and less natural light it looks like a very deep brown. The entire wall has not been painted yet but it is a pretty distinct difference. If he's using good quality BenM paint, after two coats the color will balance out - after one full coat over the B. Pear you will see more balance towards the color of the paint chip/sample. Two coats is going to equalize the color from room to room, but you are still going to have the issue of light. LT is not going to look the *same* in both of those rooms because one has less natural light. At night, eh, it will depend on what else is going on in the room and the individual lighting plans for each room. It's not unusual for the colors to look more alike at night with artificial lighting than during the day and influence of natural lighting. As long as you know to expect a reasonable balance of LT room to room and not exact *match* and identical, you'll be fine when it's finished. Changing the plan now, changing to another neutralized color, isn't going to solve anything because it too will be influenced by the current, differing wall colors and light.

I've been in a lot of show homes lately. Often they have a beautiful laminate or engineered wood floor. And then you get to the stairs, and you can't just lay the engineered wood on the stair, because the cut edge isn't pretty. So they've got a plastic edge on every stair to cover the edge of the flooring material. IMHO, it's like a flashing light that screams "this is not real wood flooring!" And it ruins the effect of the overall floor. But they do it in show homes, so apparently I'm alone in noticing that. On the other hand, I've been in a lot of builder show homes lately that obviously needed to hire a designer. The expensive part of wood on stairs is the edge of each tread. It needs to be shaped and finished. The painted riser is just an effect, less wood look, highlights the wood tread.

Every house has its issues and only you know how much specific problems will bother you. If the newly installed wood is of the same species and grade, stain mismatch shouldn't be a problem. Different boards will take the stain differently and that will occur in both the new floor and the existing floor. A bit of color variation is part of the beauty of real hardwood floors. If you have the whole floor sanded, you can go with a slightly darker color but stick to a classic medium brown shade and it won't ever go out of style. New engineered flooring isn't going to be as durable as your floor with a good quality finish. Flooring manufacturers tout their multiple coats of finish applied in a factory environment as something that can't be duplicated in an on-site job. True, but that isn't all positive - scratches, dings and dents happen on site and factory finish has to be replaced, not repaired. Rather than replacing the existing, consider spending a bit more money and doing a high end finish. You might want to investigate the newer UV cured coating systems that are marketed as comparable to prefinished products. When my hubby was curious about off color stained wood, I asked him how much the slightly mismatched stain color in our current house bothered him. He hadn't even noticed it and it's been there close to ten years since I removed the carpet exposing the original finish hardwood.

I see no reason to use transitions just the fact they are a different room and their use is different is all you need to choose a different wall color. That tile color will always drive the wall color in each space so maybe just a different shade insted of a completely new color.