’s durability. The advance in technology that allows these warranties is the suspension of aluminum oxide particles within the finish. Aluminum oxide is an extremely hard man-made material (used in grey sandpaper for instance). It is usually the second coat of a multi-coat process. The top coats are several layers of clear ultra-violet cured acrylic polyurethane designed to allow for future cosmetic recoating without sanding the wood itself.
A Prefinished product is factory finished with several coats of UV-cured polyurethane or aluminum oxide applied. These factory finishes are tough and durable. Prefinished products drastically reduce the amount of time it takes to complete installation and eliminate the dust and odors with on-site sanding and finishing needed for unfinished products. These installations typically can be completed in one day. For unfinished products, raw materials are first installed, and then sanded, stained if desired, and finally finished with 3 or 4 coats of polyurethane. This complete installation takes 3 to 5 days, depending on the size of the project.
