Should I restore my original floorboards or cover them?
Bare boards are cheap, characterful, cold, noisy and draughty; a covering is warm and quiet and hides everything below it. The five tests that decide which one your floor is actually suited to.
- Difficulty
- beginner
- Time
- 40 min
- Read
- 4 min
- Safety
- caution
Short answer
Lift one board and look underneath before deciding anything. Boards worth exposing are sound, reasonably matched, thick enough to sand, over a dry ventilated void, and in a room where cold and noise do not matter much. If any of those fail, covering is not a compromise — it is the right answer.
Exposed original boards look wonderful and cost very little, which is why people commit to them before checking whether their floor is a candidate. The honest test is not aesthetic. It is whether the boards have enough material left, whether what is under them is dry, and whether you can live with a floor that is fundamentally cold, hard and acoustically live.
Safety
Step by step
- Check what is left of the boards.Lift one. Look at the thickness, and at how much the surface has already been sanded — a board with the nail heads standing proud and the tongue close to the surface has been sanded before and may not survive another pass.
- Assess the condition across the whole room.Count the boards that are split, cut about for services, replaced with something different, painted with an unknown coating or badly stained. A handful is character; a third of the floor is a patchwork you will never be happy with.
- Look at the void.Damp, standing water, blocked airbricks, insulation slumped on the ground. Exposing boards over a wet void puts a finished, sealed surface over a problem — deal with the void first regardless of which way you go.
- Be realistic about cold and draughts.A bare board floor over a ventilated void is genuinely cold, and the gaps between boards pull air through. Both are treatable — insulation between joists, gap filling, rugs — but they are work and cost that a carpet solves in an afternoon.
- Be realistic about noise.Bare boards reflect sound, and in a flat or an upstairs room they transmit impact noise straight into the room below. In a top-floor flat, or a house with a lightly built floor, this is the factor that most often changes people's minds.
- Cost both routes properly.Restoration is sander hire, abrasives, filler, finish and several days of work, plus the gap filling and insulation the floor will need afterwards. A mid-range carpet fitted, or laminate laid, is often comparable. The romance of the free floor under the carpet rarely survives the arithmetic.
- Consider the middle route.Restore the boards in the rooms where they will be seen and enjoyed and where cold matters less — a hall, a living room, a study — and carpet the bedrooms. This is what most people who have done both end up recommending.
- If you cover, do not destroy the option.Screw rather than nail, avoid gluing anything to the boards, and prefer a floating floor or a screwed overlay over a fully bonded one. Then the boards are still there, and still exposable, for whoever comes next.
Alternatives
- Sand and finish the original boards: Cheapest per square metre if the boards are sound, and unique. Budget for gap filling, draught sealing and rugs, and expect several days of dusty work.
- Paint the boards: A traditional and forgiving answer for a mixed, patched or previously painted floor where the timber will not take a clear finish. It hides mismatches that sanding only makes more obvious.
- Overlay and cover: Hardboard or plywood screwed down and a covering on top. Warm, quiet, quick and completely reversible, and the honest answer for a floor that has been cut about for a century.
- Carpet with a good underlay: The warmest and quietest option, the cheapest to fit, and the one that solves the draught and impact noise problems rather than mitigating them.
Questions people ask
How can I tell if the boards have been sanded before?
Look at the nails or screws. On an unsanded floor the heads sit below the surface; on a heavily sanded one they stand proud or are surrounded by a small dish where the abrasive has cut around the harder steel. Also look at the tongue on a lifted board — the closer the surface is to the tongue, the less material remains.
The boards are painted. Does that rule out restoring them?
Not automatically, but it changes the job substantially. Old paint on a floor may contain lead, and sanding it releases the residue as dust. Establish what the coating is before deciding whether it comes off or gets painted over properly.
Are original boards worth anything to a buyer?
Exposed original boards are a selling feature in a period house, and they are one of the few improvements that costs little and reads as authentic. That does not override a cold, draughty, noisy result in the wrong room.