Contrast is one of the core rules of any style or décor, making it one of the most important tips for matching wood floors with furniture. Darker wood floors can make lighter wood furniture pop and look extremely satisfying. Alternatively, lighter wood floors provide the perfect balance for darker furniture pieces.
Mixing a dark wood (like ebony) with a light wood (like lime) will always look chic and intentional.” If you're starting with a wood floor and are adding new wood tones (a table, chairs, etc.), consider using a rug to act as a buffer.
Dark Wood With Light Wood
Dark wood flooring can make lighter wood furniture really stand out, whilst light wood flooring provides the perfect balance for darker furniture pieces. In fact, when you try to match wood shades in the home, if it isn't a perfect match it just looks like you've unintentionally failed.
Matching Furniture Colors with Light Wood Floors
Much as light furniture contrasts with dark flooring, the opposite is true with light floors. A mahogany table, for example, can really pop when placed on a medium toned, light wood floor. As with the dark flooring, you want a contrast, but not a huge contrast.
Light Wood Floors With Dark Furniture
They work better against wear and tear and can make a room appear larger. But it's also good to include some contrasting, darker colors. Mohagany chairs or tables can go great with a lighter shade of wood. For white wood floors, you want a contrast that's not too dark.
A good rule of thumb is that more delicate pieces of furniture go well with lighter floors, while heavier pieces match better with dark woods. This will help you preserve balance in the room so that everything gets its chance to shine within the space.
If you have dark flooring, consider creating a cosy effect with a dark wall colour. Choose shades from deep indigo, emerald, slate grey or black and choose light or medium wood accents, warm metallics and neutral textures for an intimate room, perfect for relaxing in the evening.
Between grey, beige, taupe, or greige, neutrals are a great way to match your light wood floors while still giving your walls character. Avoid darker variations of brown and yellow, as they can be too much of a contrast and will likely clash.
While wood finishes don't need to match, they should complement each other. Look at the color bias of each wood to see if it is warm or cool, then make sure their undertones match, regardless of finish.
Dark brown hardwood floors in particular never seem to go out of fashion, they are always trendy and still in style. There's something about the contrast between dark wood floors and bright, light walls, white kitchen cabinets, furnishing etc. that epitomize a sophisticated and upmarket style.
While mixing wood tones is perfectly acceptable—and in fact, we encourage it—it always helps to pick a dominant wood tone as a starting point to help you choose other pieces to bring in the room.
The key to mixing woods is keeping the undertones consistent. Woods with warm undertones will look yellow or red - think Cherry, Mahogany, and Hickory. These woods will work well together, even if they vary in darkness and grain. Cool toned woods will look a little bit grey, like Ash, Maple, Poplar, or Pine.
Both light colors and wider planks have been the hardwood styles of choice with designers and architects for years, however 2020 forecasters predict that this will be THE hot look in flooring for consumers.
Here's a short list of wood species that tend to play well together in designs: walnut and maple. white oak and walnut.
While you might feel compelled to match your cabinets and large furniture pieces to your flooring, it's important to resist that urge. Matching woods or colors can give your home a rather monochromatic look. It can certainly work in some instances, but will typically come off looking rather muted.
For light and dark shades of wood, you can choose beige, tan or ivory colors for both paint and decor. For paint as well as decor accents, green is a wonderful choice to complement wood furniture, particularly wood furniture in red, brown, or blonde hues.
The best way to compliment your dark floors is with light colored walls. The color contrast will offset your flooring and give you a nice balance of light and dark. Not only that, but the lighter color will cause more light to bounce around your room making it naturally brighter, and feel larger.
A natural look: Dark hardwood brings out the richness of the wood's grain, enhancing its natural look and giving your home a visually stunning appeal. Higher property value: While both light and dark hardwood flooring can give your home a higher market value, darker grain is known to lend itself to higher rewards.
When working with a pale oak, however, go for darker greens or lighter shades with gray undertones instead of pale greens or yellow-greens. For example, an olive tone provides a subtle complement to the wood's color, while a rich emerald green creates a bold, rich contrast. Not all earth tones are subdued.
Greens, greys, whites and beiges are no-brainers. Warmer colours, like orange, brown, rust and red, work too, but the deeper tones of these colours work best.
Dark floors will not automatically make your room look smaller. While overloading a small space with dark colors will absorb light and make the space feel even smaller, dark floors can actually help to open a space up, if done correctly.
To Wrap Things Up
Among the options we saw, white, tan, gray, blue, and green walls all work well if you have brown floors. When it comes to designing brown flooring, try to keep your walls lighter in color to make your room feel open and inviting.