You may or may not remember that we took a different route when finishing our wood floors in our home. Instead of installing pre-finished floors or using polyurethane, we chose to finish unfinished yellow pine with pure tung oil.
And in the two years we’ve been living with these floors, we have received hundreds of questions about how they are holding up. I guess we aren’t the only ones who are interested in this beautiful, natural, nontoxic finish.
Just this week, I received an email. And after I replied to her, I decided to add an update here, too. In case others are curious about our satisfaction. Here’s what she said:
My husband and I are starting to tackle our own custom build and I was wondering about one of your flooring posts. In particular, I love the look of the yellow pine that you guys finished with tung oil.
I was wondering if you were satisfied long term? How did the pine hold up in your high traffic areas? Did the tung oil seal well enough that the floors survived in the kitchen? Were the floors more work to maintain and clean?
I have three kiddos (a set of twins in there) so we are going to be pretty hard on the floors. I love that the tung oil is natural and beautiful, but low maintenance and durability are going to be musts for us! Appreciate any insights you can share!
Thanks!!
Ginny
It has been more than two years since we finished the floors in our home, so I thought it would be the perfect time to share our real-life experience living with floors finished with pure tung oil. We also just reapplied the oil to the floors, so I can speak better to long-term maintenance and wear.
So, here goes –
First – a bird’s eye view. What am I talking about and what did we do to our floors?
When building our house, we chose to install wide plank yellow pine flooring from Lumber Liquidators. The planks are *almost* 9 inches wide. We chose to finish with Pure Tung Oil from Real Milk Paint, which is mixed with Citrus Solvent before finishing. Here’s how the floors looked immediately after finishing.
And if you’d like more details about the how and why, check out these posts.
- Installing wide plank pine flooring (the steps we took to install the wood flooring)
- How we finished our floors without poly (a step by step guide to finishing and oiling the floors for the first time, including application tips and curing times)
- Our favorite food-safe finish (all about using tung oil on wood and why we love it)
I won’t be recapping all the details, and instead will be talking about what has happened since the installation and finishing. Here we go …
Are we satisfied with the pine floors finished with tung oil after two years?
If you are looking for the Cliff’s Notes version – then the answer is YES. We still love the flooring and think it was the best choice for our home and budget. (We did all the work ourselves and the unfinished pine floors and tung oil were very affordable.) The wide pine planks with the matte finish feel very “farmhouse” to me – and they help the floor feel aged and lived-in, in the best possible way.
As a bonus, every single person who walks into our home immediately comments on how much they love the floors.
They look different than floors you see everywhere else. And I like that.
Today, they look deeper and richer than the day they were installed. Most wood floors will darken over time and these are no exception – they look darker and a little more “yellow” than they did after finishing.
When we pull up the rugs, there is a distinct line where the sunlight has hit. Under the dining room table, you can see two sizes of rugs have been here at different times.
But I love the look of the floors as they age.
As a side note – there’s something important to remember about the flooring we chose – pine is a soft wood. Unlike hardwood floors (like oak), pine is simply softer to begin with. All wood will dent, scratch and ding – wood is a natural material and this is just part of the deal. But with soft woods like pine, the dings and dents happen more frequently.
Scratches are a part of life at our house. We don’t stress about it and we truly live in this house.
The beauty of finishing floors with tung oil is that those scratches and dents seem to recede into the imperfections and variations of the wood. Because the tung oil is absorbed into the wood, you aren’t chipping or scratching a finish, so it’s not as noticeable to begin with.
There are definitely spots where there is more wear. Take, for example, the walkway between the back door and the kitchen. We use this area more than anywhere else in the house. The dogs use this area more than anywhere else in the house. And if you look, you’ll see the scratches and dings. There are also plenty of scuffs that I could probably get off with a little scrubbing if I cared (I don’t).
But the beauty of this floor and the finish is that even the most significant wear isn’t really noticeable unless you are looking for it. You’ll see the wear in the close-up pictures above. But when you look at the space from a distance, you likely wouldn’t even notice them.
As a bonus – the yellow pine planks have beautiful grain and color variety. That combined with the matte finish of the tung oil means that it hides a multitude of sins. You don’t notice the dog hair and foot prints like you may on shinier floors. That’s a must in our home.
The barn had shiny wood floors and they were a beast to keep clean. I don’t miss them at all. Long live the matte floors.
Would we recommend others use a tung oil finish on their floors?
This is a loaded question that doesn’t have a straight answer. It depends.
Ask yourself:
- Do you want a natural and nontoxic finish? (Pure tung oil is both.)
- Do you want to have a finish that is easy to touch up with scratches and dents? (Pure tung oil can be rubbed into scratches and dents to revive them. And areas can be independently sanded and refinished without doing the entire floor.)
- Do you consider yourself a perfectionist? (There will be imperfections with most wood floors and certainly with a tung oil finish – and if you can’t handle that, you may want to go a different direction.)
- Do you want a shiny finish? (Nope. No sheen at all on tung oil – it’s a matte finish with a bit of a lustre when it’s clean and you look at in the right light. But you will never see your reflection in these floors.)
- Are you okay with periodic maintenance of the floors? (Unlike poly or prefinished floors, floors finished with tung oil will need to be re-oiled from time to time. There’s no hard and fast rule, but our experience tells us that 1-2 years is probably a safe bet.)
- Are you okay with nixxing most of the harsh cleaners? (A tung oil finish won’t hold up to all those cleaners under your kitchen sink. If you insist on cleaning with bleach, harsh soaps or specialty cleaners, this may not be for you. But don’t worry, it’s a snap to keep them clean.)
These are just a few things I would ask someone considering a tung oil finish. In our case, it was a great fit for our home and we are happy with our decision. But it’s not for everyone.
How does the flooring hold up in high-traffic areas?
If you’ve ever had hardwood floors finished with polyurethane, you likely had the same issue we did in our past homes- a noticeable wear pattern in the areas we use the most.
So the idea of having wear and tear on wood floors is not limited to tung oil.
But, while I think it’s a given that wood floors will have some wear, I am so much happier living with the tung oil floors. As opposed to noticing dents and dings in the finish, I mostly just noticed some scuffs and a dulling of the floor in areas we use the most.
To repeat myself – we do not baby these floors – we have two small dogs and two kids and live in the middle of the country. You can see that in places, but we’re okay with it.
Our most-trafficked areas do have dings, dents, and scratches. But I’m so happy with how the floors look and function after two years – in many ways, I actually think they look more beautiful now. So I feel confident they will continue to hold up well for a long time.
How does it handle liquid spills?
I have read several critical reviews of tung oil indicating that it doesn’t repel water. I’m not sure why this is, because our floors most definitely protect against liquids. Water most definitely beads up on the ground when there are spills if tung oil is applied correctly. (And we have two kids and two dogs – so spills are a daily fact of life.)
Issues can arise if water is left for a long time. So a leak or a spill left unchecked could become a stain on the wood and would make its way through the finish. We had this happen around the fridge when two pieces of ice came out and didn’t get picked up.
We could sand and refinish them, but the spots don’t really bother me at all. I’m living with it and truly don’t even notice unless I’m looking for it. (Who has two thumbs and isn’t a perfectionist? This lady.)
How do we clean and maintain it?
For everyday cleaning, we run the robot vacuum daily. I also sweep and vacuum as needed. To get the floors more deeply cleaned, I clean the floors every week or so with a barely damp microfiber mop (mine is from Norwex).
If an area needs a little extra scrubbing (like a muddy foot print or food spill), I just use a little dish soap which keeps from damaging the finish. (Other approved cleaning supplies include Simply Green for cleaning and Scotch Brite pads or Goof Off. If it does affect the finish, it can be re-oiled.)
Over time, it will be necessary to re-oil the floors. This helps more oil soak into the wood to protect them.
We just re-oiled the floors in October. I could tell the finish was dulling a bit and needed a refresh (just like we need to do periodically on our butcher block countertop, which is also finished with tung oil)
I sprayed a mix of 2 parts citrus solvent to 1 part tung oil on the floors in sections. Then, I buffed it with a high powered buffer (borrowed from my in-laws). It looks beautiful and restored a lot of the lustre in the floors.
I used a clean T-shirt to buff the floors and went over the most-trafficked areas twice.
It’s also much easier to clean now that we added a coat of fresh oil. I can tell the oil is working because the first time I went to mop the floors, the limited water on my microfiber mop just beaded up on the floor.
Where should I look for other resources about tung oil floors?
It’s not easy to find lots of reliable info about finishing floors with pure tung oil. Many “oiled floors” found on the Internet are actually finished using Waterlox or other tung oil finishes that include resin. These are a totally different ball of wax.
For more inspiration and tips for using Pure Tung Oil, try these:
- Start with this full run down of using Pure Tung Oil on wood floors from the manufacturer of Milk Paint. This is packed with all the info you’ll need to know – and we really did try to follow their instructions as best we could.
- I love the stained and distressed look of the floors in this child’s bedroom at Wild Ink Press. (This is great inspiration if you want a stained finish – and I love her tip about using a sharpie to fill in dings before adding more tung oil.)
Hope this is helpful! If you have any other questions, please leave them in the comments.
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Kayla AKA Kilo Bravo says
I loved these floors when you guys installed them. I still love these floors. Even the areas where you see the sun has darkened it! To me, that just screams a lived-in, loved house. We have a lot of sun spots in our new house where the previous owners must of have had rugs and we haven’t put any down and it doesn’t bother me in the least.
Stella Napier says
Thanks for this update. My wood is oak and has polyurethane finish. I hate it! We too live in the country on a small farm and the finish is worn out. When we do get to refinish, it will be with tongue oil!
Gretchen says
I love these kind of “but how is it holding up NOW?” posts! And I also love how you embrace your not-a-perfectionist tendencies. I can definitely relate.