Ghosting is the name for pale footprints or cloudy patches that show up in a film finish weeks or months after coating, often where people walked during coating or curing. It comes down to chemistry and contamination in the film.
The trouble is in the finish film; the boards underneath are usually fine. Scrubbing at it with supermarket floor polish tends to make it worse.
What you’re looking at
Ghosting sits in or on the coating itself: lighter tracks, cloudy islands, or dull footprints that catch the light differently to the surrounding floor. It often appears after the floor looked perfect on handover day.
Common timing is two to twelve weeks after coating, sometimes longer if the room was barely used and then suddenly got heavy traffic. Darker timbers and higher-gloss films show it more clearly, and matte finishes hide it better.
Don’t confuse it with:
- UV fade under rugs (resanding and colour change) — that comes from light exposure ageing the timber and coating, and it doesn’t look like footprints
- Burnish marks from the wrong cleaners, which usually follow the wiping pattern rather than foot shapes
- Wear-through in traffic lanes after years of use, where the film has thinned and the timber is showing — which is a different problem with a different fix
Typical causes
Residue on the timber before coating is the usual starting point: silicone, wax, oily footprints, plaster dust, leftover adhesive. Contaminated thinner, rags or rollers do it too, as does walking on a floor before it was ready. Some coatings are also fussier than others about recoat windows and humidity during cure.
Heavy early traffic while the film is still soft can telegraph later as lighter tracks. Pets and sock feet during the “almost dry” days are common culprits on Melbourne renovations, where everyone is keen to move the fridge back in.
Moisture and temperature swings during cure don’t help either. A cold empty house with the heater blasting overnight, followed by a humid day for coat two, is a good way to end up with film quirks. Coatings do best in stable conditions — see floor coating finishes.
What you can do
Photograph it in daylight and again under your night lights. Note when it first appeared and what happened in the room in the weeks before — movers, heaters, cleaners. Then call whoever coated the floor while the job is still fresh in everyone’s diary.
A screen and recoat often fixes mild ghosting. Sometimes a fuller sand and a rebuild of the film is needed. Avoid scrubbing with unknown chemicals: you can etch flash marks into soft film, and then it becomes an argument about who caused what.
Prevention is clean prep, the right products, correct recoat windows, and patience on cure times. Care habits after handover matter too — a curing poly should not be wet mopped, no matter how keen you are to keep it nice.