One problem you will have is that you have nowhere to test the stains. If you want to accent the grain with minimal color changes, one of the best ways is to use a medium-color penetrating oil stain, apply lightly with a cloth dipped in well-stirred stain, and wipe it off very quickly and well, so the color stays in the pores of the grain and doesn't have time to soak into the rest. Adding a tiny bit of ebony to the clear stain would make it possible to fille the pores with a dark color ... wipe it off quickly! Then do the clear topcoat. Looking at my stain test boards from the bath, done on new oak: Minwax Penetrating Oil Finish Birch was light brownish Light Cherry was quite red Golden mahogany was neutral medium brown Colonial Maple was reddish, but not as red as the cherry

A dark jatoba or espresso stain will take BC to a chocolate color. Do you know what flooring you have? If engineered with a thin veneer, proceed with caution. And obviously you're doing this for a potential buyer, so you might just want to offer them a credit on the purchase price and let the buyer deal with the refinishing of the floors. You never know if they'll balk at the new color or back out of the deal, etc. Mongo

We are installing a QS red oak floor and QS white oak cabinets. I guess we are doing the opposite of what you are proposing... The floors will just be sealed with no stain and the cabinets will have Miniwax red oak stain. We wanted the wood to complement each other but definitely be distinct so they didn't "blend into" each other.

I got a sample door of driftwood with ebony glaze on cherry and really liked it. I think I would have been happy with Starmark, but after figuring tax/installation/etc the difference between them and the custom shop was very little and my contractor really wanted me to use the custom shop. The custom shop allows things to be a little more "custom" too which is nice. They work together well with the contractor so it has made things easier than I think it would have been otherwise. I ended up matching a stained maple to Starmark driftwood with a black glaze. It's very close in appearance. The kitchen is still in progress so I don't have any finished pictures (probably 4-6 weeks out still), but here is a sample door with the stain. This isn't the door style we ended up using, its more for color. This is my custom shop's maple, but it looks very similar in color/tone to the cherry driftwood sample I got from Starmark. I think the glaze is important on cherry or maple to mellow out the underlying wood tone, otherwise looks really pink (was not a fan at all of that look). Oak might be able to get away with plain stain. It's a little dark, I thought about doing the whole kitchen in it, but ultimately settled on a mix of light grey paint (matched to SW Repose Grey) on one wall and the island/mudroom/appliance wall/desk all stained. Omega porch swing seemed pretty similar, I cross shopped that too. I think I would have done QS oak inset if I stuck with starmark or omega. I really liked Porch swing with a brushed ebony finish.