Flooring--What Color Hardwood Should We Use In Our New Addition?

by Lori
(Windsor, Ontario)

We are about to put an addition on our two-story contemporary home. We are turning our existing garage into a new family room and building a new garage out in front of the house. The old family room space will be the new eating area and has cherry hardwood floors. The living and dining room also have the cherry hardwood floors. The kitchen has a multi-brown ceramic tile. The new family room will be one step down from the new eating area so we will be continuing the flooring (cherry hardwood) into the family room.

We would like to use another color hardwood (chocolate brown) for the stair case in the front foyer and for upstairs but we are not sure if this is a decorating "no no" to mix hardwood floors of different colors in the same house. We also thought of using the cherry hardwood border in the family room and chocolate brown in the middle to tie it into the upstairs. Or do we just do cherry throughout the whole house? We would appreciate your advice!

Answer:

When it comes to flooring, I generally try to keep things consistent throughout the house--one type of tile, one type of hardwood, one type of carpet. In my opinion, when you mix different colors of one flooring type, you run the risk of having your house look like you've shopped out of the bargain bins at the store, and they didn't have enough of one item to go around.

The only time I would break this rule is if I were decorating or designing a completely custom room, such as a complete top-to-bottom master bedroom design that was really something special.

Now with that said, I'll also add that there are creative ways around things like this. Without seeing photos of your home, it's difficult to say for sure what I'd do, but let me give you some idea of how you could work the two together.

I personally would keep all of the hardwood flooring on the first floor consistent. However, on the staircase, you could use a variation of your border idea. I would suggest that on the stairs, as well as any landing area on the second floor, you use the cherry flooring, and then you could use a border of the darker flooring. Then you could easily take the darker flooring into the rooms on the second floor.

Hope that helps! Happy decorating,