The pine flooring before untreated:

The pine after with one thin coat of osmo polyx matte clear 3031

It actually looks much darker and red in real life than in the photo!

@millworkman the other product is light it actually has some white pigment in it so it tends to lighten floors as opposed to darken them!

Yes, you can layer hard wax oils. i would use white for the second color. pure is a natural white. it will not make much of a impact unless it is the first coat.

I did a water-based poly on our last house and it darkened a little but not nearly as much!

The photo below shows the last house and it stayed quite light and bright! It did darken a little over time but nothing compared to the hardwax oil, and the hardwax oil darkened immediately!

I'm going to pick up some osmo raw this evening and do a test area either tonight or tomorrow! Hopefully it works out! I'll post photos when I do it

"I'm going to pick up some osmo raw this evening and do a test area either tonight or tomorrow"

That's exactly what I would recommend! Good luck.

@timothy Winzell

I tried the raw and it did nothing! From what I have read the Raw is usually applied to the bare wood and then the clear is put over top. All it did was slightly increase the sheen.

However, once the the Osmo polyx dried it ended up looking way lighter and we are happy with the result!!

The first photo below shows how it looked the first day and the second two show it two days layer. It really lightened up and a lot of the orange colour has really toned down and the end result is a lighter floor as desired :)

My question is: If you ALREADY know the water base polyurethane KEEPS the colour that you want, why would you break the mold and try another product?

Oil based finishes (hardwax oils...please not the 'oil' part) will always deepen in colour. That's why they HAVE TO PRODUCE a white wash...just to keep homeowners happy in the time of 'white/light floor trends'. The white is there for a reason...to KEEP UP with the trend.

Please think about using a water based polyurethane on the floors (although I'm not sure if it will stick now that it has been treated with a hardwax oil).

@SJ McCarthy the water-based polyeurethane did not come in a matte finish and we wanted a matte finish to help hide scratches. We also wanted to move away from polyeurethane altogether and into more natural finishes like oil, wax, hardwax, etc.

We saw samples of the polyx clear on a lot of light woods and they did not turn amber as with an oil-based poly. Even when the osmo looked amber, it was nowhere near as dark as the oil-based poly went.

While the pine did look quite dark initially, as noted in my above comment, the end result after it dried for a few days is indeed almost clear and comparable to the water-based poly. It has a little more depth in terms of colour, but less shine than the satin polyeurethane we used last time. We are very happy with the end result (though next time we will likely try raw first to keep the wood even lighter!) And it is definitely helpful to know that the polyx lightens up over the first couple of days after application as it dries!

@SJ McCarthy

Above is the polyx the first day, quite dark.

And below is the polyx after a couple of days of drying! Much lighter and more natural-looking. It looks very much comparable to the water-based polyeurethane :)

Hi, which osmo polxy did you use in the end? i really like the look of your floors in this second photo

@hu-27435335 it was osmo polyx clear satin

Hi looks great how long did you wait to apply thr second coat?