I don't have that much experience yet.
We will have pine floors in the living room and bedroom, and they will be treated with soap. What looks best is a matter of taste, but I believe soap-treated floors have a certain advantage. Pine is quite a soft wood that tends to get marks easily. However, when you wet the wood, it swells, and the marks disappear (completely or partially, more likely partially I think). If the wood is oiled, the water can't penetrate, so it won't swell. I also seem to recall that the soap makes the wood harder (and thereby less sensitive), and every time you soap the floor, it becomes a bit harder.
We will have pine floors in the living room and bedroom, and they will be treated with soap. What looks best is a matter of taste, but I believe soap-treated floors have a certain advantage. Pine is quite a soft wood that tends to get marks easily. However, when you wet the wood, it swells, and the marks disappear (completely or partially, more likely partially I think). If the wood is oiled, the water can't penetrate, so it won't swell. I also seem to recall that the soap makes the wood harder (and thereby less sensitive), and every time you soap the floor, it becomes a bit harder.
By the way, I can recommend this catalog which, among other things, describes how to treat the floors in old houses:
https://shop.byggahus.se/products/stora-boken-om-byggnadsvard
There is much more in the catalog that is interesting for people who have old houses or want an old style for their houses.
https://shop.byggahus.se/products/stora-boken-om-byggnadsvard
There is much more in the catalog that is interesting for people who have old houses or want an old style for their houses.
We are considering soaping the floor in our house, but I'm missing a proper description of how to do it, such as which soap to use, how it should be diluted, etc. Does anyone have good tips to share, or a good site to recommend where they discuss floor soaping?
Sara -> We are also planning to buy Dala Floda MaxFura! Nice to hear opinions about it from someone who already has it!! 
A question: MaxFura is a bit "grooved" after brushing, does it possibly make it harder to keep clean because of that??
We will have pine flooring throughout the house except for the entrance, bath, and laundry room, and we are considering laying MaxFura in the kitchen and hall where there is more wear and Dala Floda's regular pine flooring in the living room and bedrooms.
A question: MaxFura is a bit "grooved" after brushing, does it possibly make it harder to keep clean because of that??
We will have pine flooring throughout the house except for the entrance, bath, and laundry room, and we are considering laying MaxFura in the kitchen and hall where there is more wear and Dala Floda's regular pine flooring in the living room and bedrooms.
Keep in mind that soaped/oiled floors require more maintenance than lacquered floors, and it takes several years before you achieve a hard, durable surface on a soaped floor. The surface of a soaped floor also feels a bit greasy. But sure, the wood feel really comes through in a completely different way than on lacquered floors.
That's true. At least when looking at the short term and if we limit ourselves to soft wood types. I don't know how it is with oiled floors, but scrubbed floors require less maintenance over time. In the beginning, you might have to scrub once or twice a year, but over time it becomes less frequent. If you have a lacquered pine floor, there will inevitably be marks and dents in the floor that you will want to sand away. Then you have to sand the whole floor and lacquer it. A scrubbed floor "repairs" itself every time you soap it, and you never sand a scrubbed floor (unless you want to ruin it). Scrubbing or sanding, I don't know which feels more tedious.ab-cd said:
If you want a lacquered floor, I think it's better to choose a harder wood type.
Exactly. The same goes for scrubbed floors. They only become more beautiful with time. It's different with lacquered floors, which can only get ugliermarge said:
Fun to see that there are those who have installed pine floors even in the kitchen!
(so it's not just us who are off track when we plan to install it in the kitchen...)
Do you possibly have water-based underfloor heating and if so, how have the floors reacted to it?
(so it's not just us who are off track when we plan to install it in the kitchen...)
Do you possibly have water-based underfloor heating and if so, how have the floors reacted to it?
Marge: Our floor hasn't been installed yet. It will be laid in week 9. We will have it in the living room, half of the hallway & in the kitchen. I have both talked with the salesperson & checked DalaFloda's website & according to them, it should be fine to keep it clean.
We won't have underfloor heating under it but according to DalaFloda themselves, it should work well with underfloor heating for the floor.
We won't have underfloor heating under it but according to DalaFloda themselves, it should work well with underfloor heating for the floor.
18 years ago, I had massive wide pine planks installed throughout my apartment, including the kitchen. Then I lye-treated the floors twice and after that, I soaped them three times. They have "kept their color" and haven't yellowed more than a shade, perhaps. I only scrub the rooms every 5-6 years and the kitchen once a year.
I don't have underfloor heating, but in a 19th-century stone house in the city, the temperature is quite even all year round.
It's true that the floor gets a gray-yellow tone over the years, but I haven’t been able to compare it with any lye-treated and oiled floor. The only thing I try to keep an eye on is grease, beetroot, and red wine stains, so I can remove them as soon as possible. If it gets a dent (rarely), I pour a little hot water there or lay a wet cleaning cloth on top, so the wood can absorb as much as it needs to "rise" again!
Still just as happy with my choice for the apartment.
In the house I'm building out in the countryside, I probably have to consider a bit, as you’re likely to run in and out with shoes on from the hallway and deck, etc. At least the hallway should probably be more practical and easy to clean.
Helena with the very damp and leaking
Sweden Cabin
Yes, that's exactly how I feel too, it also works great in the kitchen. I've had it for 18 years now and have never regretted it. The lye I used is called Faxe Lut and can also be found in paint stores. It was used by, among others, a Norwegian Museum that had thousands of guests, and they thought it was easy to maintain...
Helena with.....
Sverige Stugan
A few years ago, I installed a massive pine floor in the kitchen of a previous apartment. I chose to lime scrub and soap the floor (found the recipe in some library book where they praised this method). However, I can't recommend this at all! It looked great initially, but grease splatters from the stove + other spills stained the floor and it became ugly incredibly fast. I sanded the floor and coated it with a white-pigmented satin matte floor lacquer instead, which required much less maintenance. I think that while old floor treatment methods may have their charm, and it may not sound like too much work to soap scrub the floor regularly - every other week, according to the authors of the book I read - there are actually more enjoyable things to spend your time on than maintaining your floors.
We started with lye with white pigment.
Then oiled with white-pigmented oil, 2 coats.
Then we "maintain-soap" with white-pigmented soap about 1-2 times a year. In between, we wash the floor as usual, sometimes with regular Grumme soap (which is actually too drying) and sometimes with a weaker solution of the white pigment soap. I am lazy and don't clean unnecessarily, and I find the floor easy to clean!
Pine floors are soft, which is why it's better to oil or soap them. The hard surface of varnish is more suitable for harder wood species. Varnish "cracks" on the soft wood. The nice thing about pine floors is the smooth warm surface. But of course, I've also had varnished pine floors, and it's better than "oak floors" according to my taste. However, I found varnished pine floors "hard to clean" because dirt got stuck in the cracks...
Then oiled with white-pigmented oil, 2 coats.
Then we "maintain-soap" with white-pigmented soap about 1-2 times a year. In between, we wash the floor as usual, sometimes with regular Grumme soap (which is actually too drying) and sometimes with a weaker solution of the white pigment soap. I am lazy and don't clean unnecessarily, and I find the floor easy to clean!
Pine floors are soft, which is why it's better to oil or soap them. The hard surface of varnish is more suitable for harder wood species. Varnish "cracks" on the soft wood. The nice thing about pine floors is the smooth warm surface. But of course, I've also had varnished pine floors, and it's better than "oak floors" according to my taste. However, I found varnished pine floors "hard to clean" because dirt got stuck in the cracks...