Hi emmie! When we redid our LR and took out the carpet, we found hardwood (I think it is white oak with that honey colored mellowed poly finish) on part of the floor and slab or linoleum on other parts (from previous remodel). Our GC examined the wood and did a fantastic job of choosing the correct stock and finish. His finish carpenter meticulously "cut in" the new wood into the old by cutting back some of the old in a staggered pattern and adding in the new. There are a few places where you can "tell", overall it has a remarkably uniform look. I'll give you his info if you need a contractor who does this well. Just e-mail me. Julie

It depends on what type of wood you have and how old it is. In our last house we had 75 year-old birch, and the new planks we added during a kitchen reno always looked a little different (although not enough to really matter...the planks had differentiations even amongst the original wood.) Of course we did refinish the entire floor at the same time... Oak might be easier! In our current house, there are 60 year old red oak floors. They'd been recently refinished (~3 years ago.) We needed to patch in a large section during our kitchen reno, as we removed walls and relocated the kitchen. We simply bought new unfinished red oak (at Home Depot) and a satin poly my DH hoped would match the existing. He expected to have to try a few different finishes and/or stain, but it actually looks identical just as-is. I can tell you----- staining is not the best answer for the long term!! In another part of this house, a previous renovator used WHITE oak, and then stained it to look more like the red oak everywhere else. When we tried to do a screen-and-recoat recently, when adding some new flooring to an adjacent room, we found we were sanding off the stain. So we had to proceed VERY carefully so as not to remove the stain.... otherwise it would have meant a major sanding of ALL the stain, and then re-staining. It was a bummer because there were some scratches and fading that I'd really wanted to fix, but doing so just would have been too big a project. If you want to be able to do easy screen-and-recoats, selectively sanding more where you need to for repairs, DON'T use stain.

I think you need to strip the stairs down to bare wood and then compare some samples of the flooring stains to to get a close match with the 2 different woods. You need to find a good flooring finisher not your contractor.

You are welcome to have two different wood colours on two different levels. You can get them to "work together" by changing the stain on the BANISTER and the edges of the treads. Yah. I know. You don't want to touch them....but the problem is the the banister/treads BELONG to the MAIN LEVEL flooring. Remember: anything that a "visitor" can see from the "public" level of the home (bedroom levels are normally private areas = often the upstairs areas) SHOULD BE coordinated. If you want a darker floor but do NOT want to change the banister/stair treads, then it is logical to change the UPSTAIRS floors and not the main level floors. Why? Because the banister/treads belong to the main level = public areas = needs to match. The choice is yours....but please be aware that the two colours you have are showing above, do NOT blend well together. That means the main level wood is going to CLASH with the banister/tread colour. And that is normally a "no-no". If you want darker, then I suggest getting a darker version of the UPSTAIRS colour. The gray/black is going to cause a BIG clash with the warm brown. And that clash will force you to change the stairs.