I've got pets with their food and water bowls in the kitchen. They do make an icky sticky mess on the floor! I know some people use water on their hardwoods but the manufacturers say not to, including Murphy's oil soap which leaves residue. The steamer sounds interesting if it dries immediately without wetting the surface. I wouldn't worry as much with a solid wood. I wish I could get the real solid wood floors but will have to get engineered. I don't think they will wear and last like the floors which can just be refinished down the road if need be. If you have to do prefinished, the finishes they put on these new floors are a problem long term, imo. If you've got pets and kids they mar pretty easily but without getting the nice patina from wear like the old floors did. They seem fragile to me in that way. The companies also say no water so they're really not made to go that route. I'm looking for an unfinished 1/2" solid to go on my lower level slab after reading about a product called Monocoat today. It's a one coat onsite finishing product, oil I believe, that I hope will test out as good as they say it performs. It looks doable if you have to live there at the same time the floor is being finished and touchups to reseal the surface are easy, like tung oil, for the inevitable damage pets and kids will do. You can even sand an area and wipe more on, good as new.

1. Most of my house is Revere pewter and it's an open floor plan. Since it's a greige, do I stick to either grays or tans in all of the bedrooms to create flow? Colors commonly called grays or tans all belong to hue families. They're simply toned down versions of their hue parents like you see in the graphic below. You can find a gray from every hue family in the spectrum. Each row of child colors is about the same in terms of lightness and grayness. (These are all Dunn-Edwards paint colors, I left off the hue parent paint color info.) But that doesn't mean all of them go together. Color relationships matter and the way you understand color relationships, how you know what colors go together, is a color wheel. Color wheels illustrate how colors relate to each other and those color relationships have names like complementary, analogous, triadic, etc. Once you know what hue family a "gray" or "tan" belongs to, then it's easy to figure out what other colors go with it. For example, here's a tetrad of near neutrals. (I love a scheme of greens and purples) 2. Can I do a warm paint color in the living room but a cool color in the kitchen that is visible from the living room? Sure! The juxtaposition of warm and cool colors is one of the seven different kinds of color contrasts. (Johannes Itten detailed all seven.) If you are going to combine warm and cool colors, it's easier if they are about the same in terms of how gray they look. Like you see in the images above. 3. If I go more yellow beige in the kitchen do I have to stay with warm accents? Not at all. If you want your accents to have the most punch or pop, then using a cooler color would be the way to go to achieve maximum contrast and visual impact. If that maximum punch/pop is too much, then you go with warmer accents to lower the tension between all the colors so the visual impact isn't so intense. 4. I want to stay neutral for my wall color but from room to room, do I stay all warm or all cool? Same answer as #2. Keep all the colors within the same range of grayness and it will work. They can be lighter or darker, but it will be easier to pull off if you don't try to mix vivid, clear colors with your muted and chromatic gray colors like Revere Pewter. For example, I wouldn't put a vivid, clear color like Sugar Cookie 2160-60 with Revere Pewter. 5. I would love to paint my baby's room a light tan but my hallway is more of a cool gray. I would focus on choosing a light tan that works, harmonizes with the contents of your baby's room first. Then, I'd (casually) consider how it looks with the hallway color second. The interruption of a doorway between two room colors means you don't always have to work so hard at crafting perfectly harmonious wall color relationships; the doorway gives you more wiggle room for it to work and look good. Don't get too hung up on "warm" and "cool" color labels because color temperature is relative. In other words, a color isn't warm or cool on its own. We never see color in isolation and context is what determines an individual color's temperature which means all hue can be perceived as warm or cool - it depends. Technically speaking, warm and cool is not a continuous spectrum that splits the color wheel in half. Warm and cool is actually a spectrum within each hue family. There are warm blues and cool blues. Warm reds and cool reds. Warm oranges and cool oranges, etc. Like you see in this color wheel. The context for warm and cool in this case comes from the hue families in the color system that goes with this color wheel.

HI joshua123, The kitchen tile is from Pratt & Larson. It is a custom waterjet mosaic piece in marble. The color is a dark grey with a lot of variation. the exact color is bardiglio. the white boarder and interior boarded are snow white marble. kathy and Micah at pratt & lason were extremely helpful finding exactly what I wanted for our kitchen. I'll have to post a couple more pictures from a sunny day, as the ones I have posted dont really reflect the real colors. as far as style and mosaics being dated or not, I'm a firm believer that you should go with what you love and what speaks to you. you are going to be living in the house and walking into that kitchen every day. I dont think our kitchen mosaic looks dated at all, but I'm also not a designer. I can tell you it makes me happy when I walk in to make my morning coffee in that room. I did consider using more of that tile to cover the entire backspace area from the cooktop to the hood, as diana illustrated in some of her photos, to really give it a more modern look, but it was too expensive to justify in this house.

IMO too many colors in a space chop it up . I like a more gray green for red floors but you need to test colors with all your lighting and your stuff. That is why wall color should be chosen last . I like all LED 4000K lighting to keep colors true at night , .When you say red floors show us the floors . Do not thest the cols by painting them over whatever the wall colors are now . Get poster boards and test those to colors by painting each board with 2 coats of those 2 choices . Move those boards around during all times of the day and night with your lighting and that is how you choose wall color and IMO all open living spaces should be that color