@katiejeane i am glad i came across your post of red oak flooring. i have been trying for months to get the color right and love your home and floor. I have some questions and hope you dont mind me asking. do you get a lot of natural light? What sun exposure do you have? id love to see the floor up close to see the background color and grain. would you mind posting a picture? what poly did you apply and what finish: extra matte or satin? hoping you did not water pop or pretreat the floor to get the red out since we are not doing those things. you still love it and have no regrets? i have tried every combination that i have resorted to non-mixed colors of special walnut, and provincial, and mixed of medium brown/rustic, chestnut/rustic and going to try your mix of medium brown/weathered. what were your runner ups. So afraid to pick wrong again (first pick i selected weathered oak and what a distaster - way to pink on red oak). yoir guidance and insight are welcome. looking to put this part of the project behind me.

@Amy Molina thank you for advising. your color really is beautiful!!! i just selected last monday chestnut/classic. it did not appear to have any of that red orange showing through - just a nice neutral brown color. in my opinion, it is like a special walnut but greatly improved. special walnut was a yuck! color on my floor showing orange and the grains too bold. classic gray is the ticket to modernize a color if looking for a brown. its just finding the right brown that is tricky. now i am just hoping i selected a dark enough brown - yoir looks great! they come and do ours tomorrow in the official color.

I am going thru the same thing right now! We already blended a bona stain and hated it so I am paying to re-sand! My contractor uses bona and duraseal ...here are some of my examples...the classic grey ( big area) is nice but looks purple sometimes...I kinda like your special walnut -classic grey combo....

OK...here we go. Red oak is, well, red. In fact it sands down to a lovely wheat colour. As soon as anything with 'white' in it is put down, the wheat colour turns to cinnamon/salmon/pink. And that's where Red Oak frustrates both the professionals and the homeowners. Red oak turns pink when gray is used. Why? Because gray is a mix of black and WHITE (oh dear...there it is again...white+red=pink). The other issue with white is it is OPAQUE (cannot see through it...no light passes through). That means the issue with 'gray' = it is NOT transparent (see through). It is TRANSLUCENT (like paper...you can see light pass through but you cannot see the light SOURCE). The more 'white' you add the more opaque the stain becomes....sigh. So there will be two issues you will be fighting: 1. White + red = pink 2. White = opaque (looks like watery paint) So the end result can be a pinky gray (with hints of lilac) that looks like painted wood. https://www.bona.com/en-CA/Professional1/Hardwood-Floors/Coatings/Stains/Bona-DriFast-Stain---Metropolitan/ All three of your choices CLEARLY SHOW (even in the small swatch on the screen) a pink cast to the red oak. The only one that kills the pink (most of it...but it is STILL THERE) is the Aged Pewter. How? Because it has very little white AND it has a green base to it (green kills red). Whew! You can get rid of the red in your red oak...for a price. You can have the wood bleached. That's another $2-$3/sf of an up charge (consider the average price of a sand/refinish = $5/sf). It adds several days to the project and it will damage the wood....but you will get the grey tones you are looking for without pulling all the pink/lilac/purple tones.