One BIG decision for the whole house: the floors
When we picked out the finishes for our townhouse 4+ years ago, I knew I wanted three things: grey walls, white cabinets, and dark floors.
The builder and our realtor talked me out of the grey walls because it's cloudy in Oregon and we didn't have any side windows. We ended up with the lightest grey on the paint card which looks like white. I'm very happy with it now because the grey wall thing was sort of a trend and the light, almost-white is a lot more neutral and versatile.
The cabinet supplier offered 5 shades of medium-honey brown for the cabinets, all very dated and not at all what we wanted. Painting them white rather than staining them medium-brown would have been an extra $2,000. Staining them dark brown was my second choice, but that wasn't an option and they wanted to charge us extra for that, too--till I made a stink and they agreed to just use a darker stain.
The builder and our realtor warned us against dark floors because they show dust and dirt. We'll see everything across the room, they warned; it will drive us crazy, they said. And since we had dark cabinets instead of the white I wanted, dark floors would bury the cabinets. So we went with a very nice medium-brown floor with lots of variation. They actually look fantastic and are also a nice versatile, neutral choice, but husband and I have always felt a little cheated out of the floors we both knew we wanted. And, I wish I could see the dirt more on them!! It's hard to tell when the cat hair is building up.
So this time... we get to renovate the whole house and do whatever floors we want everywhere! We were so sure we wanted dark ones this time... but now I'm torn. A lot of the images I've been pinning are of historic homes that have been renovated but have original hardwood floors, stained medium. I don't love the floors but I do like a lighter look.
The floor samples we got are dark or darker. I made a loud, happy groan when I opened the box--I looooooove them both. Now I'm so torn!
So I went back to my pinboards and looked for images with dark floors. I think it's still possible to achieve the light, open look with dark floors... right?
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Here are the floors we're thinking about, from Select Surfaces.
I can't decide if the "dark" is dark enough, and will look more intense when we have whole rooms and floors of it... or if it's more of a warm brown than a true dark brown, maybe too yellow/warm. Maybe the "darker" is more neutral?
What do you think? Do you have super dark, or medium-dark floors, and do you like them? Any suggestions for making this decision??
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