I have always advised a customer that insists on maple, to not stain it and have a natural color. IMO, what is the point of using maple in the first place? It does not make that great of wood floor. It is unstable, it lacks texture which hides indentations, it does not take stain well and it's more costly than oak. Sure, it's the industry norm for sports floors. Those are done in a natural finish with no stain. I'm not against using maple as a floor. I've installed it many times. But customers need to be educated prior to choosing it. If a customer wanted a darker floor, they should choose hickory or walnut. Or choose a clear grade of oak and have that stained. But to pick a very light colored wood, then try to stain it dark makes little sense to me.

I realize there are those who stain maple successfully. My hats off to you. I'd rather not and I'll leave those jobs to you.

I often hear about the waterlox with stain added in. Would that work on maple better?

if i even thought about staining a maple site finish i would 40,60,100 on the machines buff with 120-150 paper and waterpopping or stain conditioner would also be on my mine leave it. A re-sand is a must and i would leave it natural. what did you pay a sf for the finishing

waterlox stain combo works great on maple. Good call.

Thank you everyone for your thoughts. You've been very helpful, as I went into this knowing nothing about hardwood floor refinishing or what my expectations should be. After 2 days of them trying to "spot-fix" the floor, it looked way worse than it did to begin with, because each spot that was worked on stood out like a sore thumb...shinier and with kind of a line around it. So, they are starting from scratch. The guy told me the "swirls" in the stain were caused by using a quick-dry stain, and that they will use a slower-drying one this time. I'm guessing 775 sq ft might be too large an area for quick-dry stain? Crossing my fingers that it looks better this time!

Bradboone, I paid $4.40/sq ft which includes staining and an extra coat of sealer.

This is a house we just bought, and the floors were originally natural...very pale in color, and very scratched up. I love darker floors and figured if we were refinishing anyway, why not get it stained darker too. We were disappointed to find out that staining maple might be hard, but had a recommendation for this guy, who told me that staining was kind of his specialty and he'd stained maple before with great results. If I had only known what problems we'd run into! I actually love the look of the floor and color overall (except for the many areas with mistakes) even with maple's natural blotchiness. I am assuming the mistakes are due to a bad stain job, and not the nature of maple itself.