Brown White Oak Flooring

Considering wood floors in your home? See the white oak flooring we recently chose and get all the pros and cons.

If you’ve been following for a while, you know that over the last 10 years I’ve found a favorite engineered wood floor. To see more about engineered wood floors and why we chose them, be sure to read this post. When we bought our new home last year, the only question was: what color white oak floors should we install?

Engineered White Oak Flooring

I go into much more depth in this post, but for today’s purpose, know that engineered wood floors are real hardwoods (in this case, European white oak) on the top layer with a plywood base beneath. This allows them to be installed in more applications than solid hardwood floors, which require a subfloor. Since we were installing directly onto our slab, engineered was the obvious choice.

Most engineered hardwoods are finished at the factory, so they are installed with the full color and sealer already in place. Here are a few of the beautiful colors we considered. Sorry for the construction zone mess!

Is White Oak a Good Choice for Flooring?

Hardwood flooring a huge investment in time, money, and mess. Of course you want to make sure to choose the right floor! We love white oak because it has a beautiful grain, a lovely true brown color (as opposed to some woods that lean more red), and is popular enough to have lots of options on the market.

And with engineered floors, there are many unique sizes and widths, as well. Our favorite white oak hardwood flooring comes in a 7 1/2″ wide plank. I love how this allows for different grain and knot patterns in the floors without making the floor feel too busy.

Medium Brown White Oak Flooring

I know that lighter floors are on trend right now. In fact, I installed beautiful light white oak flooring in my last three total renovation projects.

However, I think that rich, medium brown wood floors are ultimately classic. Our new house was built in the 80’s, and one of my goals is to help it lean more into a traditional, classic beauty. Additionally, we get lots of natural light, which allows for a darker flooring.

We’ve had all the colors of wood floors over the years, and there are a few principles that I think are helpful to know:

• Light[er] floors are more forgiving of dust and most dirt (it hides it better than dark floors).
• Dark[er] floors are more forgiving of some dirt (if it’s dark brown, obviously).
• Less monotonous floors (with more texture and variations) are more forgiving than even-toned floors.
• Therefore, lighter mid-tones with high variations are the most forgiving.

This medium brown is not quite as forgiving as lighter floors we’ve had, but it’s really not bad. Even with all the natural light streaming through the windows, I don’t find the dirt or dust shows up much.

As you can see, the house is very much still a work in progress (bar updates coming soon!). But I love the neutral brown of these floors (which you can clearly see in contrast to the orangey oak cabinets that are soon to get a makeover!).

What Direction to Lay Wood Floors

The traditional decision for laying wood floors is to run them the longer length of the space. So if your home is wider than it is deep, then you would run the planks parallel to the front of the house. Our home is very irregular, though, with sunken rooms and lots of little steps. So we opted for a custom plan.

Upstairs, we chose to run the flooring front to back in the home because of the long game room space that runs along the stairs.

Downstairs, though, my herringbone dreams came true in the foyer, and we made the rest of the decisions based on that.

Although it’s only separated from the dining room by some columns, I wanted a defined flooring in this space. It’s worth noting that when you lay these floors like this, you lose the benefit of the tongue and groove in some spots, which could leave the floor slightly uneven. If properly cut and glued, though, it should hold. And I’m so pleased with the job that our installers did.

We lined the herringbone accent with a border and then ran the rest of the flooring perpendicular to that, which happened to be from side to side in the house.

In short, laying out your wood flooring is a personal choice and can be affected by lots of factors.

How Does This Compare to Our Last Home?

Long-time followers may think at a glance that this is a similar choice to our last home. We did choose a medium brown white oak flooring in that home, as well.

But just look at the comparison here. It goes to show how much lighting can affect the color.

The Montmajour color (from our previous home) is on top; it has much more red, is a little brighter, and has more black fill for a rustic look. The Tadema (our new home) is on the bottom; it is more of a true brown and has less variations since it lacks the dark fill.

I feel that the more neutral color of the new floors lend a little more traditional look. And I’ve been adding to that look with baseboards and hardware and other details.

Is White Oak too Trendy?

Trends come and go. White oak floors have been around for a long time and will last a long time if cared for properly. I love to choose things for my home that are popular but (hopefully) not fleeting. White oak flooring has a longevity that gives me comfort.

We still have a long way to go on this home. I’m really trying to take my time curating furniture and rugs, replacing doors, updating cabinetry… But I couldn’t be more pleased with the baseline we started with in these beautiful brown white oak floors.