Red Oak – What Other Floor Will Coordinate?

Q: Please Help! My husband and I want to install a laminate floor in our condo. The biggest problem we are having is finding a perfect match to our Red Oak Stairs and Cabinets. We were wondering if a dark contrast of Cherry or Rosewood would look good? We don’t want anything too radical as our home is on the market to sell. This is also a big expense and we don’t want to regret the expenditure.
Thank You,
Trisha
A: Questions like this are fairly common for home owners looking to make a home look great right before it sells or making a home look how they want it after moving into a new one. The first question I would actually ask is this “do you want to accent the cabinets or accent the floor?” This is fairly key as you can never truly match existing cabinetry/flooring to new flooring.
Let’s examine this from the two angles I suggest in my question, we’ll start with accenting the cabinets.
Now choosing a floor to make the cabinetry stand out is fairly easy. With red oak, you have lighter colored wood with slight red tones to it (assuming this is natural and not stained), so choose a rather light, but clear flooring. High grades of maple work well here as it has a light color and very uniform grain pattern which will make the stronger grain pattern and red tones of the red oak stand out. You could also use something like white oak which will have similar, but less open, grain pattern and a paler cream coloring in select/clear grades. Seeing as you plan to look into laminate, avoid country appearances as these will have much more character in the flooring and could mute the cabinets. Alternatively, you could also look into a bamboo appearing laminate as this will have a very uniform appearance and in the natural tones should make the cabinets stand out rather well.
If making the floor stand out is your goal, I would suggest looking into a darker floor or one with very strong grain patterns and coloring. Cherry, Brazilian Cherry, Walnut, Hickory, and similar darker floors are great choices here. Finding a floor with a very strong grain pattern and appearance will stand out over the cabinets.
In the end the key thing to remember is that you can never match a new floor to existing wood cabinets or flooring. Since wood is a natural product each tree will produce a different look and variation of color. You can look into flooring types which will coordinate somewhat, such as using white oak, but you will have difference regardless. If your goal is to coordinate color tone, a light American cherry can be a good choice, but in the end it will be a lot of research and checking samples to your cabinets. I would suggest simply deciding which item you want the attention drawn to, cabinets or floor, then work from there. If you want the floor to stand out, find a floor with some great grain and color and go with it, if it looks good under the cabinets to you it will most likely look great to a home buyer as well.