Choosing the Right Hardwood Floor Color — On-Site Samples in West Hartford, Connecticut
One of the most common questions homeowners ask during a hardwood floor refinishing project is also one of the hardest to answer from a photograph:
What color should I choose?
Our answer is often: let's look at the colors on your actual floor.
This West Hartford, Connecticut project demonstrates why we like creating on-site hardwood floor samples.
A stain or sealer shown on a manufacturer's chart can be useful for narrowing down choices, but hardwood is a natural product. Wood species, grain, age, natural color variation, previous sanding and the lighting inside a home can all affect the final appearance.
That's particularly important with oak flooring.
Instead of asking the homeowner to make such an important decision from a small sample or computer screen, we placed several options directly on the sanded hardwood.
At this West Hartford home, we didn't want the homeowner choosing a floor color from a small piece of wood that might look completely different once it covered an entire room. We prepared samples directly on the actual hardwood and looked at them together in the home's own lighting, talking through how each color interacted with the wood and the surrounding finishes.
We also explained our professional dust-containment sanding process, the project schedule and what would happen once the chosen stain or sealer was covered with the final finish. Taking a little more time with the decision up front gave the homeowner a chance to see the options in the environment where they would actually live with them for years.
This allowed the homeowner to compare lighter and more natural appearances with warmer and darker choices while seeing how each option interacted with the actual grain and color variations in the floor.
We also compared the appearance produced by oil-based and water-based finishing systems.
Traditional oil-based polyurethane tends to bring out warmer amber, golden and brown tones. Water-based systems generally maintain a lighter appearance with less ambering. Neither choice is automatically right or wrong—the decision depends on the wood, the home and the appearance the homeowner wants.
Patrick Daigle Hardwood Flooring, Inc. provides custom hardwood floor staining, hardwood floor color samples, white oak and red oak refinishing, dust-containment sanding, water-based finishing and oil-based polyurethane finishing throughout West Hartford and surrounding Connecticut towns.
Choosing a hardwood floor color is a decision you'll live with for years.
Whenever practical, we believe you should see the color on your own wood before making that decision.