Once your new floors are installed, yous'll have two questions: "When tin can I walk on my new floors?" and "When can I motion my rugs and article of furniture back into the room?"  While the answers to these questions may vary depending on your specific circumstances, cure time and dry out fourth dimension provide some applicable guidance.

CURING Time
During curing fourth dimension, a few essential processes have place.  Your floor's finish hardens, all the solvents evaporate, and, most important, the potent fumes cease.  The length of your curing procedure depends on humidity levels in your environment, the indoor temperature, and the airflow.  Generally speaking, the post-obit estimates apply to about finishes:

  • Hard wax oils: 1-seven days
  • Water-based finishes: 7-14 days
  • Oil-modified polyurethane: 30 days

Later on your curing time is complete, you tin subject your flooring to normal wearable and tear without fearing any excessive harm.  It'southward back to business as usual.  Just curing fourth dimension isn't the merely postal service-installation metric yous should exist concerned with.  Later all, if you expect for the curing process to consummate, it could take up to 1 calendar month before you motility all your furniture and rugs back into the room in question.

Luckily, drying fourth dimension allows yous to move your belongings back into the room within a reasonable flow of fourth dimension.

DRYING Time
Drying time is exactly what it sounds like.  Once dry out time is consummate, you'll be able to place your hand direct on the floor without leaving any marks or pulling off any finish on your palm.  This is the period in which your floor has stale completely and cured merely enough to avoid impairment from walking—conscientious walking, that is.  Average dry times are as follows:

  • Hard wax oils: 4-24 hours
  • Water-based finishes: 4-8 firm
  • Oil-modified polyurethane: 12-24 hours

Drying time is what gives your installers the flexibility to access your floors in between coats.  Nosotros tin can become in and out of the room for multiple coats in a few days' time without fear of any harm.  Nosotros can even employ two coats in a unmarried day in some cases.  If you plan to walk on your floors during this fourth dimension, bank check with your refinisher start.

Though your floors are dry out during this time, they can even so exist ruined by dirt and oils on the lesser of your shoes and feet.  Water, and essentially all liquids, can too damage your new floors.  Thus, information technology's best to await until all coats take been applied and dried before walking through the room.

After that final coat, your floors should be off-limits for 24 hours.  This is the simply way to avoid any impairment.  Likewise, if you lot can swing information technology, hold off 3-seven days before moving furniture back into the room.  However, we understand this isn't always platonic, and you demand to get your furniture back into the room equally shortly as possible.  If that's the instance, wait at to the lowest degree 2 days.  Popular finishes, similar Pallmann Pall-X 96, can handle light traffic and very cautious furniture placement after 48 hours.

But, to be 100% certain you'll avoid impairment, supplant the felt pads on the bottom of all your furniture.  The old pads accept accumulated pet hair, dirt, and dust—all contaminants that are certain to scratch your floors.  Pay actress attention to any pieces that need to be rolled or slid into place.

Though furniture goes back into the room after 2 days, expanse rugs should stay out for most ii weeks.  If they're placed on the floor too presently, they can impede the curing process, trapping solvents in the wood.

When it comes to restoring order in your home after your floor installation, use drying time and curing fourth dimension to bulldoze your decoration decisions.