Howdy,

I'm looking for some advice on which direction to run hardwood flooring (low variation hand-scraped hickory) in a new build house. I've researched on-line and checked a few other Houzz discussions, so I already know the basic layout considerations.

Here's the dilemma: if you look at the floor plan below you'll see the hardwood area colored in yellow. When you enter the house (bottom of photo), you'll enter a large open area for the Great Room, Kitchen & Dining Room. At the opposite end of the tiled entry is a large vaulted wall with huge picture windows.....15' high. The Great Room ceiling is vaulted, and runs from the entry to this picture window wall. Our kitchen & island is also long, and runs in this same direction. So based on all the design tips I've read, we would want to run the hardwood in the direction from the entryway to the opposite picture window wall....i.e. in direction of vaulted ceiling, towards the source of natural light, parallel to the longest walls & long narrow kitchen/island.

However....when you come through the tiled entryway, there are 2 long hallways running to your left & right, that are perpendicular to the direction described above. I know for a fact that we want the hardwood running down the same direction as the halls, that's a no-brainer.

We're not interested in an angled layout, so I think we have 2 options:

1. Run the hardwood lengthwise down the halls, and then the opposite direction way for the rest of the large space (requiring a 90-degree transition where each hall ends), or.....

2. Run the hardwood lengthwise down the halls, and then the same direction in the rest of the large space.

The joist direction doesn't come into play in our case, so please don't consider that.

We'd appreciate your vote, and anything else we haven't considered. Thanks very much -

Wade