To my eye, what you had was perfectly fine. The amber color may have been from oil-based polyurethane aging over time, which is the natural process.

Of your two samples, I like the lower one better (the one that matches the picture frame. It shows the beauty of the wood (knots included) without the weird gray-ish-ness of the top sample.

The dark stain in the lower picture seems too dark. It hides the grain and the knots. If you're going to hide the wood, you might as well not use such beautiful wood. It would be like putting on a beautiful dress, and then hiding it with the ugliest overcoat you can find. Anyway, that's my opinion.

Those gray stains are awful. What you have is much nicer.

Thabj you kenpek01, the stain with the picture frame is the one we used in the top pictire but they had not sanded the floor smooth for the sample so the sample didnt match - it came out orange (the top photo has the new stain). Wondering if we can fix it and the flooring company is not being helpful with color options...

You could have the new stain sanded off. When the floor is ready for stain, you could get new samples.

However, I really like what you wound up with. It might not be what you imagined, but it is great. Maybe it is a happy serendipity.

Sometimes I think people have bought that "orange" is bad and therefore anything close to orange is also bad and therefore must be avoided at all costs.

It does match our ceiling which we wanted to change so maybe you are right on the serendipity part and embracing orange. even tho its not what we were going for.