Yes. Either. Less flooring materials is best excluding bathrooms and laundry rooms.

not too chaotic even in a smallish space? i keep being told not to do hardwoid in laundry but its in kitchen and i imagine there is more risk in water leak there!

If you want hardwood in the laundry, there are precautions you can take (overflow pans and sensors) that might help alleviate your concerns there.

In a lightly used powder room, hardwood should be fine. You just would have to check behind your infrequent guests to be sure that they are as neat as you would be, and mop up anything they leave behind.

I even had hardwood in a master bath for about 15 years. It looked fine when I removed it for tile.

Ive had hardwood in my last two laundry rooms. I do hardwood in powder rooms all the time.

Do you prefer it all cohesive or adding some variation with porcelain tile in powder/laundry? my best friend feels the powder should be ”special” and that its totally fine to have variation in thise 2 spaces regardless of space size

If you have any plans to do something special in the powder room, like a unique/fun wallpaper, believe me, it will be much easier to coordinate with a wood floor.

A current popular engineered light flooring is European Oak. You can get it wide plank in rustic grade.

It doesn' have the open grain od domestic oak. Different species.