More photos to maybe help show how gold fruitwood is looking.

Why stain at all ?

The natural white oak is lighter than I prefer.

Post a photo of your samples by the wood cabinets we can see in the background. That is the relationship that matters the most. And from what I can see those are very red leaning cabinets so you definitely want to avoid stains that lean yellow.

I am not a fan of the cabinet color so we are ignoring it, we’ll paint it or replace them some other time. I think we are likely going to choose 1:2 early american : fruitwood as shown in this largest square. It’s probably slightly more orange/red than the beige I had in mind but we can’t test any more. We tried mixing fruitwood with rustic beige but I am still so afraid of it pulling grey.

I think all of those stains are too light. I'd go with a darker neutral brown, such as Special Walnut or Provincial, which are classic and work with any style of home.

White oak ages and darkens, so you are chasing a moving target unnecsarily. Warmer tones are very much at the forefront, and all of the old "gold or red" toned woods are what are coming back strong. And they never really went away, because they are classic. Plain white or red oak with an oil based finish and no stain is perfect and will be perfect for decades.

We had plain red oak with an oil based finish for 13 years and were tired of looking at a bright orange/yellow floor. Personally I think it’s a dated look. The darker colors suggested above looked muddy on the r&q white oak and also defeats the purpose of the extra cost of the expensive wood imo.

Here are some photos of Provincial and Special Walnut on white oak. I don't think they look muddy, but you may:

IMG_1026.MOV · More Info

Provincial stain on white oak · More Info

Provincial stain on white oak · More Info

Micromanaging after the fact is never good, and is frustrating for everyone. Your installers should be charging you double, since you are insisting on double labor. The color that you need is Duraseal Special Walnut, or Jacobean, waterpopped. It's the actual professional grade stain, where Minwax isn't even good amateur stain. Oak darkens over time and attains additional character. https://www.duraseal.com/stain-gallery/ Note that the depth of color shown in the charts is best achieved with waterpopping, NOT a second coat. Additional coats of stain limit finish coat adherence. As will sanding with too high of a grit, and burninshing the wood so that it doesn't accept stain or finish well

I didn’t share details here but in this case the color issue was the refinisher’s fault. The dark water popped look is exactly what we don’t want. It’s nice that you like it but not what we’re going for.

" The natural white oak is lighter than I prefer."

Doesn't sound like you know what you want then. Because you are saying you want darker, but now you don't want darker. It's not the installer's fault that he can't understand what you want either. It's yours, for not communicating well with the installer.

I didn’t say I wanted darker. I said I wanted less yellow/gold.

You are all over the map here. Wood physically has yellow and gold in it. That's normal and natural, and you don't get rid of it. It exists physically. If you cannot understand that a stain is not a paint, you will never ever get something right. Stain allows the natural color of the wood to come through the translucent partial coloring. You said you wanted something unnatural, got it, and then hated it. You are on double secret probation and extra labor charge from here on out. All work stops until a big dollar change order happens.

I can imagine this is hard - I feel like to get the yellow out, folks tend to go grey (which you don’t want and I agree isnt great) or darker - I do think a wood floor is inherently nice looking and once rugs etc are added it will be a classic backdrop

i remembered this post fwiw https://chrislovesjulia.com/the-stain-we-decided-on-for-our-white-oak-floors/

You DO need waterpopping here. No matter the color. Buy you trying to tell the flooring guy *what to do*, instead of being clearer about the *result you want*, is the source of the problems. You should never tell a pro to ”use this, try that, don’t do that”.

All you should do, is furnish a general color inspiration, and let them make samples for you. Then approve the sample. Which you presumably did with the gray. And then lost your mind at what a whole house of it looks like. All the sample creating comes at a cost. A custom staining process costs more than a simple ”use Jacobean and whatever it comes out looking like is fine”.

You can’t even clearly say what it is that you want. THAT is a problem. Wishy washy indecisive costs more than even a custom stain process. It wastes everyone’s time.

If you don't want gray or yellow/gold, then you need to go darker. Wood is a natural product, and as McDonald said, it naturally is yellow/gold/red. To tone it down, use a stain that has some green in it to counteract the red. I still say that Special Walnut and Provincial are the best choices for neutral medium brown. But the floors are still wood.

Maybe show the floor refinisher a photo of what you like and see what he suggests to get that color.

Obviously this is someone who should have chosen predictable printed vinyl. Wood is wood. It looks varied, like wood, until you bleach, and dye, and tone, and stain it into looking like fake vinyl. Waiting a specialty multi part not wood looking wood color created in the field will jump the price WAY up there. Could have already had the plastic, and be done.

Are you really thinking that the raw stained color is the actual finish color with the clear??? Is that where the ”muddy” comment is coming from? Is this DIY then??? Because that is the only way that I think that an installer wouldn’t A have corrected that assumption, or B, have walked off the job by now.

Wipe on mineral spirits if you want to see what the clear coat makes it look like.

" The natural white oak is lighter than I prefer."

Do you not understand that the natural color is going to darken within a few months? That the clear finish will also darken it? Has your installer not explained even the most basic of natural wood properties to you?

I'm agreeing with Geyser that this is sounding very DIY. Or very inexperienced floor guy.

Unfortunately we were not given guidance. The first time, we were left alone to meet with the refinishers that did not really speak English. They mixed brands with the tests which didn’t match our result nor the later duraseal tests. The contractor helped us communicate some but didn’t educate us on color darkening over time etc. We did final tests yesterday and will just pick one. I’m sure it will be fine.

Also they did do a test with water based natural finish only (no stain) and it was lighter than we want. All I was asking with this post was if there was a way to tone down the yellow of fruitwood without darkening it much or getting grey. We have now come to a conclusion.

Ugh, so sorry for your predicament. Communication is key, and your contractor should be the intermediary between you and the floor guys.

I had a similar situation, but my contractor assumed all responsibility, because I was paying him, not the subcontractor/floor guy.

So much of design/decorating is making the decision and then taking that leap of faith that it will be what you wanted. I wish you luck.

Thank you for getting away from ugly grey! With a light brown natural wood, it is not easy to get away from a yellow, which is OK - do all your decor in warm colors with no greys and it will all be OK.

Any of the colors in the test area look fine - over time you would not know the difference. Stop stressing and get rid of the grey asap!

I feel sorry for the floor guys. This is their biggest nightmare. Clients that don't really know what they want and can't ever make a decision. Hopefully you will get your project finished.

Where did I say I don’t know what I want? It’s pretty clear there was an option we wanted a tad less yellow version of if possible. I’m not all over the place trying to decide if we want a dark brown floor vs light blonde. As a client my worst nightmare is choosing a sample and coming home to a floor that looks nothing like it, which is exactly what happened.

So…you are trying to make the new white oak look like red oak but you didn’t like the red oak originally installed because it was too orangey?

We were hoping the white oak would be a more neutral canvas so we could get a light brown that isn’t super yellow/orange/red. From our tests I have learned we have to compromise somewhere. The light stains either look a bit yellow or grey. The only way to get away from that is to go darker. Maybe some perfect in between exists but I have not found it within the duraseal lineup.

I have seen my neighbor’s white oak darken naturally as the year went by. In fact, her rugs underneath were a different color and had to have her floors redone on a new home. I personally have had white maple cabinets and promised they would stay light only for them all to turn very yellow. I think some stains will do that even if clear.

Reposting lala girls link. Should be helpful to the OP

https://cljtemp.tempurl.host/the-stain-we-decided-on-for-our-white-oak-floors/

The weird thing is the stain used on that link is weathered oak. We did weathered oak 50/50 with neutral and it looks extremely grey. Based on photos/videos of her home (chrislovesjulia on socials) I was very surprised with our result. Another blog I found did 50/50 weathered oak & fruitwood which also doesn’t look grey in photos. Idk it’s probably just their lighting.

I think we are going with 1:2 early American : fruitwood, top left. It is a bit darker/warmer than I initially had in mind but the grain still looks somewhat soft. I tried mixing grey in (rustic beige, silvered grey) and it looked weird kinda purple-y.

My regular go-to for a light neutral brown was a Duraseal mix of Chestnut, with neutral to lighten and a bit of white to keep the grain from standing out too much.

Looks like a good choice out of the options above.

We did a light blonde look in our house which I love so much

Good luck!

The stains you show on the left (top and bottom) look to be quite yellow/orangish to me. If that's not what you want, I don't think you are going to be happy with either of them.

Looks great!

Wow, looks absolutely fantastic--the colors work so well together!

Looks great!