Sanding a parquet floor uses the same machines as any other timber floor, but it requires a different technique. With standard floorboards, every board runs the same way, so you sand with the grain, and the job stays fairly predictable. On parquet, the grain changes direction every block.
That changes the sanding sequence, the grit progression, the filling stage and how long the job takes. Here's how it's done properly, from first inspection through to the final coat.
Why Parquet Sands Differently to Floorboards
In a herringbone or double herringbone layout, adjacent blocks meet at 90 degrees. In basketweave and mosaic finger parquetry, the direction alternates across the entire floor.
That means whichever way you push a drum sander, you're cutting against the grain of roughly half the blocks at any given moment. Sanding against the grain tears the timber fibres rather than shearing them cleanly, and it cuts faster, so those blocks end up sitting slightly lower than their neighbours. Run a machine in one direction across a whole room and you'll end up with an uneven surface and scratching that only reveals itself once the coating goes on.
The answer is to stop trying to follow the grain at all, and work diagonally instead.
Check the Floor Before You Start
Two things are worth knowing before you hire a machine.
How thick are the blocks?
Mosaic parquetry, the style made up of small fingers laid in squares, is usually only 8 to 10mm thick. Block parquetry is generally 14mm or 19mm. Engineered parquet is different again, with a hardwood wear layer that may only be 2 to 4mm deep, which can mean the floor has one light sand left in it, or none at all. Lifting a vent, checking a threshold or looking at a pipe cut-out will usually tell you what you're working with.
Are any blocks loose?
Tap your way across the floor and listen for hollow spots. Older parquet is typically bedded down in a bitumen-type adhesive over a concrete slab, and after a few decades some blocks let go. Loose blocks chatter under the drum, sit unevenly, and take coating differently to the ones around them.
Lift any block that rocks or sounds hollow, scrape the old adhesive off the back of it and off the bed underneath, then re-glue it with a suitable parquet adhesive. Weight it down and let it cure fully before any machine touches the floor.
Replace missing blocks with the same species laid in the correct grain direction. It's tedious work, but blocks that were never properly fixed will show through the finish eventually.
The Sanding Sequence
1. First cut, 40 grit at 45 degrees
Run diagonally across the dominant direction of the pattern. This strips the old coating and levels any blocks sitting proud of their neighbours.
2. Second cut, 60 grit at the opposite 45 degrees
Cross over the first pass so the two form an X. This removes the scratch pattern the first cut left behind.
3. Third cut, 80 grit along the length of the room
Your finishing pass. Keep the dust from this one, because you'll need it for the filling stage.
Don't skip more than one grit at a time. Coarse scratches left underneath a finer pass stay more or less invisible on raw timber and then appear the moment the first coat goes down, which is the worst possible time to find them.
Keep the machine moving throughout, and ease off the pressure on mosaic fingers, which are small enough to chatter. If you'd like a refresher on general drum sander technique, our step-by-step floor sanding guide covers the fundamentals.
You can see the machines working across a real herringbone floor in the video here.
Edges, Corners and Blending
Run the edger through the same grit progression you used on the main floor. If the perimeter is sanded to a different grit than the field, you'll see a picture frame around the room once the floor is coated.
Corners and areas under cabinetry need a hand scraper or an orbital sander. After that, go over the whole floor with a buffer and screens to blend the transitions between machines, ideally using 100/120grit.
Filling the Joints
Parquet has far more joints per square metre than a plank floor, so the whole floor needs to get done at once rather than spot filling.
We recommend Berger-Seidle Pafuki. It's a wood filler that gets mixed with the fine sanding dust you reserved from your third pass, giving you an exact colour match to your own floor. Keep adding liquid or dust as you go until you have a spreadable paste, then trowel it across the floor. It's designed for the small gaps of a couple of millimetres that most older parquet floors develop.
Give it around 45 minutes to dry, buff off the excess, and the floor is ready to coat. You'll find Pafuki and the rest of the range in our Timber Gap Fillers collection.
Here's the process on a double herringbone Tasmanian Oak floor.
Coating a Parquet Floor
Most parquet floors are finished with a water-based system built up in three stages: a primer, one or two build coats, then a hard-wearing topcoat. The primer goes onto raw timber and helps reduce edge bonding, which is important because there are so many joints for a coating to bridge.
From there, it comes down to the look you're after. A clear build coat keeps the timber close to its natural tone. A pigmented white coat lightens a floor away from the deep orange tones that older parquet often develops, though pigmented products take more care to apply evenly. For the topcoat, a two-pack water-based polyurethane gives you the most durable surface and is available in anything from semi-gloss through to ultra matt. A hard wax oil is the alternative if you'd rather have a finish that can be spot-repaired down the track, which our guide on hard wax oil vs polyurethane coatings explains in more detail.
Whichever system you choose, you'll find the full range in our Coating & Varnish collection, and our team is happy to talk you through which combination suits your floor.
Expert Advice for the Job
Parquet is the floor most likely to catch out a first-timer. If you're dealing with a heritage herringbone floor, thin mosaic blocks, get in touch with us to make sure you’re getting everything you need to do the job right.
FAQs
Can you sand a parquet floor with a normal drum sander?
Yes. The machines are the same ones used on any timber floor. What changes is the technique, since you need to work diagonally across the pattern rather than with the grain, and follow a full grit progression to remove the scratches each pass leaves behind.
Do you have to sand herringbone diagonally?
On the coarser passes, yes. Because the blocks sit at 90 degrees to each other, there's no direction that follows the grain of the whole floor. Working at 45 degrees means the machine cuts across every block evenly instead of tearing hard into half of them.
What's the best filler for gaps in a parquet floor?
Berger-Seidle Pafuki, mixed with the fine sanding dust from your own floor. Because the colour comes from the timber you've just sanded, the filled joints blend in rather than standing out, and the whole floor can be trowelled in one go.