One of the questions I get most frequently about my home is about our beautiful light wood floors. It’s a rainy lazy Sunday here in Chicago, so I thought I’d hop on and finally spill all the details on the blog!
The Details Behind Our Light Wood Floors
In our previous home, we had super dark floors that showed every single teeny little piece of dirt. I knew when building this home I wanted to go the totally opposite direction with light wood floors. I absolutely love the way they turned out, but getting the perfect formula was not easy!
Minwax For Wood Floors
After many many swatches on the floor, in both sunny and shady corners of our home, we finally found the perfect formula for our white oak floors. A mix of Minwax Classic Gray & Simply White. Which is funny as these are also the Benjamin Moore paint color names throughout my whole house!
At first, I was worried that the color was going to end up being too much of a 20th-century brown color, but luckily it turned out exactly as I hoped. It’s hard to trust exactly how the color will seep into the solid wood flooring, but I’m so happy with our results.
Although, this decision is definitely not something that you want to rush! We took our time deliberating between different flooring options and stains and I’m so grateful that we did. After all, this is your home, you wouldn’t want to be living in a space that makes you uncomfortable.
How To Mix And Match Wood Floors
Remember this mix could look different on your floors depending on the material, our floors are white oak. If you have red oak floors or something more complicated like parquet flooring, this mix will give you a different result.
Your best bet would be to look up the types of wood flooring you have (as there is such a wide range) and the grain pattern before getting your flooring finished. Different wood species will have various results, so be sure to do your research first!
Natural lighting will also affect the color. You may want to play with the percentages of each too, we believe ours is an even 50/50 split. Although, sadly nobody wrote down the final formula. But starting with these two stain colors will get you close!
For those wondering, we also used this same formula on our stairs, banister, and faux wood beams in our living room. We were so happy with the color we figured we should use it in more areas of our home!
Plus this also helps create a lovely flow throughout our home. Matching colors in each area of the house created a perfect symmetry that I really love.
Curious about a paint color that you’ve seen in my home? Be sure to check out this post to see all the paint colors used throughout my home!
