Hardwood Floor Refinishing Cost Calculator
Refinishing a wood floor runs about $5.22 a square foot in Atlanta — $4,179 for 800 square feet, in a range of $3,657 to $4,702. Before that number matters, though, there is a question nobody answers: how many sandings your floor has left. Solid wood has about 7 from new. A thin engineered veneer has 0, and it looks identical from standing height. That is a division rather than an estimate, and this page does it first.
Estimate the cost for your home
Estimated cost of refinishing the floor
$4,743
typical · range $4,200 to $5,286 · 800 sq ft · $5.93 per sq ft · 3 sanding passes · 62.4 trade hours · 6 sandings left after this one
Labour priced at national wages. Enter a ZIP code to price it for your area. 25% of this figure comes from modelled material prices — each line shows its own uncertainty.
Priced from bls.gov Aug 2026how every line is sourced
The one input that changes the answer for you.
Wood all the way through, normally 3/4 inch. About 6 mm of it sits above the tongue and that is what can be sanded — roughly seven full sandings from new, so most floors have several left. This is the case where refinishing is straightforwardly the right answer.
The standard three-pass sequence: a coarse cut to take the old finish and level the boards, a medium pass to remove the coarse scratches, and a fine one before the finish goes on. Skipping the middle grit is the commonest way a cheap job ends up with visible sanding marks under the gloss.
Dries clear rather than amber, cures far faster, and smells much less, which is why it is now the default in occupied houses. Dearer per gallon and it shows scratches a little more readily on a dark stain.
What the two other choices are worth
| Oil-based polyurethane3 coats · 5 days before furniture | $4,451 |
|---|---|
| Water-based polyurethane3 coats · 2 days before furniture | $4,743 |
| Hardwax oil2 coats · 2 days before furniture | $4,529 |
| Light wear2 passes · 51.2 hours | $4,086 |
|---|---|
| Normal3 passes · 62.4 hours | $4,743 |
| Heavy4 passes · 73.6 hours | $5,400 |
The finish moves the total by $78 and it moves the schedule by 3 days, which for most households is the bigger number. Oil-based polyurethane is the cheapest and the hardest wearing, and it is also the one that keeps you off the floor longest and smells while it cures.
1 / 5
The figure above is already calculated. Each step just makes it more yours, and you can stop at any of them.
Before the price: how many times can this floor be sanded at all?
Only what sits above the tongue can be sanded, and each full sanding takes about 0.8 mm of it. That is a division, not an estimate — and on some floors it comes out at zero.
| Floor | Sandable depth | Sandings from new | Left after yours |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0.6 mm veneer | 0 mm | 0 | none |
| 2 mm veneer | 1 mm | 1 | none |
| 3 mm veneer | 2 mm | 2 | 1 |
| 4 mm veneer | 3 mm | 3 | 2 |
| 6 mm veneer | 5 mm | 6 | 5 |
| Solid, 3/4 inch | 6 mm | 7 | 6 |
Yours has about 5.2 mm left, or 6 sandings after this one. ⚠️ Measure before anybody quotes, and it takes five minutes: lift a floor vent or look at the cut edge in a doorway. Solid wood shows the same grain through the full thickness; engineered shows a thin top layer over visible plywood plies. A 0.6 mm veneer is thinner than a business card and cannot be sanded once — and it looks exactly like a floor that can.
Refinish, or tear it out and start again
| What you do | Per sq ft | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| Refinish what you have | $5.93 | $4,743 |
| Tear out and lay vinyl plank | $8.41 | $6,728 |
Refinishing is 70% of replacing this floor with vinyl plank — $1,985 less. Both come from models on this site at the same BLS wage for your area. ⚠️ They are not the same product and the page will not pretend otherwise: vinyl is the alternative people actually price when a refinishing quote looks high, not an equivalent. New solid hardwood costs considerably more than either. And the comparison misses the thing that usually decides it — refinishing keeps a floor that can be done again, and every replacement throws away a floor that had sandings left in it.
| Line item | Qty | Cost | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Abrasives and edging discssquare feet | 800sq ft | $128–$272 | estimated±36% |
| Sanding: drum, edger and buffersquare feet × 0.014 hours × passes × construction factor × lead factor | 33.6hour | $1,900–$2,041 | sourced |
| Dust containment and extraction1 per job | 1each | $90–$320 | estimated±56% |
| Water-based polyurethane finishsquare feet, when this finish is chosen | 800sq ft | $544–$1,000 | estimated±30% |
| Buffing between coats and applying the finishsquare feet × 0.009 hours × coats | 21.6hour | $1,221–$1,312 | sourced |
| Clearing, protecting and reinstating4 hours + 0.004 per square foot | 7.2hour | $317–$340 | sourced |
| Total | $4,200–$5,286 | ±11% |
Where these numbers come from
- The question that comes before the price
- Only what sits above the tongue can be sanded — once the machine reaches the tongue the board loses its joint and the floor is finished. On solid three-quarter-inch wood that is about 6 mm, and a full sanding takes roughly 0.8 mm. So: 7 sandings from new on solid wood, and 0 on a 0.6 mm engineered veneer. ⚠️ That is not a small difference in degree, it is the difference between a job and a destroyed floor: a drum sander removes more than 0.6 mm before it has finished one pass. And the two floors are indistinguishable once they are down. Checking takes five minutes — lift a floor vent or look at the cut edge in a doorway. Solid wood shows the same grain through the full thickness; engineered shows a thin top layer over visible plywood plies. Nobody quoting over the phone can know which you have.
- What refinishing costs against not refinishing
- Two alternatives are worth pricing before this one. A screen-and-recoat abrades the existing finish and adds a fresh coat: it costs a fraction of a full sanding, keeps the colour, and — the part that matters — uses none of the floor’s remaining thickness. It only works while the wood itself is undamaged, which is exactly when people do not think of it. At the other end, replacement: refinishing is 66% of tearing this floor out and laying vinyl plank — $4,179 against $6,344, both from models on this site at the same wage. New solid hardwood costs more than either. The arithmetic that the comparison misses is that refinishing keeps a floor which can be done again, and every replacement throws away a floor with sandings left in it.
- Where the hours actually go
- Three things, and only one of them is what people picture. The grit sequence: 2 passes on a floor that only needs its finish taken off and 4 where the damage is deep, which is $1,100 on this floor. ⚠️ Each grit exists to remove the scratches of the one before it, so skipping the middle one leaves coarse marks in the wood that are invisible bare and permanent under the finish. The perimeter: an edger and a hand scraper do what the drum cannot reach, which is why a room full of alcoves costs more than its area suggests. And stairs, which are entirely hand work at about 1.4 hours a tread — a 13-tread staircase adds $893 to this floor, which is more than staining the whole of it ($544).
- Dust, fumes, lead and wages
- Sanding a floor makes a great deal of wood dust, which is a recognised occupational hazard and, in quantity, a fire risk — OSHA, Wood Dust, retrieved 2026-08-24. Finishes are where the smell comes from, and EPA, Volatile Organic Compounds’ Impact on Indoor Air Quality covers what that is and why water-based products behave differently indoors. ⚠️ In a pre-1978 house the edger runs within an inch of painted skirting around the whole perimeter, which is disturbance of painted surface and puts the job inside EPA, Lead Renovation, Repair and Painting Program. Wages from BLS OEWS, May 2025, retrieved 2026-08-20, with benefit load from BLS ECEC. One declared substitution: the BLS publishes no occupation for sanding and finishing wood floors — 47-2042 is literally “Floor Layers, Except Carpet, Wood, and Hard Tiles” — so this model uses carpenters, and says so rather than hiding it.
- Material prices
- Modelled estimates, not sourced prices. No public, machine-readable source of US residential material prices exists, and we would rather say so than pretend otherwise. Each line carries its own uncertainty band. How we estimate them.
Contractor overhead and profit applied at 33–43% over direct cost. Data last reviewed 2026-08-24.
What this figure does not include
- Screen and recoat
- Abrading the old finish and adding a fresh coat is a different and far cheaper job, and on a floor whose wood is still sound it is frequently the right one — not least because it uses none of the remaining thickness. It is worth asking for by name before accepting a quote for a full sanding.
- Fixing why the floor is cupped
- Cupping is moisture arriving from below or from a leak. Sanding a cupped floor flat before it has dried produces a crowned floor when it does. The moisture has to be found, fixed and given time first, and none of that is priced here.
- Black pet stains
- The staining has reacted with the tannins through the full thickness of the board. Sanding does not reach it. Those boards are replaced or they stay dark, and which one you choose is a conversation to have while looking at the floor.
- Subfloor repairs and squeaks
- A springy or noisy floor is a fastening or joist problem underneath the boards. Refinishing changes the surface and nothing else.
- Skirting, shoe moulding and thresholds
- Taking the shoe moulding off and putting it back is priced. New moulding, new thresholds or repainting the skirting afterwards are separate work — our interior painting page covers the last of those.
- Somewhere to live during the work
- A finished floor cannot be walked on for a day or more and furniture waits longer. Whether that means a hotel, staying with family, or living in half the house is a real cost of this project and not one we can price.
Questions people actually ask
How much does it cost to refinish 1000 square feet of hardwood floors?
About $5,132 in Atlanta — $4,509 to $5,755 — which is $5.13 a square foot for three sanding passes and a water-based finish on solid wood in normal condition. Two things move it more than area does. The finish: oil-based polyurethane is $3,887 on our 800 square foot reference floor against $4,034 for hardwax oil. And stairs, which cannot be machine-sanded: adding a 13-tread staircase to that same floor takes it from $4,179 to $5,073. Before any of that, check the floor can be sanded at all — see the question below about engineered wood.
Is it cheaper to refinish hardwood floors or replace them?
Refinishing, comfortably, and it is not close. On our 800 square foot reference floor refinishing is $4,179 against $6,344 to tear it out and lay vinyl plank — 66%. New solid hardwood costs considerably more than either. Both of those figures come from models on this site at the same BLS wage for the area, which is what makes the ratio worth quoting. ⚠️ The caveat is the one this page exists for: refinishing is only cheaper if your floor still has sandable thickness. A solid floor has about 7 sandings from new and most houses have several left; a thin engineered veneer has 0, and no price makes that work.
Can you restain old hardwood floors without sanding?
Not stain, no. Stain has to reach bare wood, and on a finished floor the polyurethane is in the way — anything applied over it sits on the surface as a tinted coating and wears off in traffic paths within a year or two. What you can do without a full sanding is a screen-and-recoat: the existing finish is abraded with a buffer and a fresh coat goes on. It keeps the colour, costs a fraction of this page, and — the part that matters most — uses none of the floor's remaining thickness. It only works if the wood itself is undamaged and the finish has not worn through anywhere. Ask for it by name before accepting a quote for a full sanding.
Can I stay in my house while floors are refinished?
In part of it, usually. The floors themselves are out of use for 2 days with a water-based finish and 5 with oil-based, and furniture should wait longer than most people are told. The other differences matter more than the price gap of $-292: oil-based polyurethane smells strongly while it cures, water-based very much less. Sanding itself is loud and dusty for the days it takes, and "dustless" is a marketing word for vacuum-assisted rather than a standard. If the work covers the whole ground floor there is generally no way through it, which is a real cost of this project and one we cannot price.
Taken from Google’s “people also ask” results for this search on 2026-08-24, not invented.
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