Is there a good polyurethane that has UV protection in it? If so, does it work?

I'm not talking about yellowing/amberizing/oxidizing. Rather, I'm interested in something that will reduce color changes in exotic woods as well as American Walnut.

Deb, thats a loaded question. I am hardly a finish guy but I read alot. Typically UV inhibitors do what it says they do, inhibit the damage. I doubt there is a magical cure-all.

Here is a good article I read about it. http://www.rosebudfloors.com/residentia ... damage.php

Thanks Stephen. I'll check that out. I'll talk to my foreman, too to get his thoughts. This customer has tons of windows and it had a huge impact on her floors (American Walnut). She is moving out in May w/ someone moving in a week later and they need to sand the floors. (and want to try to reduce the impact for next time.

I haven't been hipped to any UV resistant finishes for flooring really.Those may exist in the marine finish industry though.

On another note, Going with water based sealer and finish can help reduce the coloring effect of sun light overall.

Most if not all prefinished floor have some sort of uv inhibitors in them.

Interesting. Here's a pre finished ash floor that I sanded and refinished a few weeks ago. The dining room had sun outlining similar to all the site finished floors I have worked on . There might be more that can be done but my guess is that substantial UV protection for floor finishes isn't on par with the automotive finishing technology.

My only other suggestion is to sand a floor as fine as you can .Maybe up to 150 grit and then progressively screen the floor finer and finer to make it lighter from the onset .

may-4th 034 by paulsecondino, on Flickr

Just as good as a 100 year warranty

Stunning photo Paul.

That is interesting Paul. Wonder how many years it had been down and covered by a rug?
I have inspected a few that were only a two years old that had the same effect and the manufacturer claimed it had UV protection. Just goes to show you never know.
But do go read some of the prefinished claims on UV protection.

Does the one you applied have any claims for UV protection? I think it does not matter what anyone manufacturer claims, the wood is still going to patina somewhat.

I know the contractor that put this floor in and he said it was about 6 or 7 years ago. It obviously started out the lighter color that you can see in the circle that the rug was.

OT keep it as light as possible , I sealed with Bona DTS (waterborne) and top coated with Bona Traffic HD. Not really sure that Bona does much with their product to stave off UV coloring.

Looks like they never moved that rug in 7 years. Although it is not always possible many finish and wood manufacturers recommend moving the furniture around just because of this. And we all know that some exotics fair even worse.

Thx guys for all the input and advice. My refinisher told me there is a product w/ UV "protection" in it...I put that in quotes as it's more of an inhibitor. I forgot the name, but it is more expensive (obviously). I'll have to text him soon as I want to give my customer both options.

LOL on that ash. Wow.

BTW, this is American Walnut and it's DARKER where the area rug was (and I had a similar issue w/ a customer selling their home with Brazilian Walnut). Now, in addition to warning people about the area rug thing for these photosensitive woods (which I always did), I now advise people to wait at least 6 months before adding them. I think I wrote this into my contracts, too...but now I need to double check.

We are doing this project at the end of the month, so hoping to see how it turns out soon.

As a hardwood flooring manufacturer which also operated a UV cured finishing line, the UV lamps in simulating sunlight enabled me to experiment with many UV protected finishes. In my experience there is no such thing. If you don't want the Walnut to wash out over time, pigmented stain is the only answer. We stained all our Walnut which looked completely natural with a Walnut stain and the pigments in a high grade stain will not wash out. I hope this helps. Best Regards, Kevin Pennington