I have not seen two totally different woods used against each other except in cases where one is a separate room (not open floor plan) and there is a threshold in the doorway to delineate the spaces.

difficult to match, but not impossible.

We just laid 2000 sq.ft. of oak floors and matched the existing 500 sq.ft, then refinished/finished the entire floor for under $15 per square foot...less than we pay for premium prefinished engineered wood floors installed (and waaay less than tile). It all matches perfectly and the price tag was almost on par with the cost of only doing some areas in engineered wood as we would have had to add underlayment to the new floor to meet up with the old.

Thank you! Ironwood Builders -- you added the oak, and then refinished all 2,500 sq. ft of floors (including existing)?? Just want to understand. Thank you.

I have had good success over the years adding hardwoods in situations similar to yours without refinishing the existing floors. One thing that factors into this is the condition of the existing floors and finish.

One thing going for you is you only have about four lenear feet of existing flooring to match up to. Find a really good finisher and see what they have to say.

In the South you can purchase, install and finish Red Oak floors for around $7/sf. Ironwood is based out of Northern Cal. where things are more expensive. Depending on where you live you should be somewhere between these two.

Harrisburg, PA. Thank you Dullea and Assoc! So the floors are red oak? Thanks again!

I would try to find the same size and grain of oak and try some sample stains to find the right coloring. Ask a floor covering salesman what kind of oak it is. There are many types. They will take the stain differently.. If you can't find the same size, then I'd try creating a border pattern from one room to the next to make a comfortable transition.

One example

Dullea's point is well taken and I forgot to mention my location. But given that the labor is the main cost of refinishing and pre-finished materials are nationally sourced, the cost benefit analysis actually improves when the location is factored in!

Others

@Dullea and Associates. "In the South you can purchase, install and finish Red Oak floors for around $7/sf." Do you consider N.E. Florida as part of the South? (I didn't even think of that before I moved here. My bad.) Because I didn't get quotes anywhere near that price point. BTW, "purchase, install and finish" -- you make it sound like a three-step process. When the first step is simply exposing your wallet. lol

Match the floors, do not do a different color.....

I placed maple laminate and cherry in connected rooms and they look great.

You should definitely be able to match the stain to the existing floor. The floor finisher will need the capability to custom mix the stain. They will make samples for you to show you the match. Also, you will absolutely need to use the same width & species of wood of as the existing floor.

Your puppy dog is so precious looking. Just thought I would share.

Here in Tulsa, OK, you could get new oak floors purchased, installed, and finished for about $7 to $8 and they can refinish existing floor for about $2.50. I agree that I can't see how having two markedly different colors is going to look right.

Thank you! Just trying to avoid the hassle of sanding and restaining the existing floor which is the foyer, dining room and office. Sounds like it is possible to match existing. Thank you again everyone!

I would do something like LB Interiors above. I had a darker great floor on my third floor in the hall. I had maple furniture so I bought that maple looking "scrubbed" look real wood. It was of course the most expensive they had but it really looks nice. It is different enough that it doesn't compete. The furniture in 1950 very fancy early American so it looks very up to date. The wood has a rust/gold/brown look to it.

I had good experiences with three different homes and three different floor installers. In each case, I added red oak flooring to existing red oak flooring and the stain was matched perfectly. The only way you can tell the flooring was added and not original is, in one of the homes, there is a small threshold strip between the kitchen and dining room. In the other cases, the added flooring was seamlessly connected. Experienced stainers know how to accommodate for the aging of your existing hardwood and stain.

I agree with 'nasafemme' I know it can be done. the existing floor has so many color irregularities, different grains going on that If the same wood product was found, you shouldn't have a problem with coming very close tto the same coloring or achieving the same look, with trying stains on the scrap pieces or hiring a professional to help with choosing the correct approach to match your existing flooring. A threshold would not be a problem to divide the new from the old.

Great idea!! Thank you!

You're welcome!

You should be able to get a close match to your existing floor with a custom stain. Be sure to evaluate finished surface, not just a stain sample as the finish itself will slightly change the appearance of the stained floor, especially if you're using an oil based finish.

Maybe you remove the flooring at the base of the stair and install a wood pattern floor. This would allow you to then install the traditional oak flooring in the rooms with carpet. The pattern at the base of the stair would then allow you to make an easy transition. This would work if the landing at the base of the stair was symmetrical with another room. I can only imagine the space as there is no photo. Just a thought.

As mentioned in my previous post I feel you should have little problem if any in matching the floor color and finish should you decide to simple butt the new to existing.

Thank you again! I love Houzz. You are all so helpful.

I would suggest matching current floor to new floor. Your existing floor looks like typical red oak. If your installer thinks it will be hard I would get a 2nd or 3rd opinion!

WARNING! I just went through this and it was such a pain! Wanted to match kitchen to living and dining. Was told they could "get close, not 100%, but close" (which supported much of what I read on-line too). Given I had a 3' doorway into the room (not open concept), I thought it would be fine. Well, you will see from first photo that was not the case! We weren't even at 50%. I then asked for a darker stain. Was told my existing floors had just natural stain, and that it was the yellowing of the finish that gave the colour; a darker stain now would change the look of the grain. I thought I would rather live with that, so we re-stained (photo 2). It was better but definitely not what I anticipated. Company said they would re-do living and dining for $2.75/sq ft. I got my money back instead, hired someone else for $1.75/sq ft to finish the rest of the level and now I have an almost perfect match. I'm sure it would have been perfect if done at the same time. Anyway, from all this I think it is important to know if it is the stain or the yellowing of the finish over time that gives your existing wood its colour. If it isn't the stain, you really have to re-do it all. Wish I had sucked up the extra money upfront. The money we were trying to save turned into extra meals out, 12 days, and a lot more dust to clean!

Like several others (especially Nasafemme), I added wood floors to 3 rooms (fam rm, kitchen and bathroom) to continue what was already in the living room and dining room. My installer made a beautiful match. He custom mixed the stain, showing me samples, until we thought it was a match. Everyone thinks it was all original. Matching is not that difficult if you have an experienced installer.

I guess I just lucked out; to make a long story short, I bought a second home in a different state, and did a pretty extensive remodeling from afar. I hired local contractors over the phone, knowing little about them. The home had existing wood floors in some areas, and I wanted it taken throughout the rest of the downstairs. The guy matched it pretty darn well! Truly, unless you were looking for it, you would not have noticed the difference except that the new areas were totally unscuffed, lol. When you are transitioning from one room to another, it tends to be not so noticeable. The boards run the same way, but are separated by one board running perpendicular in the doorway (as in the picture in the comment above). The floor is fairly dark. So it CAN be done. My sister had really good luck matching her lighter golden floors, too... I'm jealous of yours floors, btw - the wood floors in my last house were just that color and I loved them - never showed dirt, even with three dogs! I will never have dark wood like I do now again, but fortunately this is not a "forever" house for me.

Don't try to match, complement it with a different hardwood flooring or change direction diagonal but let it flow to "new or different rooms"

Your floors should not be hard to match. I'm not a fan of changing floor colors in mid-stream. It's like changing carpet colors from one room to the next when they butt up to each other -- ends up looking like a patch work quilt. Rooms should flow from one to the next.

Love the pooch!

Have your flooring guy match it, buy several pieces of wood or your flooring guy may have a few leftover pieces then try several stainson your sample pieces to find your match. It looks like red oak with a walnut stain.

A lot depends on the age of the existing floors. In our home we have places where the floors are 100 years old, 50 years old and 2 years old - all were sanded/stained refinished at one time and they don't match perfectly but it's fine because they blend in. I would think that if you run the boards perpendicular to your existing flooring and get a close match it would work well. The nice thing about running the boards the other way is that if you DO need to refinish at any point in the future, you don't have to do all the rooms - the change in boards gives the refinishers a place to stop. Our flooring guy suggested a threshold between our kitchen and dining room for that reason - the kitchen floor will probably need to be done long before the dining room.

If you run it the same way and use same size plants. You could come very close to original. How much original wood are you talking about? If just this hallway. Might be better to fine wood close to that color if you like it. Then rent a electric sander and restrain to match new floors.the cost is small. Or just replace all floors. It's a good investment.

Who told you it couldn't be matched? Look at your existing floor....do all the wood planks match? No, each is unique and takes stain differently so matching exactly is not a problem since your floor now doesn't match exactly. It will look way better than any alternative so go for it. I promise it will work if you follow steps mentioned above. We just had our kitchen floors resanded and stained and the refinisher just darkened the stain until it matched. He put it right next to the wood at the threshold to the next room.

I love your dog!!!As for the floor, sorry I have no real help on the floor.

I agree with those arguing for trying to match the floor to maintain the flow through the house. We built a great room addition onto our kitchen and had to match the new floors to 90 year old white oak floors that had last been refinished 20 years before. While you can see that the older floor has a bit more shrinkage between boards, I think they otherwise managed to achieve a good match. Here's a photo of where the new floor (bottom) meets the old (top). If our contractor could find a match for our 90 year old floors, I think a good floor specialist can manage to find a match for yours.

We have an open floor plan in our house - when we moved in, it was carpet (over hardwood) in the living room/dining room areas) and laminate in the kitchen/entrance area (over really old, very unattractive tile).

We pulled up the carpet and found the hardwood (red oak) to be in decent enough condition. That was refinished and then we laid new harwood (also red oak) down in the kitchen/entry area.

Even with the sanding/refinishing in the dining/living areas, they don't match perfectly. It is clear that half of it is brand new and the other half is a little more weathered. We have transition pieces as well, the levels weren't quite the same becasue of what had been laid down previously.

Anyway, moral of the story is that it doesn't bother us that much.... I'm just so happy to have hardwood floors instead of the carpet and laminate! We could have put brand new hardwood down everywhere, but even know, after living with them for a few months, I think it would have been a bit excessive considering how little it bothers me (and like many here, I'm a details person. A lot bothers me).

just change the direction of the boards and ask your installer to match as closely as possible. It will be fine - especially once you get your furniture down.

We used tile to bridge the transition. I wish I had made it a little wider but I have had many compliments

It's nice tile. Do you have that tile and gray/charcoal in both rooms? What were you blending it with?

We just went through the same dilemma with our floors. I hated to pay for a refinish of the existing floors when they were in great shape. They are 2 1/4 inch wide, solid red oak that was unfinished when laid then stained and finished prior to moving in. We had carpet as well as linoleum in the kitchen which we removed and had it all replaced with pre-finished 3 1/4 inch wide, solid red oak in a honey stain and butted the 2 woods right next to each other in the adjoining doorways. As you can see the stain match is nearly perfect. Unless pointed out, few people can tell that we didn't have the entire areas re-done.

Deb, is that a pre-finished hardwood? If you see even the slightest bevel at the edges, it definitely is. I can't tell 100% from the picture if there is a bevel, but it appears to be a factory finish. Looks a whole lot like Bruce Hardwood's 3 1/4" red oak, cherry stain:

Have you gone to flooring stores and taken out samples to put next to your floor? If your house is fairly new, and the hardwood is in only an area or two, I'd almost wager it's pre-finished. (Builders don't like to shut down a house for several days to do site-finished hardwood if they don't have to. Homeowners who replace a floor with hardwood, same deal; they go for quick/easy pre-finished.) I'm saying you can match your floor, but it will take some leg work.

Good luck!

Very Old Post!

Does anyone have photos of their old hardwood flooring butting up against new hardwood floors that shows a border to help ease the difference in color. I have a lot of existing hardwood that will be too expensive to refinish. I want to add hardwood in my family and living room to match existing hardwood. I have an open concept home. I have 2 1/4" Bruce red oak natural floors. The home was built in 2002. The old flooring has oxidized over the years turning the color a more yellow. The new natural color doesn't match in color even though they are the same floors. I don't want to add new floors then refinish all of them to match. I think it would be very expensive to do so as it's about 2300 sf? Help?

Anybody knows whether it's red oak or white oak? I'd like to add hardwood floor to my existing hardwood floor but I don't know the difference between white oak and red oak. Please help? Thank you in advance.