Sanding Wood Parquet Flooring

Sanding wood parquet flooring is more difficult than it may seem at first.  Think about it…

When sanding conventional solid wood flooring, you need to be aware of the direction of the grain of the wood.  But because parquet wood flooring has wood grain going in all sorts of different directions, the concept of sanding with or against the grain of the wood goes out the window.

Remember, that is how parquet is constructed; that’s the very point of parquet, in fact. It’s a crazy quilt of little pieces of wood set in different directions.

So, to avoid the problem of extensive cross-grain scratching you need to follow a prescribed sanding procedure:

Step 1 – Sand at 15 Degree Angle

Begin at the wall, moving the sander in a 15° direction towards the center of the room.  Stop at sanding when you get to the center.

Step 2 – Sand at Opposite 15 Degree Angle

Do the same thing on the opposite wall but be sure to stagger your sanding passes.  Next, begin from the side as you did before, except flip-flop the 15° angle of your sanding direction and keep going towards the center of the room.

Step 3 – Sand Perpendicular to Walls

Finally, stand towards the center of the room from the walls, but sanding at a 90° direction from the wall.

Parquet Sanding Tips

Finally, you’re going to want to avoid using extensively abrasive grits with your sandpaper and drum sanders.  They coarsest grits you should have would be in the 50 to 80 grit range, following up with grits in the 80 to 100 range.  Remember, the higher the number, the finer the grits.