What are your choices?

Coffee brown, provincial, medium brown I think is where I’m heading. But not “on trend” I can pick any duraseal stain and they can mix them. Sky’s the limit!

Your decision should be based on what is appropriate for your home, and since you have not posted full images of the house, one can only guess. Which wood do you currently have on your floors?

Here is a photo from another Houzz posting. You have to see the stain on YOUR floor under YOUR lighting.

This isn't hard to do. Select based on process of elimination. I took out the natural, gray, white, red and orange colors

So now instead of 29 colors to choose between you're down to 16 to choose from. Now you do the same.

That helps a lot and they are going to do some test spots for me tomorrow. I can’t wait!

Chestnut! Nice brown. Not too dark. Not red. Not too light.

I asked him to bring out chestnut later too !

Provincial reads yellow to me :/

Reads yellow when compared to the other two neutral tones. However, your home has had light floors for a long time. Be careful about going in the exact opposite direction You will have to reexamine all your interior furnishing and lighting selections because a dark floor is going to EAT LIGHT UP.

I think dark walnut out .... I’m having him bring out special walnut and chestnut. Far right is hubby’s favorite medium brown

I think provincial out seems yellow

I don't like the middle one, seems yellow. Left or right stains are nice. I actually like the dark walnut, but of course, that's what I have in my house. I also have light walls and lighter colored area rugs, so sucking up the light is not a problem for me.

I like it but hubby thinks too dark. I’m trying the special walnut as it shows grain and more neutral.

New options!

Since I know DH doesn't want the darkest one, I vote for the bottom one on the picture above. The other lighter stains I feel read too yellow.

Please make sure a single coat of finish has been applied to the stain patches. Without a coat of finish you are picking blind. Finish (the polyurethane stuff you are paying $$$ money for) will ENHANCE the look of the stain. If it is 100% water based, it will NOT turn yellow. If it is oil based or oil modified it will turn YELLOW! And a little bit of that yellow WILL SHOW UP over a test patch.

Without a coat of finish, you and your refinisher are setting each other up for failure. Do NOT make a decision until you have CONFIRMED there is a coat of poly over each stain patch....and one on raw wood to show the look of natural wood.

He put this neon white slim over each

At night

Forgive me, but what is "this neon white slim"?

Instaseal extreme ?

I like the bottom row stain on the right - The others read too yellow/orange

We refinished our 20 year old red oak floors this spring. The original stain was a yellow/orangish and fairly glossy. After two weeks of looking at 6 stain samples night and day we chose the Chestnut stain. NOT the English Chestnut, which, in my opinion, has a pronounced reddish cast.

Fast forward 6 months and we are very happy with our choice. It's a warm, rich medium brown. I will say it does show dust a little more than our original floor, but we vacuum about every other day, so really not an issue for us. We are finding it a nice change, and a much warmer, richer look.

* Edited to add: Our samples looked very different daytime vs. nighttime. We have a fairly sunny home with lots of windows.

Best to know what "oak" OP's floors are - Red Oak or White Oak - Stains will look different and take on different hues depending on the type of oak.

If they are using Duraseal stains, my guess is they are using DuraSeal finishes. The question becomes, "Which one?".

Way darker than the sample patch but they water popped it first. I really like them! Darker and Not yellow or red which was the main goal but not too dark to show dog hair!

Duraseal HD

Then Duraseal clear max I believe

Which stain did you end up choosing?

Special walnut

Can you show a photo of special walnut?