My floor guy had a container of Bona Red out but never had used it before, he wanted to bleach instead. He bleached once and it is still pink despite him starting to stain. Now I hear that you need to bleach three times to get a significant amount of red out. I should have insisted that we use the red-out... Bona seems to be a cutting edge technology. Don't take the removal of the the red lightly... it's hard to do from my experience.

Hey Jen -Curious if you’ve tried anything yet on your red oak floors.

Here’s a thread with a lot of info on Bona Nordic seal on red oak. https://www.houzz.com/discussions/4766317/bona-nordicseal-on-red-oak#n=221

I tried another method I’d found online…which was a mix of duraseal country white and pecan. I did not care for the results even after trying the mix at varying ratios. The pink was still present and looked like 80s pecan/whitewashed cabinets in my opinion.

The thread above has a lot of good info/opinions. At the end of the day, in my opinion, it’s a losing battle to get the exact look you are looking for (I too) with red oak.

I’m tossing in the towel and going with Bona Natural seal & commercial matte hd finish next week…OR going dark. The dark mix I like on red oak is Duraseal mix of 25-35% ebony and 75-65% Jacobean (depends on specific red oak floor…need to experiment) but looks rich (imo) and doesn’t present black or red /orange/pink.

Really trying to go light, as it’s a very small lake house, and want to appear more open, but if the natural seal and finish look too pink, gonna toss in the towel.

Per the thread, many have said that natural looks less pink than Nordic and there are pics. Using bleach/lye mix first may help, but still shows pink and the process is a nightmare imo. Super corrosive/hard on the wood and can get blotch if not event done and removed.

Good luck!

I am in the same boat. Red Oak floors I want to look like my former home's light white oak floors. My refinisher has started today and we are just now putting samples on to test. He is using Berger-Seidel products. We are testing their natural Stain, their Nordic White with 2,3, and 4 coats. And they have a new product called Pinkequalizer which we are testing with the same products over it. I will let you know how it goes!

Jocelyn - We ended up going with Lobas white stain. It didn’t erase the pink, but we’re happy with the results (anything is better than the bright orange they were before) good luck with yours!!

First pic is of the red oak stairs. Then the next two are the scary Bona red-out reaction that temporarily blackened SOME of the stairs as the tannins in the wood reacted with the Bona process... no one tells you about that! TWO rounds of the 2 step process were necessary to even out the color of the individual planks.

Last pic is the stain samples on a twice Bona'd sample planks. I've used plain wood bleach before and I agree that process removes all the character from the wood.

Your floors look great, Jen!

Paul, what stain did you end up

choosing and can you show us the final product?

Everything is covered with plastic and paper right now for painting. I'll post when I can. BTW, 4 of the top stairs needed to be resanded (bona'd again) because of blotchiness with the stain. The best we can figure out is the heat/light from the giant skylight above the top stairs warmed up the wood and being that the pores were wide open, the stain took differently. It was done during the recent heat wave so it makes sense. Controlling the temperature of the wood by covering the skylight did the trick.

Love how my floors are turning out! Here is a photo showing the newly sanded red oak which is very pink and the other side is 1 coat of Berger-Seidel Pinkqualizer plus one coat of their Nordic white plus 1 coat of Royal Matte. There will be one to two more coats of royal matt applied. the rooms are looking so light and airy now

jocelyn this is a new product for me. Can we see a full floor shot?

Laura, the pinkqualizer is very new as it came out just this year I believe. I'll be happy to upload some more photos when the floors are finished. The room you can see at the bottom is now filled with a bunch of furniture from the other rooms. So, hopefully by the end of the week I should be able to take some full floor photos. My floor refinisher is a perfectionist, so we are on his timeline. He finishes floors like furniture-not your average, run of the mill, get the floors done as fast as possible type. I will say they are coming along beautifully! We tried different amounts of Nordic White over the pinkqualizer, from 1 to 4 coats, but really loved just the hint of white of 1 coat.

do you know if it can be used with other stains?

no, sorry I don't know. I was interested in a particular look and my floor refinisher thought this would give me the closest to the finish I wanted. But I don't see why it wouldn't work with other stains. We tested with Berger-Seidel's Natural Stain- but I wanted a different look and finish.

So odd that he would only do half the floor with so many steps involved.

not really-we were testing out on one room- then before the final coats go on it, the furniture was all put in that room while the rest of the downstairs floors are getting refinished.

Laura- here is a photo of a finished floor. It is so hard to get an accurate photo. It's a bit lighter and has no pink tones in person. Natural late afternoon light in a Southeast facing exposure. This is 1 coat Berger-Seidel Pinkqualizer, 1 coat of their Nordic White, and 2 coats of their Royal Mat. I absolutely love how they have turned out. Lots of color and grain variation in our 12 year old red oak, but it just adds to the charm of the floors in our coastal home.

Just got mine done, they came out beyond expectations.

Red out x2

Nordic x 1

Traffic hd satin x2

looks great! Is this a before and after shot? can we see a close up of the room with the chandelier?

Haha not even close, chrck out the pics from before. Will also include our sample square as we were deciding between 1 or 2 coats of nordic. Not sure if my company knew what they were doing with the nordic (not enough sanding after nordic?) but everyone that saw it said 2 coats looked like the grain was covered with a haze

After doing my homework it appears the disadvantage to doing only one coat is the higher possibility of lap marks that only show when you put traffic on after. They redid my living room(sanding down to raw wood, back to red out) after I pointed these out.

I think I saw a professional on here comment on 2 coats being the same result if sanded properly. The owner of this company seemed very good but the employees really seemed to not exactly take their trade too seriously.

Lap marks

Failed touch up before redoing living/chandelier room

Lessons learned for me, hopefully this may help someone else out..

-Ask to see your home during each step of the process. Mistakes are easier to correct on the spot and otherwise may require a complete redo if not handled immediately.

-Pictures online are somewhat meaningless. You can hardly see the red oak "red" in my pics of half sanded floors, although it was quite present. Lighting and the temp your camrea sets completely changes the mapping from your eyes->photo. I played with flash, lighting temp and photos in Adobe light room to try to determine the differences in sample squares.

-Look for unsanded areas if you are refinishing pre manufactured, had a ton on the stairs that stuck out like a sore thumb after going significantly lighter.

-2 applications red out makes for a much more dramatic difference than 1

Arda, we’re planning to do two rounds of red out as well but trying to determine drying time between. Did they start the second round right away? Was there a 12 hour dry time before doing the sealer, or did they go right into it? thanks!

Bona has these videos. Bona Red Out™ - Instructional Video - 2022 - YouTube . Bona Red Out™ - Best Practices - YouTube

@pkr (for 2nd redout application) instructions say to wait until wood is visibility dry, appears this is what my guys did as well.

Before the sealer instructions are explicit about using a pinless moisture gage to ensure wood has no extra moisture compared to pre red-out. I am not a flooring guy, but from what I have learned this is probably super important before sealing

If, you are applyinga second treatment of red out. You do not need to inspect with a moisture meter. Floor boards just needs to be dry visiblly to the eye. After the second treatment a moisture meter should be used. Although waiting overnight is more than enough.

Bergen Seidle's Pinkqualizer is a better product. One treatment is all you need. It does not get diluted like Pink blocker by Ciranova.

Bona's Red Out has a chalky residue at the bottom of the bottle that does not wash off. Which means you can not account for a full gallon of product. Only way to remove it is to redo the area. Pinkqualizer is the better product.

@Arda The floors looks amazing. Are you going to paint the walls and the hand rail too? I have the same wall and hand rail colors, would love to see the finished results.

Thanks Jing. No plans for painting the walls and hand rails, hands are full replacing baulsters and painting the trim under them 😅

G&S Flooring, can you please show some before and after pictures of the Pinkqualizer treatment on red oak?

Marketting demo. It's a new product.

Thanks for posting Dan. it is diifficult to see the wood flooring in the video so hoping we can see some in actual in home results.

gmazz- if you look earlier in this thread you will see that we used pinkqualizer on our floors. Floors are lighter in person than they look in the photos- hard to get a good picture.

this may show it a bit better. But it still looks darker in photos than real life.

here is a before photo of floors

Thank you Jocelyn. Did your floor refinishers have experience with Pinkqualizer or did you ask them to use it?

Your kitchen looks terrific!

thanks, gmazz7. Our floor refinisher suggested using it. I had asked about Bona Red Out and he felt this was a superior product. I think he had only used it once before- it is a very new product.

Thanks! it does sound more predictable.

We live in western suburbs of Chicago and are interested in having our red oak floors refinished with this product. If anyone has experience using it and would like to give us a quote, please post a link to your business.