How We Stained and Installed our Pine Floors

empty bedroom with vintage chandelier and beige limewash walls with stained pine wood floors

Learn how to stain and install pine floors. We’re sharing what stain we used on our pine flooring and how we installed them.

For the upstairs part of our renovation, our bedroom and one other room, we did pine flooring. I love the look of pine floors, but chose not to use it downstairs because our old kitchen had pine floors that became too beaten up over time. Pine is a softer wood and with the traffic our kitchen and dining room get, it just doesn’t really work well.

However, the upstairs of our house has pine floors. They are painted though (they were painted when Mike bought the house). So this wood does match the flooring up here, it’s just not finished the same. I wish we had the time, money & motivation to redo all the floors up here, because I love how this stained pine floor turned out!

bedroom with beige limewash walls and stained pine floors installed

Mike had a hard time finding a place that sold the size boards we needed. We ended up buying ours from a lumber company out of state. We chose to do boards with two different widths, since that’s what the flooring is on the rest of this level. And I like the look of it. Our boards are 1×8 and 1×10.

Also, it’s so hard to really capture the color of the floor. It looks slightly in different photos, and in the video. The photo below might capture it best? Just depends on the lighting outside, etc. I’m in love with the color. It’s not yellow, as pine tends to be (I think it looks more yellow in these photos). It’s a nice warm medium brown. Not too light, not too dark. We mixed our own stain for this.

bedroom with stain pine floors installed

*This list may contain affiliate links. That means, while it’s the same price for you, I get a very small commission out of it that helps my family and me.

Supplies needed:

sander
tools to distress wood, if wanted
stain (see below)
circular saw (to cut boards to size)
foam underlayment
utility knife
stapler & staples
nail gun & nails
flooring nailer
square cut flooring nails
hammer
nail set
Bona Mega Waterborne Wood Floor Finish – Extra Matte
lambs wool applicator pad
foam sanding pad – 400 grit

Our Stain for Pine Floors:

Mix 3 parts Early American stain with 1 part Natural stain. (The exact amounts you’ll need will vary depending on your floor size). Apply with lint free rag.

Watch the video to see what we did:

empty bedroom with stained pine floors and beige walls

bedroom with antique dresser and pine floors

You can see the entire bedroom here. And here’s a great post for removing stains from hardwood floors.

-Manda