I am sure that your floors will look beautiful, but,. have you ever lived with dark floors? They will be fine if you live alone and don't breathe. Otherwise they show EVERY speck of dust, EVERY crumb, etc. It is for these reasons that I prefer very light floors. In addition it keeps a home from looking dark.

I vote maple! Should be just as good quality s oak, but looks better and more modern

A factory finished maple is very pretty. The "charcoal" (as in the colour of new asphalt) is VERY dark. And these darker floors can be upsetting to live with. Dust shows up inside of 1 day (after cleaning). And scratches can turn WHITE on the surface = highly visible on a dark floor.

We are "guessing" at the depth of colour for your floor - if you have a photo of the floor you are looking at, please post it.

If you think you will have solid site finished maple installed, you may be in for a nasty surprise. Maple is a BEAST to stain. In fact it HATES to take a stain. Absolutely HATES it. And low-end or moderately trained flooring installers WILL QUIT once they try to stain maple. They are pulling their hair out because of the blotchy mess maple turns when site finished.d

Factory finished maple is fine....site finished is a nightmare.

We just had to replace our Maple floors and we chose White Oak. The maple turned yellow (even with water based finish) and you can never stain it a different color because maple doesn't take stain well. I would never do maple again.

You can choose either as both floors can be stained, i stained maple before in different colors and it looks amazing!

White oak. I have 3.5” white oak planks and it is stunning. I choose unstained.

My former boss has dark wood floors (quite pricey) but they always looked terrible. You could see every footprint, crumb, and speck of dust.

I dislike the grain in oak so maple would always be my choice but waht do you mean by the island area not in the same wood, I would run that floor everywhere except the bathroom and entry.As for the color I had dark floors in my last house LOVED them everyday and a swiffer was my best friend , 5 mins. no problem

Agree that the charcoal floor look is a trend that look dated in a few years, and then it will be difficult/costly to undo. (Remember when everyone was obsessed with the Tuscan look and colors?)

When you feel like you want to get on board with a trend, the smart thing is to do it with the more easily changed things (like paint or window treatments) as opposed to hard-to-change things like wood flooring or tiles.

The classic floor is the lightly stained oak. Understand that sometimes the grain in oak is annoying, but there are many varieties in the wood, and multiple ways of cutting the wood to show the grain more or less, and different stain techniques that emphasize the grain less. So I suggest to do some looking around at different versions of the oak floors. You might have to push to get to see the variety.

OH that's not charcoal. That color looks fine. The problem with maple is as others alluded to is that it doesn't take stain as well. I'd stick with a white oak flooring.

http://www.heidelbergflooring.com/hardwood-floor-grades-types-of-wood-cuts

Clear Grade White Oak...pay attention to the different "cuts"... ie the way the wood is sawn makes a difference.

If you can afford it (ouch), English and French White Oak are IMO much more beautiful than American Oak.

A gentle warning...Maple will turn orange / yellow as it ages...quicker where it receives direct sunlight. It's an inherent quirk of Maple. Oak just "darkens"...very, very slowly.

You can do rift sawn white oak, it has way less movement. I did a combo of rift and quarter sawn white oak. Plain sawn is what you are used to seeing, which has a more traditional look. The wider planks also reduce the busyness. As I said above, the maple floor you see initially (which is gorgeous) is not what you end up with. It yellows very quickly. Yes you can stain maple but it looks very different when you do, it gets blotchy and busy looking which is probably the look you are trying to avoid. We are staining our maple stairs because we have to in order to try and match them to our new white oak floors. However, we have been warned that the only way to avoid a real blotchy look is to go dark and use special stains, and even then they don't know exactly what will happen. I love maple too and had it for 15 years but it only looked good the first year. Just being honest. If you like the yellow Maple look then you should go for the Maple. I personally did not like it. Here are photos of rift sawn white oak, wide planks:

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Okay, we had real wood, not engineered. So I am not sure about pre-stained engineered. Will the stain be darker than natural? If so, maybe that will protect it more from yellowing. However, if it is a light stain, I fear you might have the same yellowing issue even if it is pre-stained. But note that if you ever do refinish it (I believe that with engineered you can only refinish it once), you will have trouble staining it another color besides natural.

You need to seek out a "higher end" shop. The sales lady was remiss in not fully informing you about all aspects of the woods in question, as well as the pros and cons of the different finishes used. A real hardwood floor is an investment, carpeting and "engineered floors" are not.

20longwoodroad, what is the maple floor that you are considering that you put up a pic of? We are looking at similar colors and trying to pick between somerset maple mist,somerset maple onyx and mirage greystone (way more pricier). Curious what yours is? TIA

Hi there. My favorite floors are natural walnut @8" plank and mildly hand-scraped with a staggered random pattern. They are timeless and durable. I'm not a fan of dark wood floors as they do show everything and with the walnut you can always bleach, go lighter or darker at any point if you get tired of them. You can see the richness of them in this entry that we designed a few years back.