Matching hardwood between main and basement/stairs

last year

We have a traditional oak hardwood on our main floor. Not my favourite but when we moved in we put hardwood on the circular stairs and the whole second level and tried to match the colour. Looks a bit more modern but about the same colour. We now want to put laminate in our basement and are thinking of an ash/grey or other lighter colour. Should the stairs to the basement (no door, open to basement) match the new basement laminate or do we have to try to match the old main level hardwood?

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bess_collins5
Original Author

last year

Thanks for the comments. I thought by going light in the basement and stairs it would avoid the ”close but missed” appearance, like AnnKH mentioned. I‘m not married to grey, just light tone.

A bit more info: Basement and stairs are currently an old carpet. Half wall on the side, serves as the ”railing“. The skirting is carpeted too. Yuk. About 10 steps split by a landing.

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JAN MOYER
last year
No ash gray flooring. No. Please. It was a fad , and it has sailed away.

Put an edge to edge carpet RUNNER on the descending stair, and whatever wood you select in the basement ( not gray ) and that need not match the main floor.

Know that there are codes for stairs, and the slightest variation matters greatly, especially riser and landing points.
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bess_collins5
Original Author
last year
We have a professional coming in to do the work I've just started looking at colour samples. I take it you don't like grey?? lol. :-) Ultimately I wanted to avoid old fashioned "dark" wood but not totally sold on grey...maybe just something light.
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AnnKH
last year
Basement and main floor do not have to match.

Stairs do not have to match floors either, if there is a decent contrast - as opposed to "tried to match, but missed".

I've had dark and light hardwood floors, and the darker wood showed every speck of dust. Our current oak floors with no stain don't show dust at all.
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Lyn Nielson
last year
for the basement floor, I would find the lightest flooring you can find, steps don't need to match anything.
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kandrewspa
last year
You just want to avoid the gray tinted LVP. It was very popular up until about four years ago. Now it's about as popular as poison ivy. Even house flippers have stopped using it. That's when you know a trend is dead as it can be.

There's nothing wrong with liking gray. Have a gray sofa, a rug with some gray, but more natural colored floors are now popular (on the light side), and aside from what is on trend or not, it just makes more sense to use a more natural looking flooring. I have LVP in my basement that is on the dark side (medium to dark) and it doesn't show dirt. I love it. When I had it installed five years ago I had to look hard for something that wasn't gray at all and I'm glad I did. IMO a medium tone is pretty immune to trends. Let everyone else flip flop back and forth between light and dark. If you get something that is close to the upstairs in shade, but the stairs are carpeted or have a runner, no one will notice they're different. I have carpeted stairs to ease the transition.
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