Wood species and how each takes a refinish

By Wood Floor Report Editorial. Last reviewed August 2026. How we research this.

In brief

The Janka scale, read at the government lab that publishes it

Nearly every hardness number on a flooring site traces back to one source: the USDA Forest Service's Forest Products Laboratory and its Wood Handbook, report FPL-GTR-282. Chapter 5 defines the Janka test as the load required to embed an 11.28 mm (0.444 inch) steel ball to one half of its diameter. Flooring uses the side hardness value, measured with the load perpendicular to the grain. The table below is read straight from the handbook's Tables 5-3b and 5-5b, at 12 percent moisture content, which is dry indoor wood.

Method: USDA Forest Service, Forest Products Laboratory, Wood Handbook FPL-GTR-282, Chapter 5, Tables 5-3b and 5-5b, read 2026-08-28. Values are side hardness in pounds-force (lbf) at 12 percent moisture content, lab averages on small clear specimens rather than flooring planks. The two ratio figures are our division of the FPL values.

What the scale actually predicts is dents. It predicts sanding effort less well than you would think. Pine sits near the bottom of the table, yet Ben Osborne of How To Sand A Floor warns that pine is just as hard to sand as oak. The reason: while it is softer it is more fibrous and resilient. At the top of the table the effort is real, though: The Wood Database calls jatoba difficult to work on account of its density and hardness. Whatever the species, the machine work follows the same path, starting at 36 or 40 grit, covered at sanding.

Red oak and white oak: the two benchmark floors

Red oak and white oak, the most common American floors, differ less than the marketing around them suggests. FPL measures northern red oak at 1,290 lbf and white oak at 1,360. That our division makes about 5 percent apart. Carlisle Wide Plank Floors, a flooring maker that publishes the same two numbers, says they are so close that both woods will perform equally well once installed, finished, and sealed. If your floor is oak of either kind, you are the standard job in the trade's cost tables: NerdWallet's by-species table puts oak at $3 to $5 per square foot.

Color is where the two split. Per Carlisle, red oak carries salmon and pink undertones while white oak runs beige and brown, and both take stain easily. White oak is the better base for gray and lighter stains. And with medium to dark stains the two look virtually the same. If a dark color is the goal, contractors often water pop oak first, wetting the sanded wood so the grain opens and drinks more stain. The Flooring Girl says the technique is used on oak floors being stained, especially dark stains. Color choices live at stain colors and the process at staining.

Maple: hard, pale, and famous for blotching

The maple on floors is sugar maple, also called hard maple, at 1,450 lbf, harder than either oak. Its trouble is not the sanding. It is the stain. The Maple Flooring Manufacturers Association, the trade body for maple floors, warns that much of a stained maple surface will appear uneven and blotchy. And because of maple's extremely tight cellular structure and variable grain it does not recommend staining or bleaching maple strip flooring under any circumstances. (MFMA's original statement sits behind a member login. We read it as quoted by Flooristics, a flooring company that carries the passage.)

The mechanism is simple. As Flooristics puts it, quoting refinisher Rob of Natural Wood Floors, maple grain alternates very hard and very soft spots. And the hard spots will not absorb stain easily. So they read as light blotches next to the soaked-in dark areas. The safe play is a clear finish that shows maple's natural pale color. On price, maple is the expensive line in NerdWallet's species table at $6 to $8 per square foot, against $3 to $5 for oak. Adding a color costs more still: staining runs $1 to $3 per square foot per HomeAdvisor. And adding NerdWallet's staining line to its refinish band puts a full sand plus stain at $4 to $11 per square foot. Spending that on a species its own trade body says not to stain is a decision to make with open eyes, and a test patch.

Hickory: the hardest domestic, and a little moody

Hickory flooring mixes the true hickory species. And all of them out-rank oak: pecan hickory at 1,820 lbf, shagbark at 1,880, pignut at 2,140. That hardness buys dent resistance, and it costs sanding patience. Hurst Hardwoods, which publishes a hickory sanding guide, says its surface can be a bit rougher than other hardwoods and requires more attention in sanding. And warns that belt sanding the edges will over-polish the wood so those spots will not take finish the same as the floor around them. Stain takes comparably to other hardwoods per the same guide, but hickory shares maple's hard-and-soft grain. So Flooristics gives it the same blotch warning.

Hickory has one more habit worth knowing before a refinish: movement. An inspector writing in Hardwood Floors Magazine, the NWFA's trade publication, puts it plainly: hickory tends to exaggerate the effects of temperature and humidity. None of the cost guides we read prints a hickory line. The national $3 to $8 per square foot band still applies. And the hard-species end of NerdWallet's table, the maple and mahogany line, is $6 to $8.

Pine and the softwoods: cheap wood, not cheap work

The pines span a wide stretch of the table: eastern white pine at 380 lbf, loblolly, the southern yellow pine, at 690. And longleaf pine, the antique heart pine, at 870. Douglas-fir floors sit with them at 710. Soft wood dents. FPL's own table note calls eastern white pine the softest common floor species listed, denting easily relative to oak. On an old pine floor those dents are usually part of the character. And a refinish will not sand them all away without spending wood the floor may not have.

Do not expect the softness to make the job cheap or quick. NerdWallet prices pine refinishing at $4 to $7 per square foot, above its oak line. And Ben Osborne's warning bears repeating: pines are just as hard to sand as oaks, softer but more fibrous and resilient. Old heart pine also tends to live in old houses, where board thickness has already been spent by past sandings. That is the budget question covered next.

The exotics: jatoba and ipe

Jatoba sells in the US as Brazilian cherry, and it is not cherry. American black cherry measures 950 lbf. Jatoba measures 2,350 in FPL's imported-woods table, harder than any hickory. The Wood Database calls it difficult to work on account of its density and hardness, with a moderate blunting effect on tools, though it glues, stains, and finishes well. Its defining refinish trait is light: jatoba's color darkens with exposure after installation. So rugs and furniture leave light patches that take months of light to blend. A freshly refinished jatoba floor is a floor that will keep changing color for a while. And that is normal, not a defect in the work.

Ipe, sold as Brazilian walnut, is the far end of the scale at 3,680 lbf, about 2.9 times red oak by our division. The Wood Database calls it extremely hard and dense with high cutting resistance and a pronounced blunting effect. And notes its natural lapachol deposits, a powdery yellow substance in the wood, can interfere with finishing. None of the national cost guides we read publishes a jatoba or ipe refinish rate. Plan from the $3 to $8 band, expect the top of it. And ask bidders directly what they charge for exotics and whether they have sanded them before.

What each species costs to refinish

Method: per-species costs are NerdWallet's published by-species table, read 2026-08-28. Hardness values are FPL-GTR-282 as above. National ranges, not quotes. Six publishers we read (NerdWallet, HomeAdvisor, Bob Vila, Fixr, This Old House, Inch Calculator) all put the overall full sand and refinish band at $3 to $8 per square foot.

Read the table as a routing chart. Oak owns the bottom of the national band, maple sits at the top of it. And the hardest imports have no published line at all. Cherry needs one caution: the $3 to $5 cherry line fits American black cherry, a soft 950 lbf wood, while jatoba sells as Brazilian cherry and is a 2,350 lbf import. So know which one is on your floor before you price from that row. To turn any of these per-foot rates into a job total, the full math is at cost and cost per square foot, or put your own footage through the calculator.

How many refinishes your floor holds, whatever the species

Hardness does not buy extra refinishes. The published counts are stated by wood thickness, not by species, and every species spends the same budget. A new 3/4 inch solid tongue-and-groove floor carries about 1/4 inch of wood above the groove, per Uptown Floors. And it cannot be sanded below the tongue and groove without exposing the installation nails. A full sand removes about 1/32 to 1/16 inch, per Just Around the Corner Flooring of St. Louis, which is how its guidance lands around six to eight sandings over a solid floor's life. Other trade sources say four to six, so the honest range across what we read is four to eight. Carpet Trends of Rye, NY draws the floor of the budget: at least 3/32 inch of wood above the tongue is needed to refinish safely. The full count-by-count breakdown is at how many times can floors be refinished.

Engineered floors run on a smaller budget, set by the wear layer, the real-wood veneer above the core. Just Around the Corner's rule of thumb: about 2 mm handles one to two refinishes, 3 mm handles two to three. And 4 mm handles three to four. Refinisher Ben Osborne is stricter at the thin end, calling 3 mm the minimum to sand at all, good for one sanding, with 6 mm good for about three. The sources disagree below 3 mm, which is itself the useful fact: a thin wear layer has no margin for error. Check yours before any machine arrives, using the guide at engineered hardwood.

The decision: match your species to the right job

Method: our judgment, applied to the sourced figures on this page. National figures. Your contractor's bid will differ.

The plain recommendation: if you have oak, proceed with confidence and shop on the bid, because every crew knows this wood. If you have maple or hickory and want a color change, that is the one species-driven reason on this page to slow down, test, and consider keeping the natural look. If you have an exotic, make species experience a hiring question, not an assumption.

You may not need a refinish at all

Species changes the refinish. It does not change the cheaper alternative. If your finish is dull or lightly scratched but nothing reaches bare wood, the floor was never waxed, and you like the color, a screen and recoat does the job on any species. The reason: the abrasive screen scuffs only the finish and never cuts into the wood. Hired out, screening runs $1 to $2.50 per square foot and the recoat $1 to $2. That is $2 to $4.50 combined by our addition of Fixr's two lines, against $3 to $8 for the full sand. Its limits, per The Flooring Girl: it cannot fix deep scratches, cannot change the color. And will not bond over wax or wax-containing polishes. The walkthrough is at screen and recoat.

We can point you at the smaller job without flinching because we do not sell flooring and we do not refinish floors. This site connects homeowners with licensed contractors. When a $2 to $4.50 recoat is what your maple needs, that is what this page says.