Seeding, before or after leveling/topdressing.

Hi all,

I will be coring and leveling and top dressing my lawn late October, I have some ruts about an inch or so deep where the trenching for the irrigation has sunk which I plan to fill with lawn construction mix (soil and sand) and then for the finer leveling on top I plan to use top dress mix over the entire lawn after the trenches are filled.

I have seen on here some people put their seed down before the top dress mix, and then level the top dress mix with a leveler, I always assumed this would scatter the evenly placed seed around resulting in a no longer even application of seed? I thought applying the seed on top of the top dress mix with a drop seeder would give an even application?

I did consider a hybrid approach of seed down before the top dress mix and then more seed after it, but then I would be able to do two passes in either direction which is recommended and the bottom layer of seed would be mixed all around anyway.

So my question is, what would be the best way to do this? I like the idea of just doing two passes with the drop seeder in opposite directions with the drop seeder on top of the top-dress mix rather than worrying about mixing up the seed to much during leveling, but I also want to do it the way that will give the best result.