There are some attractive examples of diagonal hardwood floors.

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It will be more expensive as there will considerably more expensive as the layout is not as easy and the waste factor of material is considerably more..

Diagonal flooring is more expensive due to the extra labor and waste.

Otherwise, it is personal choice. Assumining you are standing at the entrance, I would place the planks. parallel to the windows, so you see those long lines as you enter.

How wide are the halls? Do you have a photo of them?

Thanks!

One hallway is 40” wide and 25’ long and another is L shaped of similar width but shorter length

Actually I took picture for in first post from the garage entry and not the main entrance. The viewpoint from main entrance is in this set where you see the fireplace divider. I thought doing the planks diagonal would make the side fireplace divider more interesting.

My recommendation would be to set the planks in the direction of the subfloor planks.

As you've heard, it is a personal choice. One thing I like to point out is this: some of us get DIZZY when we are walking on a diagonal hardwood install. I'm one of them. I have a STRONG tendency to run into the walls when the floor planks have a diagonal slant to them. The only way this stops, is if the rooms are the size of the ballroom in the Mirror Room at Versailles Palace (outside of Paris) or the thrown room in the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg (in Russia).

You get the type of size I'm talking about. Go ahead and lay out 20 - 30 planks on the diagonal and see how you FEEL when you walk on them/look at them. You might find that you are one of 'us' (a minority for sure...but I would hate to see you pay 25% extra for labour and 25% more for 25% waste only to find you walk into walls).

That's a VERY expensive mistake. The only option is to rip them out...or pay for an occupational therapist to come in and 'train you' to stop walking into walls.

Diagonal floors always make rooms look "off" to me. You want the focus in your rooms to be the nice view out your windows, your interesting center fireplace or art on the walls - not the direction of the floors.

That’s great feedback. I also tried using the visualizing tools some of the flooring suppliers had. They were not very accurate in the color or plank size but it certainly helped understand how different parts of the house would look in different directional layouts. I think I’m leaning hard towards straight plank.

Great suggestions. I tried a few visualization tools on the flooring vendors websites. The color and plank size were not accurate but it was enough to assess for the plank direction. The flooring guy also reminded me that everything in my house is straight and minimal. The flooring tools seem to confirm that straight plank is more aligned to the overall look as did the pro on this thread. And I definitely wouldn’t want any visitors to my house walking into walls 😅. Thanks for all the input and helping me decide. Adding a pic from the tool.

The diagonal is disorienting to me. I feel like people will stare at your floor instead of your artwork and decor.

Thanks to all the suggestions on this we ended up with a remodel that we are enjoying a lot. We had to pause things for a bit to help the kids catch up on academics post-Covid, but now getting back into it. Gonna go get cabinet hardware, stain the trim, and get some window shades in the coming months now that kids are rocking school again :-)