I paid to have an independent, certified flooring inspector come in to evaluate my floors. His final report noted that the pinholes were caused by an improper finish. The flooring contractor applied 2 coats of polyurethane on the same day and did not allow sufficient time for the first coat to fully dry before they applied the second coat. The inspector noted a hazed appearance in numerous areas that were indicative of the previous coat not being fully dry before the second coat was applied. The wood was not a number 2 grade selection and the inspector contacted a technical adviser from the National Wood Flooring Associate and he said that there was nothing inherent to the red oak that would have caused the extensive pinholing in the finish that was observed and that this was due to either incompatible finish products being used or improper application procedures. I had a second company come in and redo the entire refinish - sanding down to bare wood and reapplying stain and 3 coats of poly and there are no pinhole visible on any floors in the house. The fact that the issue could be corrected by completing redoing the work lends credence to the original job having been poorly done. The original company tried applying a 4th coat of polyurethane but this did nothing to fix the pinholes. If you look at page 59 of this PDF, pinholes can appear in the finish of a floor if the previous coat was not fully dry (http://www.crescenthardwood.com/nwfa/ProblemsCauses.pdf). The bottom line was that I was out a lot of money from the first contractor, which was a large reputable company in my area, because they refused to fix the issue or even test to see if their finish job was the issue and had to go through the aggravation of having the entire job redone. The second company came out and sanded the floor of a closet and reapplied stain and 3 coats of poly to ensure that it was the previous finish and not inherent to the wood. The test area showed that when done correctly no pinholes in the finish formed.

If you like your current colour then go ahead and put down a new version of it. If you want something different then I would go lighter. I love the look of red oak in the 'buff'. It is a pretty wheat/sand coloured wood. So long as you work with a high-end water based polyurethane that does NOT yellow, you will have a very pretty 'pale wood' floor without much effort. Your existing finish appears to be oil based (or oil modified) which makes the floor yellow. The strong gold tones in your wood right now = the finish. Did your refinisher apply a coat of FINISH over your colour samples? If they did NOT....then you are picking BLIND. And I mean screaming and crying and tearing your hair because your beautiful gray floors turned to a muddy orange mess. Not good. Do you see the pale colour of the raw wood? You can keep that colour (very close to it) with 3 coats of water based polyurethane like Bona Traffic HD. Keep the gloss level a snick on the low side (satin is a nice low-gloss option) and you keep that pretty 'swedish blonde' look.

Hi everyone! We are doing a full home renovation and have red oak floors on one floor of the house and white oak on the other floor. We are trying to get the floors to look as close in color as possible. I’ve seen a few threads and articles about using Bona Nordic Seal, Traffic HD Poly, and some mention using a country white stain (I think duraseal makes country white, and Bona just makes a “white”)- did any of you have the issue of two different woods and if so, did you do the same number of coats/combination of seals and stains on both floors? Or did you stain the red oak to dull the pink while leaving the white oak natural? We are going to sample some of the combos in the house to see before we decide but wanted to see what worked for others. Thank you!

Too many samples here.. And whatever you choose will change based on location, lighting, surrounding colors, etc, and that will vary throughout your home. I also like using a stain without a custom mix. If you have to re-do a small section later, there's no problem matching. Choose something you like and don't stress about how it appears in one particular spot; the overall effect is far more important. FWIW, we redid our red oak floors using weathered oak and couldn't be happier. We were looking for something that added a little grey but still looked natural, and it does exactly that. Good luck!