Unfinished Hardwood flooring vs. 
Pre-finished Hardwood flooring

Both unfinished and pre-finished flooring have their benefits, as well as disadvantages that can 
come with it. To determine what is right for you depends on a factor of thing. Some include 
how fast you need the job done, if it’s a new or existing house, the cost you’re willing to spend, and possibly even if you’re planning on doing the installation yourself.

Pre-finished is a much quicker option. A good choice if you are already living in your home for some time and you are renovating and would like to move your furniture back as soon as possible to the area. You don’t need to do any sanding or finishing, as it’s already done to the flooring. This means no dust all over the house or harsh chemicals lingering for some time after installation. Installation takes less time, effort and energy, and no time is required for setting. The clean up is also much simpler.

Some people prefer the end result of laying down an unfinished floor. When you install pre-finished flooring, the finishing is already done separately with each plank. When you lay down unfinished flooring, you finish the area as whole. The finish seals all boards together, with no spaces between the planks. This gives the floor a more uniform look, and can even be better in regards to moisture resistance due to the seal of the surface as a whole. 

A nice advantage to unfinished hardwood flooring is that you can choose the exact colour or stain you’d like your floors to be. However, nowadays there are plenty of options to choose from on pre-finished hardwood flooring anyways. Finishing of pre-finished hardwood flooring made on factory is much stronger than finishing made by professionals on-site. Standard factory finish is usually done with 10 coats plus one top coat with scratch resistant aluminum oxide finish.  This is not comparable to the 2 or 3 coats only that can be done on-site.

Consider this: if you chose unfinished hardwood flooring and some of the floor gets scratched or dented, it is virtually impossible to do anything about it.  Pre-finished hardwood flooring is beveled, so there are small spaces between the planks since each plank is finished separately in the factory.  If a piece gets scratched or dented, an installer can remove the piece and install a new one. Unfinished hardwood flooring is finished all together in the area closing all the small gaps between the planks. You cannot remove a plank from the area, meaning you have to sand and re-finish the area as a whole. 

Last factor to consider is money, which is almost always an important factor to most people. Pre-finished flooring when you buy the material, all that’s left to pay for is installation. Say the hardwood flooring material ranges from $2.99 up to even $8.99, you add around $1.50-$2.50 for installation. If you buy unfinished hardwood flooring it will still cost you around $2.50 up to even $7.99. It’s only normally $1.00 less than pre-finished flooring. However, instead of simply adding on installation costs, you have to add on finishing on site costs as well. Finishing on site ranges from $1.50 to about $2.50 depending on if it’s natural finish or stained. It can start to cost you much more to have unfinished flooring installed.