What it costs to refinish hardwood floors in Edmonton
Refinishing is priced by the square foot, and the range between the cheapest and the most expensive version of the job is wide enough that a single number would be useless to you. Here is what actually moves it.
Tile Mart's 2026 pricing guide puts Edmonton hardwood floor refinishing at $3 to $8 per square foot. On a typical 800 to 1,200 square foot main floor, that rate works out to roughly $2,400 to $9,600 for a full sand and finish. Board condition moves that number more than floor area does, which is why we look before we quote.
What a refinish costs per square foot in Edmonton
Three Canadian publishers land in the same range and disagree about what it covers. Tile Mart, a Canadian flooring retailer with an Edmonton location, names Edmonton directly and lists $3 to $8 per square foot. 1 DAY Refinishing, in a Canada-wide guide published in September 2025, gives the same band and narrows it by species: $3 to $5 per square foot for oak, $6 to $8 for maple or mahogany.
Floors Depot is the only one of the three that splits the work in two. Its 2026 Vancouver guide prices a screen and recoat at $1.75 to $3.75 per square foot, a standard sand and finish at $4.50 to $7.50, and a custom stain and seal at $6.50 to $9.50. It is a Vancouver guide, not an Edmonton one, and it is cited here for the split rather than for the level.
That split is the useful part, and the flat ranges hide it. A recoat scuffs the existing finish and rolls new coats over it. A full sand takes the floor back to bare wood. If you are comparing two written quotes and one is half the other, check which job each is for before deciding anyone is expensive.
What that works out to on an 800 to 1,200 square foot main floor
Nobody publishes a whole-job Edmonton figure, so here is the arithmetic, and it is ours rather than theirs.
At Tile Mart's Edmonton range of $3 to $8 per square foot, 800 square feet is $2,400 and 1,200 square feet is $9,600. At Floors Depot's sand-and-finish band of $4.50 to $7.50, the same footprint is $3,600 to $9,000. 1 DAY Refinishing skips the multiplication and publishes a large-area figure directly: $3,000 to $8,000 for 1,000 square feet or more.
The three overlap between roughly $3,600 and $8,000, and that is as tight as the published numbers allow. The per-square-foot rates run better than two to one, so multiplying them by your square footage cannot produce a narrow answer however carefully you measure. What narrows it is the floor.
A screen and recoat on that same 800 to 1,200 square feet comes to about $1,400 to $4,500 at Floors Depot's recoat rate. It is the cheapest real option, and only if the finish is worn but the wood underneath is not.
Board repair and water damage are priced on top
1 DAY Refinishing puts loose floorboard repair at $6 to $10 per square foot and subfloor repair at $3 to $10 per square foot. It prices moisture testing on a water-damaged floor at $75 to $200 before any repair begins.
Those sit on top of the refinishing rate, not inside it. On a water-damaged floor the testing comes first for a practical reason: sanding wood that is still carrying moisture wastes the sand. We deal with the water, let the boards come back to a stable moisture content, and refinish after that.
What actually moves your number
Floor area works in your favour as it grows. Many contractors carry a minimum project fee, often around $2,000 by 1 DAY Refinishing's account, which is why one 150 square foot bedroom costs far more per foot than a whole main floor does.
Stairs are the forgotten line. Treads and risers are hand work that no floor sander touches, and 1 DAY Refinishing prices them at $50 to $100 each.
A colour change adds a step and a day. 1 DAY Refinishing puts staining at $1 to $3 per square foot on top of the sanding, before the finish goes on. Going darker on old oak also makes every remaining repair show more, not less.
Then there is what you can do yourself. 1 DAY Refinishing lists $20 to $50 a room to move furniture and $1.50 to $4.00 per square foot to pull old carpet. Do both and both lines come off the quote.
Finish type shifts the schedule more than the price. Water-based dries fast and stays clear. Oil-based ambers and cures more slowly, which adds a day or two you cannot walk on.
Why a real quote needs someone standing on the floor
Statistics Canada's 2021 census counts 151,470 occupied Edmonton-area dwellings built between 1961 and 1980, out of 548,625 in total. Those floors are forty to sixty years old, and how many sands they have already had is what sets your quote.
Everything above prices the work. None of it tells you how much wood you have left, whether the boards are cupped, or what is under the finish in the traffic lane between the kitchen and the back door. Those answers decide whether you are buying a recoat or a full sand, and they are the difference between the two ends of every range on this page.
What a starting-at price does and does not include
One Edmonton company, Canadian Sanders, advertises "Price Starts: $999.99~" on its Edmonton page. Take the tilde seriously.
Set that against Tile Mart's Edmonton range of $3 to $8 per square foot and $999.99 covers somewhere between roughly 125 and 333 square feet. That is a bedroom, or a small living room. Pairing one company's advertised floor with another company's per-foot range is our comparison and not one either publisher made, and it is arithmetic rather than a quote. The order of magnitude still holds. A starting price is the smallest job a company will take, not the price of your job.
The questions worth asking anyone quoting you, us included: what is excluded, how many coats are in the number, which finish product it is, and whether furniture moving and carpet removal are in or out. A quote that will not answer those in writing is not a quote.
We do not publish a starting-at number, for the same reason we do not price a floor sight unseen. Send us the rooms and the square footage and we will come and look at it.
Where to start
If your floor is dull and scratched but the wood is clean, start with the screen and recoat page and do the water-drop test on it before you spend anything. If there is bare wood showing or you want a different colour, read what a full refinish involves. If the problem is damage rather than wear, start with board repair or water damage.
Sources
Every published figure on this page, and the date we last opened the page it came from. Where a whole-job number is our own arithmetic on somebody else’s per-square-foot rate, the sentence it appears in says so. Last reviewed 2026-08.
- Tile Mart, Cost to Refinish Hardwood Floors (2026 pricing guide) — the $3 to $8 per square foot range named for Edmonton. Checked 2026-08-28.
- 1 DAY Refinishing, How Much Does Hardwood Floor Refinishing Cost in Canada? (September 2025) — the Canada-wide per-square-foot range, the oak versus maple split, stairs at $50 to $100 per tread, staining at $1 to $3 per square foot, furniture moving, carpet removal, board and subfloor repair rates, moisture testing, and the typical minimum project fee. Checked 2026-08-28.
- Floors Depot, Hardwood Floor Refinishing in Vancouver, 2026 guide — the only published split we found between a screen and recoat, a standard sand and finish, and a custom stain and seal. Checked 2026-08-28.
- Statistics Canada, 2021 Census Profile, Edmonton census metropolitan area — 151,470 occupied dwellings built between 1961 and 1980, of 548,625 in total. Checked 2026-08-28.
- Hardwood Floors Magazine (NWFA), How Many Times Can a Wood Floor Be Sanded? — six to eight sands over a solid floor’s service life, and 1/32 to 1/16 inch removed per sand. Checked 2026-08-28.
- Hardwood Floors Magazine (NWFA), Can the Floor Withstand a Resand? — the 3/32 inch minimum wear thickness and how to measure it at a floor register. Checked 2026-08-28.
- National Wood Flooring Association, Avoiding Winter Weather Woes — seasonal gapping as normal behaviour, and the 30 to 50 percent humidity target. Checked 2026-08-28.
- Health Canada, Improve indoor air quality in your home — the same 30 to 50 percent indoor relative humidity range. Checked 2026-08-28.
- Natural Resources Canada, Keeping the Heat In, Table 9-1 — the maximum indoor humidity a window assembly tolerates without condensation at -20°C and -30°C. Checked 2026-08-28.
- Environment and Climate Change Canada, Canadian Climate Normals 1991 to 2020, Edmonton International Airport — January daily average of -12.3°C, and average afternoon relative humidity of 69.7% in January against 40.1% in May. Checked 2026-08-28.
Get the number for your floors, not for an average one.
Get a free quote