"Can one stain 'New' Red Oak to match 'Old' Red Oak?" This is tuff to do. When we do a repair in an old Vancouver Home I often use some Shellac first and then top coat with Polyurethane. The shellac gives me the aged look or yellowing and the two seam to work well together. Some times we tint the top coat a little. Judgement calls since sunlight and time will yellow the top coat so making it look right now might make it look wrong in a year.....

@jjam Your floors look beautiful. @Angela Wacker I hope your floors turn out beautiful. @mdln these are such a good ideas/solutions next time I am doing a renovation I will make sure to get this kit. I went by the house in the morning and took a closeup photo (prior to getting confirmation from the contractor and subcontractor) It does look like white oak. @SJ McCarthy thank you for all the information, it gave me ideas on what to ask the contractor and how to have a conversation about the floors. I even came up with a few more stains to try in case the original choices did not work out. The contractor e-mailed me early this afternoon agreeing to test a few more colors. We asked him, again, regarding the type of floors we have and the new ones they installed, initially he said the floors were red oak, but then he texted us an hour later letting us know that the sub had informed him that it was white oak!?! What!! @Beth Thank you!!!! @SashaDog Thank you!!!! @G & S Floor Service @Timothy Winzell it appears you guys were right - it is white oak -probably. Quality/grade? who knows! I cant believe the contractor did not know this! It appears my worries about the floors looking red after a light stain were unnecessary. We stopped by the home to see the samples on our "white oak" and the white stain looked nice with the top coat on it, not pink. The birch was nice, but we decided to go with the white as it looks more like the natural color of the wood we love. I am still anxious about the overall outcome, but crossing fingers that it turns out nice. I am going by the house tomorrow and working from my car so I can take a look and stop the workers in their tracks if it looks bad lol. I am just kidding...but maybe I am not :) Here are the two samples we tried Bona Birch and Duraseal White with bona HD on our "white oak" floors (this is not 100% for sure lol). Leaving the picture here in case someone is looking for a picture of these two stains. You are all such a wonderful group of people! Thank you for helping me through my anxiety. This morning I felt so stupid to have been worrying about a floor stain when so much more important things are going on in the world. Anyways, thank you and much love to you all. Stay healthy!! -Mari

It looks like you already have a medium stain (?Provincial?) on there so you are aware it will be lighter than any of the options you are looking at. Because you want to get away from 'red/orange' tones (as seen in your photo), I HIGHLY recommend you work with the Jacobean side of things. Just like in the make-up industry, floor stains use GREEN based stains to 'hide' or cover red tinges. Jacobean is green based. Jacobean is often used to create a mix of colour. The green base of Jacobean is used (50:50 or 25:75) to get rid of the red AND to darken a colour. This is normal. It is done all the time (by skilled refinishers). I'm not fond of Ebony. It can go down VERY dark (so dark it looks like black paint). Dark walnut might pull a bit to reddy-orange (browns are made up of reds and oranges and blues, etc). Be prepared to ask for a custom mix. And to stay away from orange all together you MUST WORK with a water based polyurethane. That means you MUST HAVE a coat of finish applied to the samples BEFORE you choose. This is normal. It is natural. It is 'industry standard'. Never, ever pick a stain colour without a coat of your finish (in your gloss level) over top. And make sure you view the stain patches through ALL 5 lighting situations. I like to see stain patches put down on Friday (with a coat of finish) and then the homeowners view it over the weekend. You tell the refinisher what you want on Saturday. The full staining process starts on Monday. That's the IDEAL way to do this.

I don't see any obviously Red Oak pieces but it's hard to say from this distance. Oak is sorted by tree type, not wood color. Red and White Oak trees have fairly easily identifiable differences in the leaves (Red Oak has pointy tipped leaves where White Oak is more rounded). Once the wood is installed, one of the better ways of identifying the type from the surface is to look at the medullary rays. As viewed from an end, an Oak log has circular annual rings, and rays that run from the center to the edge. From the surface of a floor, it's easiest to see them on plain sawn boards, where you see the edges of the rays. On Red Oak, the rays on the surface will generally be short. On White Oak they will often be 1" or longer. If you look at the picture on your other post, the longer rays are quite apparent on the upper right board. Another way to tell is by the graininess of the wood. This is a better method to determine what type of wood is in an entire floor, rather than identifying single boards. Red Oak is more grainy looking. When viewed from a cut end, Red Oak spring wood looks like a tiny bundle of straws. On White Oak, these same straws are filled with tyloses, making the surface less grainy and giving White Oak a better measure of moisture resistance, which lends to its use in boat building and barrel making. You can see examples in the link below. If you want opinions on specific boards, pictures would have to be taken close enough to examine the surface grain. https://www.finewoodworking.com/2020/11/12/a-closer-look-at-oak