Advantages

• Factory Finished wood floors come pre-sanded, pre-coated, and ready to install. One room can usually be installed in a day.
• The installation for Factory Finished wood floors does not produce any toxic fumes, dust or odor.
• A faster installation allows you to move back to the location quickly. You don’t have to wait for the finish to dry or cure.
• Factory Finished wood floors have an extremely durable finish and often comes with a 20-30 year ware thru warranty.
• Factory Finished wood floors can be installed in your home without relocating family as the location remains safe for living even during the installation process.
• Once Factory Finished wood floors are installed, it’s ready to be walked upon.
• If you are planning on installing your hardwood floor below ground level, you should probably opt for prefinished engineered wood flooring to help the floor withstand the harsher conditions.

Advantages

• Unfinished hardwood floors allow you to create your own unique finish that suits you.
• Installing unfinished hardwood floors and finishing them after installation maintain the natural characteristics of the wood.
• It enables better uniformity of seal and finish by filling in the empty spaces and cracks formed due to minutely uneven flooring planks.
• The process of sanding has its benefits too. It enables the installer to incorporate borders, inlays, and other customized elements which are not usually available with factory finished flooring.
• The choice of finishing hardwood floors on-site makes it easier to match the newly installed hardwood flooring and finish with any existing hardwood flooring or other interior elements.
• Whether you like light-colored wood or dark, a satin finish or high-gloss, unfinished hardwood floors offer many products, styles and options to choose from.
• These floors are sanded on-site before the finish is applied, they are smooth and table-top flat across the surface without any bevels and grooves. Most people prefer this look over the beveled pre-finished look.
• As a result, Site-finished floors are also much easier to clean because you don’t need to worry about getting into all the grooves to remove the dust.
• You have much more freedom to customize these floors any way you like. Unfinished floors provide a blank canvas for any color of stain, inlays, borders, custom medallions, custom patterns, finish sheen levels plus grades and species of wood

Factory Finished Disadvantages

• The biggest and most obvious drawback with pre-finished floors, are the bevels on the edges. Because of the factory finish, these types of floors obviously cannot be sanded flat on site… so to compensate for any milling discrepancies, the boards are milled with bevels to make the thickness inconsistencies blend in across the installed floor. This means a Factory Finished floor will have obvious v-shaped seams throughout. Right away, even flooring amateurs will know this is a factory finished floor and not an original site installed and finished floor which most people prefer the look of.
• Keeping bevels clean and free of dust can become increasingly difficult.
• Another issue with the bevels is that when you need to sand and refinish your floors down the road (yes even these tough aluminum oxide factory finishes will still scratch, dent and wear) your hardwood floor refinisher will need to remove a lot of wood to get the floor level to the bottom of the bevels. This will take a LOT of wood from your floor and wipe years off the overall life of your floor.
• Flooring may be discontinued or often changes in the finish occur making it difficult to match exixting Factory Finished floors.
• You also don’t have much choice when it comes to customizing your floor with Factory Finished floors. You can’t always choose custom stain colors and sheens or certain board widths. Plus it’s much more difficult to make custom inlays, borders and complicated patterns look good compared to site-finished floors.
• Factory Finished floors are custom finished at the factory and offers limited finish and color options.

Unfinished Disadvantages

• The on-site install and finishing process is about twice as long as having pre-finished floors installed.
• Unlike pre-finished floors, you won’t be able to walk on your floors right away. The last coat of finish will need to dry at least overnight and furniture will need to wait 72 Hours before it’s put back into the rooms, which can be an inconvenience if you’re on a tight schedule.