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Choosing the right color for your hardwood floor is a big decision. After all, color infuses a space with energy and immediately creates an ambience for a room. And because changing the color of the floor is a pretty big deal, you want to make sure that you’re happy with your choice before the installation and finishing begins.
Choosing hardwood floor colors starts with your choice of wood species, which can range from lighter woods like Ash, Brown Maple and White Maple to woods like Birch or Hickory that have more medium colored tones in amber and brown, to dark woods like Cherry or Walnut. Specific hardwood colors can also be achieved by staining your floor.
As you plan your interior design scheme, you’ll also want to think about the consistency of hardwood colors. Some woods like White Maple, White Oak and Red Oak hardwood floor colors are more consistent and have a narrower range of tones, while species like Hickory, Ash and Birch show more contrast and can create more multi-colored hardwood floors. This is usually due to the greater color contrast between the heartwood and sapwood in these species.
Carlisle Wide Plank Floors offers floors in a wide range of colors and species, along with the widest selection of stain colors in the industry. And at Carlisle, you’ll find expert assistance from our design consultants to help you choose the right hardwood colors for any space.
Carlisle prefinished floors can be stained to virtually any color, and the ability to apply the stain in our facility rather than in your home allows us to use stronger sealants that add greater protection while sparing you from the mess and odor of sanding, staining and sealing your floor on site.
Heartwood is the darker wood at the center of the tree, while sapwood is the outer layer of wood and is typically lighter. In some species the contrast between heartwood and sapwood is quite pronounced.
Floors with light hardwood colors create a more spacious feel in a room and can go with almost any other colors in the furniture, woodwork or walls, making light colors an excellent choice for contemporary wood floors. To get a light floor, you can choose a wood species that comes in light hardwood colors, like Oak or Maple, or you can use a stain that achieves the look you want. Light-colored hardwood floors are able to hide dust and dirt more easily.
Dark hardwood colors have been trending for a number of years and have the ability to create a more formal look or a more rustic and casual appearance. You can create floors with dark hardwood colors by choosing a wood species that is naturally dark, such as American Walnut. Rustic hardwood flooring made with reclaimed timbers is often quite dark, thanks to years of aging and wear. You can also create dark hardwood floor through the use of stain, which gives you more options for choosing a wood species with the specific density and grain personality you prefer. While dark floors can create a sense of coziness, you’ll want to avoid using dark colors in small rooms, as the rooms will feel even smaller. And floors with dark hardwood colors will tend to show dust, dirt and debris more easily.
Hardwood colors are the natural colors of hardwood species, which range from light woods like Ash or White Maple to woods with more red tones like Cherry or Red Oak, to woods like Walnut that have darker, more chocolate hues. Hardwood colors can also be achieved by applying stain to the wood during the finish process, which can color the wood in a wide range of hues from dark to light.
At Carlisle, we offer stains in an unlimited assortment of hardwood colors. While our selection includes a variety of popular color options, our Carlisle Custom Color match system can quickly find a stain that matches the color of virtually any item you bring in, such as a paint swatch, a piece of tile or a section of fabric. That means, rather than settling for a color that’s close to what you had envisioned, you’ll have floors with the exact hardwood colors you’ve always wanted.
When selecting hardwood colors, the choice often comes down to natural color vs. custom color. Our customers who prefer natural colors want to keep the organic feel of the wide plank timbers they’ve chosen by using a clear or amber coat of finish that allows the natural personality of the wood to shine through. Customers who choose custom colors have a more specific interior design scheme in mind and want to evoke a certain feeling with the color of their floor.
At Carlisle, we been handcrafting the finest wood floors in America for more than 50 years. Every Carlisle wide plank floor is a masterpiece that’s the perfect expression of the homeowner who commissions it. Your floor will be a stunning reflection of your sense of style and beauty, with every detail rendered with unmatched pride, passion and purpose by our expert woodworkers.
While the quality of our floors is truly exceptional, the experience that our customers have with our design consultants is equally remarkable. Our team works with you every step of the way to help you shape your own unique vision for your floor – from choice of wood and hardwood colors to the choice of texture, width of the planks, patterns and more. When you choose a wide plank floor from Carlisle, you’ll have a surface that will be a defining feature of your home and a welcome reminder of where you are every time you walk through the door.
