What do you mean you don't want to get it sanded to preserve the hardwood. You will be amazed at how beautiful your freshly sanded hardwood floors will look!

What do you mean “gray/black undertones” ???

We moved into our 3rd home in our mid 20s. We had heart pine floors, very orangey. I hated them.....at first. The house was empty, the walls were a horrible color. We lived with them. Furnished the house and now find with rugs walnut, mahogany and cherry furniture look great in it. 25 years later, I'm glad we didn't change them. Fashion will come and go. Sand only when you have to ;^)

This is a picture from Home Depot, and this is the color we were envisioning.

I read online something about buffing and refinishing, which is a light sanding technique instead of fully sanding it, but I wasn’t sure if that was a possible thing to do.

We didn’t want to have to fully sand it if we didn’t have to (we heard that hardwood can only be sanded a number of times before the top layer starts to get too thin, not sure if it’s true), and also we heard the mess is huge, and it can be really expensive to do. So we thought if there were any other possibilities out there.

We could also choose to live with it, and we might learn to love it, just as mentioned by heartheron40 (Thanks btw!) 😊

I just can’t really picture all the different finishes going together. The honey oak on all trims, doors, ceiling, kitchen, then the red/brown, and basically all our furniture is espresso color (we can’t really afford to buy all new furniture).

To change the color the entire old finish needs to be sanded to fresh wood. Buff and coat is not staining or changing stain color it is merely breaking the surface of the poly and reapplying poly.

That dark color seems attractive. But to keep it attractive requires near continuous cleaning. Every thing stands out against that dark background. Every spec of dust.

Have you already moved in? If not, I’d refinish. If it’s hardwood (not engineered wood) I doubt you have much to worry about - it’s not like people sand their floors every 2-3 years. I would also however caution against going too dark, and also try to factor in the remaining wood trim/paneling so that colors don’t clash.

If you have already moved in, it is going to be a giant pain. I would probably buy a lot of area rugs and live with it for a bit to see if you stop noticing the floors.

I'm not sure you will like that brown floor finish with all of your golden wood. Make sure you look at lots of pix of that combo first. The floor color you have now is a much better choice IMO

If, your floor is at it's limit with sanding. You can chemically strip the floor. You can use OTC strippers or make your own with a 50/50 lacquer thinner and denatured alcohol. Use a respirator and allow good ventilation - absolutely no open flames nearby.

I’d leave the floors. Once you get into the mess of redoing them, you’ll regret your decision to mess with them at all.

It looks like those floors have been recently refinished. The gloss level appears to be matte. That is a look that is hyper trendy. This trend has been going for the last 5-10 years (depending on where you are).

The orange looks very good with the CEILING and the gold/orange trim. You will notice how much the new gray walls clash with the orange trim and the ceilings. For me the gray/orange combo that you have causes my vision to vibrate. That tells me the clash is in the extreme range. It reminds me of the purple/green combination.

I'm sorry but if you want gray in this home, you are going to have to change the following:

1. The stone fireplace - the stone is clashing (just a snick) with the gray you have chosen

2. The ceiling - the yellow is clashing with the gray walls (but working 'OKish' with the current fireplace)

3. The deep orange wood floor - this is a big clash with the deep gray on the wall.

These are expensive changes. To refinish a wood ceiling takes ++ effort from a professional (effort and time = very expensive). You either have to paint or stain it gray (not a good idea) to get it to work with the gray walls.

The window trim is a P.I.T.A.! Again, it is time consuming and expensive. This has to be done to get the dark gray paint to work.

The fieldstone fireplace is a subdued 'mortar gray' with hints of orange in it. Believe it or not, the mortar gray is starting clashing with the dark gray on the walls.

And then there is the dark orange floors. If you want any gray in that room to work, you must redo the floors.

Or you can change the dark gray to something more complimentary to the orange tones in the home. I'm not saying the mint green was a nice option...but there are better options than this stark gray colour. If you find the right gray, you can leave all the other items alone.

But the dark gray you have chosen is not working with anything in this home.

That’s a big bummer with the grey. We had a color expert from Sherwin Williams pick it out for us, because we are not great picking colors from an infinite selection of colors. We trusted her on that bold choice, and it was such a huge pain to get that wall painted.

Again, we are not experts, and it took days to do it ourselves. Ugh, we will have to live with all of that now 😂

I like the gray. Put an area rug on the floor and get some furniture in there, and you are going to enjoy being in your new space.