You are confining yourself to looking at factory finished floors. You can have any finish you want if you have the flooring installed and then finished on site. Of course, you need to be careful because the type of wood you choose will influence the ultimate stain color and look of the floors. I recently remodeled and installed light wood engineered floors. They have a pretty decent wear layer - that is the portion of the "real" wood that determines how many times it can be sanded/refinished. However, more important to me was the durability of the actual finish because realistically I would not have any floor refinished - logistically it would be too difficult so if I needed new floors (knock on wood), I would opt for factory finished engineered wood floors. My floors are from Mirage and they seem to have a wide selection of finishes - I opted for a natural oak finish which is very "blonde". They are a Canadian company and espouse green practices. Mirage Floors Solid hardwood floors are great in the right circumstances. They weren't practical for me because I have no interest in refinishing - I don't anticipate selling but if circumstances change, the buyer will either refinish prior to moving in or decide they don't like the floors and put down new flooring or the floors will still be in decent condition and they will just move in.

@Trish Walter Wow, they are gorgeous! I love the amount of character and color and the plank width. I ordered several samples of the Hurst Hardwoods Engineered French Oak, but the colors were way off from what was represented on the website pictures. I mean way off, like a completely different color...a grey rather than a brown. And what were supposed to be four very different colors all looked almost exactly the same. I didn't ask for Riverstone, but maybe I will talk with them about getting a few more samples and see if anything works. My husband is doing the install, too, to save money. I don't want to get the HH unfinished and have him also have to do the staining and finishing on top of installing. Thanks so much for sharing the info and the pictures. Enjoy your beautiful floors!

@HU-16337133: It looks like you’re going to have a beautiful result no matter what.🙂 Who makes that flooring?

@kandrewspa here are my cabinets. This color is called “Dove,” which is an off white (but reads white), but brighter white cabinets are also a possibility. It’s between those two tones. I welcome any suggestions for flooring color etc. My contractor will be installing the floors first, so that why I’m scrambling to select floors now. Regardless of what countertop I end up with, I feel like I’m limited (for the reasons discussed above) to a neutral tone anyway. I’ll post pics of the countertops I’m considering.