**I'm newish to this forum, but not to forums in general, if i ask questions that have been covered well, I'm sorry, i did search a lot but ill always appreciate links to past discussions that are relative*** So we are remolding our '75 day light ranch in Oregon. The main space we are starting with is the upstairs (ground floor from the front side of the house) take a look at my image below to get a feel for layout. I need help figuring the flooring in this multi use areas that share a floor. and if it is more than one floor, how to pull that off well. we do not plan to stay in the house too long, but i have already owned it for 15 years (not lived in by me the whole time). we hope to move a few hours away in the next few years, so while we need to remodel this for us, it is really unlivable now, we want to keep thing in perspective in terms of cost and styling. on the other side i dont believe in doing everything vanilla in the most palatable styles just for sale, i also live in a pretty eclectic street of a generally eclectic city. i hate beige the color and the mentality. we have 3 year old twins and are using the main living room as a family play area and that area is pretty good, just needs styling. its the kitchen great room that is the trauma it used to be kitchen, dining room and what we assume was a family room with its large horrid fireplace/rock climbing wall. We have begun using it as kitchen/ office (in the old dining), TV den and new dining banquette side by side delineated by the fireplace. the kitchen is sized for a house 1/3 the size, i have no idea what they were thinking. this house is 3/4 bed, 2730 sqft, has a huge living room, a huge family room and a monster den downstairs, so why is the kitchen 8'x12'? Anyway, we are pushing the kitten out little into 2 of the rooms it shares a airspace with, making it about 10x15 but with generous 4 foot walkways around it. the cooktop will be in the island. So I'm sure i will have a few questions, but my main one for this post is flooring. it had a amazing over use of carpet (dining room, bathrooms, everywhere!) they were ripped out a while ago and we have been putting up with painted plywood subfloor, so I'm very determined to get this part figure out soon! question is can i find a flooring that i like and would work in the whole upstairs (possibly not the master suite, but maybe there as well) or realize that i should do something different in the kitchen and maybe entry and have more freedom to do the rest in something that might not hold up to this wet areas? and if I did do 2 types of flooring, where and how to i transition that in a open concept room? My kitchen gets well used and messy, i have my hand full with kids "helping" me cook and clean so it is not realistic to think I will wipe spills up right away all the time. i will be putting electric in floor radiant heating in everywhere, the home has no central heating, just a horrible jumble of baseboards and ceiling heat. i like modern and easy to clean. solid colors, slate and grey and bold gemstone colors and did a mention easy to clean? I'm sure the rest of my town likes wood and nature and eco everything. what flooring would you put in? 1 type or 2 or even more? how would you handle transitions around the kitchen area? **the lines on the floor around the kitchen aren't anything really, just an idea of where a different floor top may stop and start?** This post was edited by InFlux on Sat, Feb 8, 14 at 5:59

Thank you so much for the information. I enjoyed the browse! Earlier in the day, after work, I went out and bought a quart of Dunn-Edwards Navajo White, which has a green tinge. Now I think I'm warming up to stepping it up a notch after seeing those pictures. Part of my problem is I have the pretty blues and greens in my nearby living room that would look so pretty with some of the yellow/olive like hues of green. But beyond my kitchen (and visible) is a step down area and den that are a green grey, which unfortunately doesn't look great with the maple, otherwise I'd just carry it on up. I wish the yellow that was on the wall worked, but I don't think it looks good with my silestone. I do like how it looks with the maple though. Here is a picture. I'm hoping a darker green might do the trick to work with both areas. I have spent so much $$ on paint samples that it is embarrasing! :-) Here is a link that might be useful:

mtnrd...lol I am not either, but I will take opinions from absolutely anybody that will listen to me! My husband is not one of them anymore ;-/ joanieponie thanks, I am looking for a light color for this room, it is on the dark side of our house and doesn't get much light. Plus a color to possibly make the 2 Ive chosen make a little more sense together. My painter says it looks like an ode to the Dallas Cowboys...eeeek!! As an Eagles fan I was especially concerned! I remember looking at raccoon hollow & its medium/dark taupe I think. Does look nice next to Revere Pewter though!

I don't think it's too many colors. You have framed openings and sightlines from one room to another. That means the colors need to coordinate, definitely, but they don't all need to be the same. My living room and dining room are separated by a 6 foot opening, and I use the same basic palette in both rooms but mix up which color dominates in each room. My living room has robin's egg blue walls while the dining room walls are chocolate brown. The blue is picked up in the DR curtains; the brown is picked up in the wood furniture in the LR. But since you are choosing all grays, I will add that my appreciation of variation in grays is limited, so if I were doing all the rooms in gray, my default would be to use the same gray in all the rooms (unless it had an unpleasant color shift in rooms with different light).