You need to look into different pre finished hickory floor manufacturers. The ones in the second photo are ones I mostly think of as hickory flooring. The first one is very subtle and the last one is just a mess.

Go to a floor place and look at the different floor companies. Then check what kind of hickory floors they sell.

Mirage offers quite a few options and in different stains.

For instance their Old Hickory Sierra doesn't have much contrast.Mirage hickory floors

Somerset is another floor company, but their hickory options are more limited. Got to look at manufacturers and the easiest way is to go to a floor store ( and I don't mean Home Depot or Lowes)

Choose a wood with less inherent color variation? Or work with a supplier who sorts their stock for better matching boards? When I did our maple floors I was able to specify all white, moderate heartwood/sapwood mix, or "character" a highly contrasting mix.

Your second photo looks like walnut not hickory.
Also look into Hallmark Hardwoods as they have some really awesome hickory products.

Have you considered ash? It's one of my favorite wood species.

The second photo does look like walnut. We have hickory in our home and it does have a lot of pattern. We mixed character hickory with non character to get some rustic element. I spend ages trying to pick the boards to they didn't look crazy as my husband nailed them. I drove him nuts as I didn't want all the movement.

We purchased to do a flip and it was on sale in Amish and was great quality wood/company so we went with it due to it is a fairly hard wood and the price was really hard to pass up since it's not our long term home. I like it, I don't love it. I do love the walnut. Yet, 8 years later after putting down over 2k sf of it I'm ok with it. We do have a area rugs and such. I prefer the character mixed in with it. It's not a choppy mess such as photo 3 I must say.

I'll post a couple photos for you to see.

Looking up at the link to, "Mirage" our floor doesn't have that type of variation light to dark such as in the two top left photos.

I have a cousin who put in 8 inch, I'm using 5 inch, and an acquaintance I know used 3 inch. I LOVE hickory and have no issues with it whatsoever unless it gets down less than 5 inches (unless of course you can choose between #2 hickory and mix it). My one that used 3 inch loves hers, but I think it looks like chaos. The color variation is wild and over the top. I am totally all over wood, and I'll normally take it in any way, shape or form in my house, but the 3 inch just had way too much movement. It made me feel like I was hallucinating.....that said, she got it at a box store. I'm using 5 inch and my logs were just recently cut and kiln dried, ready for me to go pick up and take to the finisher. Your second picture looks like mine.

Mine is 3" and I don't find it chaotic, but I did spend A LOT of time racking up the boards before my husband could touch it..... major drama, but it worked out well. I agree wider boards would make it less of a painstaking process picking the boards that go down and when.

Porter, the fact that you could choose some character and non-character makes a HUGE difference. Like I said, the one with the 3" got hers from a big box store so whatever was in the box, she got. No picking and choosing. For the record, your floors look fantastic at 3"! I wouldn't hesitate with yours.

Here's the 8 inch floors I was referring to....bear in mind, picture taken at night and I really just wanted a picture of the cat's haircut, not the actual floors! They just buffed a wax into theirs. Picture seems a bit yellow to me, but that's a phone camera for you.

If you like hickory but want to calm it down somewhat, just use a light stain and the wildness will recede. Oak is the same way, you're right about the monolithic look of oak, though.

Thank you....

Yes, they are select grade..... Before we purchased after driving miles to Amish land I looked at the hickory. We had seen the hardwood people at the, "Home Show" locally 2 years in a row. They have wonderful wood in so many species.

I saw the same exact thing you did in your last photo above after researching and was, "NO WAY". My husband and I really wanted Walnut, but since our plan was to only stay in the house 5 years and we were told the hickory would be on special we went out and looked and well... I had to mix the character for fear it would look off. I wish I would have done a pinch more character, but it's all good. I too wanted a wider board, but this 3" was the only one on special.

They are all cut and kiln dried in Amish so they come pre boxed in VERY long boxes. You open each box and never know what will be in it a ton of loooong boards or a mix of long, med, short..... It was really interesting and frustrating at times.

So yes, we rented a truck drove way back to Amish and bought it and well... as I said I did take painstaking measures when racking them up for my husband and it drove him NUTS, "just put them down PORTER and stop trying to make it all work and match it will be fine and make sure the lines don't form an H nor are they too close to one another.......". I was fully instructed on the lines, TRUST ME!

I emptied a ton of boxes and separated by groups by their approx. same lengths and then by colors and tones. Same with character in a separate space in the kitchen to keep them apart. I also separated the wonky pieces and the ones I absolutely loved in groups by length and had them all in our eat in kitchen which is not wood.

Yes, we are still married :)

Love the cat 'cut'..

Colblran, looks great... love the wider!

Love the mini lion too!

Jay, where are you getting the hickory if you go that route?

Floor #1 IS Floor #3. Just with much better lighting and more stuff in the room covering the floor, and the short boards culled out. Hickory is just one of those woods that you need to order extra in order to cull out what you don't like on the front end. It lessens the contrast between heart and sap wood if you put a light stain on it.

Hickory is known for being less stable dimensionally than oak or maple. You want to avoid wood that is too wide. What is "too wide" depends on your climate's weather swings. And how controlled you keep your indoor humidity levels. You want to be sure that you have addressed the home's needs for humidity control via a humidifier/dehumidifier or air conditioning. 35-40% is ideal.

I have random width hickory floors, 3”, 4” and 5 . I chose random widths to absorb some of the greater expansion and contraction that is inherent with hickory wood—narrow boards absorb movement better than wide boards. The random width boards are hardly noticeable in my home due to site finishing and the character of the wood. My installer filled the occasional knot with a dark complimentary epoxy before finishing the floors—I’m not sure what grade I have, but my floors look identical to Colbran’s floors plus an occasional knot. Expect hickory to fade dramatically near windows. My brother has dark stained hickory in his home which works well with his decor, but he wishes he could see more of the character of the wood which is lost with stain. Staining hickory is tricky business and best donein a factory. We do not have rugs in our small home, because I like the uncluttered look of a rugless house. My rooms do not feel naked without rugs because of hickory’s character. However, Hickory is super hard, so slippers have become a must in our house.

The cooks kitchen, I don't think that floor number 1 is the same as floor 3. Certainly respect your opinion, but after a month of racking this stuff up the rest. I feel one is more cohesive even if this kitchen wasn't in place. I've been wrong more than one time though!

Urethane finishes tend to get 'bleached' by the sun. Has nothing to do with the species of wood.

There may be finishes that protect better against fading, but with my floors it is the character streaks in the hickory wood which has faded not the finish itself.

We were told to get prefinished too because of our humidity factor. I think you're on the right track. Let the wood sit in your house more than a week and get acclimated to your space, then install. It should be fine then. I didn't want prefinished either necessarily, but if it will hold up better to climate, then so be it.

Jay, no, ours were logged and cut and kiln dried. They are a no name brand, lol! But, the picture above of the 8 inch planks are my cousin's floors and they are exactly the same as mine as I bought their leftover logs. They were sent to a finisher after the cutting and drying process and then planed and finished. They opted for no stain and just a wax buffed on theirs. I'm not staining mine either, but having them "finished", and by that, I mean coated with something like a polyurethane that is not shiny in the least, but will protect them. And climate in Iowa is all over the place, so yes, I can relate. If the boards were kiln dried and treated the way they were supposed to be treated, you shouldn't have any issues at all putting them in your house. Butttttttt, you HAVE to give them time to acclimate to your house too. You can't just move them in the house and start installing the same day. If I'm not mistaken, they told us a week. We will give them that at least, maybe more. We have 6 x 8 oak beams in the house right now to acclimate, and I've had raw beech in my house more than 2 months that has been acclimating to use on my ceiling.

Here in Central Texas, 95% of my wood installs are engineered. Our humidity is 90% - 95% on average. Keep your home well acclimated and you shouldn't have any issues. Expect expansion and contraction as with any wood during the summer and winter months.
Keep your windows closed. Doesn't matter how nice it feels to you. You can open them for short periods but not all day.
Engineered wood will also handle moisture issues better than solid. The more veneers the product has, the better. A 3mm or better wear layer is ideal.

Jay, looks very nice.... personally, I'd do 1/4th or a little more of character personally.

I'd also (if you are doing this job) recommend you take a lot of boards and separate them by length and colors so you know what you need when you are racking them up vs. jumbling through boxes to try to get a really nice look. It's a hassle, but in the long run it also is of great help when trying to get the, "next length" you need to help cut down on waste. Having boxes and boxes opened you end up with a giant mess and perhaps some color combos you might not have wanted in a certain line or area.

Sincerely wasn't going for a museum, but certainly wanted to avoid a mess of non cohesive boards just tossed out and then would have been sorry. Hence, my last diatribe.

We did bring the boards in and they sat in the home for about 8 weeks (was highly recommended by Sheoga where we purchased) so they could acclimate to the homes humidity, etc. I think that is a very important step to take.

We do have a humidity regulator of sorts installed, yet really in the end wood will expand and contract no matter even with this device my husband installed. I see it in the crown moulding by seasons. We have had no issues with the floors on the main floor, stairs nor upstairs hallway.

ARF, sorry I said personally twice.... Oh geez Porter!

We have an Aprilaire my husband installed. Mostly for airborne allergens, but it has the ability (or so it says) to regulate humidity and shows on the thermostat what the humidity is in the home.

Nothing here other than air conditioning in the summer, furnace in the winter, and maybe the windows open in the spring and fall if the humidity is low and it's beautiful outside and nice enough to open the windows. I really don't think you're going to have any issues at all as long as your wood is acclimated for the week or two it needs and your installer is doing the job correctly. The tongue and groove part of the wood takes care of itself (keeping it together and giving it the ability to move as it needs). You're going to be fine.

we have Sommerset floors, engineered,pre-finished, character white oak. I am terrible at paying attention to humidity. In the winter it is dry and humid in the summer, yet the gaps have been the same. Maybe slight variation, but not enough to notice. We have had the floors for over 4 years now. They still look great.

The sunlight has also slightly darkened the floors, but they have not yellowed.

I have hickory and love it! Mine is darker stain but the variation makes it so beautiful. We did not do prefinished. We got to really tweek the color. I will put a pic or before and after finishing. We did herringbone so there is a LOT going on and it looks stunning. I will also put in kitchen and family room. (Non herringbone)

OMG I love that! Congrats Jay.

Which manufacturer and name did you end up going with?

Jay, looks awesome! Can't wait to get mine on the floor now!!

Dream House 2015 what stain color did you use?