Don’t be fooled! If you are shopping for wood flooring, don’t be fooled by a salesperson discussing the number of coats of finish as a comparison of the durability of one flooring product over another. This has become one of the greatest and most confusing myths in the wood flooring business. This floor has 7 coats, this one has 15 coats, it doesn’t matter how many coats.
Flooring finishes must be optimized for hardness and flexibility. All urethane aluminum oxide finishes have to put x amount of grams of aluminum oxide per square meter(10.764 square feet) of flooring. Different finish manufacturers use different methods as well as some manufacturers develop more proprietary finishes with the assistance of the coating manufacturers. When it comes to the practical points of a finish, keep in mind gloss levels and textured surfaces have much more to do with how a floor will look over time than the number of coats of finish. The higher the gloss level, the more wear and tear will show. A textured finish such as an open pore/brushed finish or a handscraped surface will show less wear. The reality is that although aluminum oxide makes for a low maintenance and durable finish, it will still scratch. Some finishes are better formulated and refined than others, but this has no relationship to the number of coats.
Don’t be fooled and fall for this misleading and uninformed information.