Please recommend Light/Medium pre-finished solid hardwood floors
jyyanks
last year
last modified: last year
Hello
I’m looking to replace the hardwood floors in my current house. Ideally, I’d like a light or medium brown finish with no yellow or red. I seem to like white oak and maple the best but open to other woods.
I will consider engineered floors but prefer solid hardwood at 3 to 5 inches. Can you recommend a brand and a color?
The pictures attached show the colors I'm looking for. Thank you!
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Comments (17)
jck910
last year
typeandrun
last yearRelated Discussions
do you like pre finished hardwoods?
Comments (52)if you decide 3/4" oak, site finished. Our bid for 2 long hallways, refinished and a dining room and a living room and one 11x11 bedroom and to put all new hardwood (about 1500) into the kitchen which was feathered in with existing hardwood in a fairly good sized family room was 4600 total. we applied a dark stain plus 2 coats of oil, semi gloss. which to me does not look so different than satin and holds up better he said. So that is 4600 total with new hardwood in a average size kitchen, refinishing 5 rooms total and 2 long hallways. I think that seemed fair. I will say that I did have the 25 year prefinished in PH dining and honestly did not like room the way it looked or how the prefi performed. Plus with site finished you have no problem ever refinishing them over and over for many years. It just seemed to be worth the extra cost IMH0 also even with the oil. we still were able to sleep in our house. The smell dissapated later in the day and, we had fun crawling in and out of our master bedroom with 2 dogs...lol not so much! good luck...See MoreIs this the 'classic' medium brown hardwood flooring color?
Comments (24)Sheeisback - don't get yourself set on a look from a photo. Oak has a lot of movement and just because a photo happens to show a section that looks really consistent to your eye that doesn't mean the rest of the floor looks like that. I got some excellent advice when I was in a tizzy trying to choose stain for the floors in our new house - everything but the bathrooms and laundry area are hardwood, no carpet anywhere and I was frantic because it's so much wood and HAS to be right! Didn't want natural, didn't want dark, didn't want yellow/orange/red.....sound familiar? Amy (amysrq in the old days) told me to think of the floor as a secondary player - you don't want people walking in and only noticing your floor, not your inviting decor or art or family photos or whatever it is you feature in your home. Sure they can walk in and say wow your floors look great but it should stop there unless you used some vivid aniline dye in a modern house which is totally not you! She said that anything that falls within what our brains tell us is a 'natural wood tone' will become backdrop to rugs, furniture etc - as it should. Of course some stains have more red or orange but even those will look appropriate and largely neutral unless they are VERY red or orange. It was great advice and calmed me a lot about the decision but I still panicked when the floors were done picking out boards that I didn't think right which is insane. I LOVE my floors now, there are boards that are noticeably lighter, a few boards get a distinct pink hue when the sun hits them and there are streaks of lighter or darker areas within the same board! What am I going to do rip them out? Of course not - embrace the wood for what it is and the beauty of a natural product. Yes, 7' is a nice length but see if you can get them to try for 7 to 10. You'll still have short boards which are needed at the ends and in closets if you're doing them but getting some of those longer boards mixed in with the 4', 5' 6' makes for a beautiful floor. We rejected the flooring brought to us initially because it wasn't what we ordered in length, the installer had a fit, said that's all that's out there and quit. We ended up ordering ours from a place we knew back home in Chicago and had it freighted to NC. For some reason the long boards seem to go north and the shorter more 'character' boards are popular here. We wanted neither. Shoot for select, long boards and you'll be happy. Can't wait to see it. And BTW - are you working with a specific stain mfg that the installer prefers?...See Moresolid hardwood vs. engineered hardwood
Comments (21)I'm a fan of Hickory. Love it! I love it's STRONG variation! Yep. Variation is the word that can be used for Hickory. If you are going for "mid-tone" then it means the Hickory is stained. No problem. That's fine. Hickory takes a stain very nicely. But it will still have plenty of variation. The stain will even that out a little bit, but not entirely. The finish is UV cured urethane. I'm not very excited about that finish. If you are going for factory finish, you will want to work with the TOUGHEST finishes on the market (that's why you go with factory finished...for the TOUGH finish). The UV cured urethane is a ho-hum type of finish. Average would be the best way to describe it. The thickness of the plank is 3/4" = normal for sold. The plank width is 5" with random lengths UPTO 60" (5ft). That tells me there will be many planks in the 3' - 4' range. Again, this is ho-hum average. And with a wide plank product, it will need "glue assist". And Hickory certainly needs it because it has a bit more movement (less stable) than white oak. And then there is the "low gloss" format. The low-gloss finish on this depth of colour = nightmare to live with. It will show dust, etc as well as oily foot prints, sock prints, paw prints and will look hazy at certain times during the day. The "haze" is part of the chemical make up of the finish itself = that's how they take away the gloss...they haze it with a chemical additive. The haze goes away when you sand and refinish the floor. That's the only way to fix it. If you must have a mid-tone floor, I would recommend a TOUGHER finish (aluminum oxide or ceramic infused polyurethane) in a satin. Satin is FAR MORE livable. It offers a lovely glow without being shiny. It hides skin oils (like paw prints from dogs) because it is the same gloss level as skin oils....it isn't hazy....you get the idea....See MoreLVT, Pre engineered hardwood or hardwood
Comments (20)I don't think the hardwood from today is nearly as good as the hardwood from even a few decades ago. I have small dogs - both less than 20 pounds. But they're young, like to play, and they've left some pretty amazing scratches and skitter marks in the hardwood - in 2 different homes. Yes I keep their nails trimmed, they get a quick dremel every week. The old floors were site finished oak hardwoods. And there were spots where the scratches were getting pretty bad. The one house in question is in a beach town, so between the dogs and the sand, the floors were very scratched up. I deliberately chose a wood look LVP and it's held up incredibly well, but no one will mistake it for site finished hardwood either. I have engineered wood in my primary home - and while they've scratched that up too, it's somewhat less noticeable because it's a matte finish, and it's pre-finished engineered, which I've heard may be somewhat harder....See Morejyyanks
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last yearlast modified: last yearThanks for the response. I don’t have pets and my kids are grown. This would be for the first floor of my house. My house is currently under renovation but I can add a floor plan of the first floor which currently has 3 different types, size and color wood floors (4 if you include the stairs) and old pics of 2 rooms which show the floors. Ignore the paint color. My goal is to have consistent floors (size, type, color) on the first floor.
Walls will be BM super white. House is 124 years old
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