Doors and trim please help

last year

last modified: last year

Hey all, I need some input on my doors/trim. We’ve been working back-and-forth with a company to get some samples on door and trim stains. Trim will be fore baseboards, door and window trim. We have a lot of wood going on in our house already (which we love- style is old fashioned/rustic) and we were trying to find a stain color in between our walls and cabinet color. We have some knotty pine accent walls and Hickory cabinets in the kitchen and knotty hickory in bathrooms and mudroom. We were thinking we wanted to do knotty alder on the doors because we really liked the looks of it, but we got the bottom left sample back with the black circle on it. The rep told us that that is the risk we would take with getting knotty alder doors is that we may get knots that look like that. She also said we cannot request to not have black knots and there are no returns.

So now we are questioning our wood choice and not sure what to do.

We haven’t liked any oak samples we’ve gotten. You can see the pine sample on the bottom right. It doesn’t look too bad in the picture, but it looks more orange in real life which we have been trying to avoid. She said we could special order Hickory doors, but I’m wondering if that would be too much grain variation on top of everything else we have going on. We want our doors and trim to have less color variation and not be too dark. Should we try a different wood species? Not sure if we should also be considering a different door company? Please help

edit to add floors are a laminate oak (they look much prettier in real life)

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Comments (11)

PRO
Mark Bischak, Architect
last year
Sometimes decorating with a variety of woods and stains takes a talented Interior designer, other times it take a magician.
palimpsest
last year
Honestly I would probably do the doors and associated trim in pine in a tone very close to the wall color. So verticals (walls, doors, trim) in one tone, horizontals (floor, in a darker tone) and the cabinets the darkest. I would not introduce yet another species or color associated with the walls.
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chispa
last year
I just can't wrap my head around doing all that real wood everywhere and then going with wood-look laminate on the floors ...
amandashouseproject
Original Author
last year
@Mark Bischak, Architect hahah i think youre right!! we've been very happy with the mixed woods so far, just trying to find the right fit for this last piece of the puzzle
amandashouseproject
Original Author
last year
@palimpsest thats good advice thanks… I did all the staining myself for the walls so I may need to keep looking to find a place that can get a closer color match.. its so hard do find stain that doesnt turn the pine orange
amandashouseproject
Original Author
last year
@chispa I understand your concern… we debated long and hard on our flooring and landed on laminate due to having young busy kids with high potential of scratching real wood, leaving water marks, etc
palimpsest
last year
If you have concerns about the floor have you considered LVT or laminate that looks like tile instead of wood? They you would not be in the situation of abutting one real material against an imitation of the same material.

All wood interiors used to be a little easier when people combined it with a colored tile or carpet, because you were creating a pretty solid color plane of something that was clearly not, and not trying to look like wood.
amandashouseproject
Original Author
last year
@palimpsest we are happy with our flooring choice and already have it ordered, thanks tho!
Clyde Kalvin
last year
Do the trim, baseboards and doors in pine that matches the pine walls. We live in a log cabin. Walls are knotty pine and doors, trim and baseboard are knotty pine. Finished in a clear varnish. Floors are oak stained special walnut.
amandashouseproject
Original Author
last year
@Clyde Kalvin beautiful!! pine is probably the way to go, I just haven’t loved any of the pine samples theyve done for me…I could maybe have the company try to color match my stain tho instead of doing a shade darker.. I’d really like to avoid having to do more staining myself 😅
PRO
HomeSealed Exteriors, LLC
last year
Sounds like it may be too late, but you can find engineered wood flooring options (real wood surface) that are tremendously durable. They have a "hardness" rating, I forget if there is a different name for it. I have 2 dogs (130# and 70#) and 6 kids, and ours still look like new after a few years.

Along the same line of thinking, if the price and look fit your needs, hickory would be a good choice for the door IMO as its a bit harder than pine or alder and will withstand more abuse. I'll leave the aesthetic considerations to the design crowd, but considering that you have hickory cabinets I can't imagine that it would look out of place.