Can oak hardwood flooring be quot;modernquot;?

I know it is a matter of personal taste, but, can oak hardwood flooring be modern? My early 1990's infill came with 3-floors of honey coloured red oak hardwood. I hate it, but can't justify tearing it out! (not just yet anyway.) I can however, justify a sanding and re-staining. Have any of you seen an oak floor that you liked, in a modern environment? -a particular stain you liked? I know that it can be stained any colour that I want, but they all look to me like they came from my grandmother's house! thanks so much for reading, RyanK

Oak graining is not my favorite either, but there is nothing about oak, per se, that is not modern. I guess it would depend on your overall aesthetic, but we had our oak floors stained natural which has hardly any pigment in it at all. This means that the variation in the boards is more pronounced but I think it looks great. I also think a cooler brown stain looks pretty good on oak floors (by cooler I mean one that has no read or orange tones in it -- I think Minwax's Dark Walnut would fit my description).

Of course, oak can be modern. Anything can be modern in MY world view as the number 1 modern principle for me is lack of pretentiousness. Just set it off with clean lines elsewhere, and it will work. Then again, Im an engineer and not an architect, so take my opinion with a grain of salt.

Regarding the sustainability or green issue - replacing the floor would NOT be green, because you would have to replace it will something that was taken from Earth's resources. So, Id say figure out a way to make it shine...pardon the pun. That would be the best use of resources. Strictly speaking, you might not want to stain it as it might detract from one modernist principle - honest use of materials.

Good Luck!

i say YES! refinish the floors and if they still bother you consider a different type of base. if wood - get rid of the unjulations and go simple like a rectanglar in shape. or small metal angle? or small c-channel at the bottom of your drywall or no base at all.

My 1964 modern was built with narrow oak hardwood floors. Cheapest looking thing about the house (now that the 1/4-inch panelling is gone), but certainly modern.

Yes it can be modern. If you have dark colored furniture I would leave it natural with a few coats of poly over it. (I'm not a purist, so for me staining is just fine). If you have light colored furniture then maybe you could try staining them a very dark brown to black. Imagine those gleaming dark floors it would look great!

Like Rous said, no red or orange if you can help it because that feels more traditional.

I also agree with mjfreestone that it would not be Green or ecologically responsible to pull out perfectly good wood floors just because they are oak when you can do something with them to make them look good.

Go for it!

I vote for deep black or ebony for stain. But, you could also paint a cool graphic design over it, as is. If you're up for sanding it at some ppoint, why not experiment and try out some cool blocked-out patterns or any such design. You can always paint over it and then ultimately sand it if you decide you can't live with it.

In our 1937 house, we had the (originally very dark) oak floors simply sanded and coated with a clear coat of polyurethane 8 years ago. Really brought out the differences between the various boards. It has yellowed somewhat with time, but in combination with almost white walls still provides a magnificent backdrop to our modern furniture.

I hear you on the oak flooring - I have the same problem. We have very dark kitchen cabinets - almost an ebony - so we don't want to stain the oak flooring a dark color. Instead, we are putting almost a whitewash coat on the oak to lighten it up a bit and get rid of some of the contrast in the grain. I have been warned by flooring guys that this was an eighties trend, but have been assured by designer friends that this is becoming popular again. And really, I don't care if it was popular in the eighties. I just want a floor that I like. They are using a Minwax white oak stain. The one drawback is I have been told that if the whitewash coat scratches the entire floor needs to be redone. We'll see if that is a problem.

I was also advised that we could just keep the natural color of the red oak. That looks OK to me, though not as nice as the whitewash, so if we have a scratching problem I may just do that when we refinish the floor. The one thing I was told is that you should not use poly, as it yellows over time. Instead use a water based finish. A bit less durable but it doesn't yellow.

Finally, I was in a modern art gallery recently and was surprised to see oak flooring that looked pretty good. It even had that orangy stain. The rest of the space was very clean and modern, and the floor did not look out of place.

My 1940's era home has original oak flooring that the previous owners stained a dark ebony to add a more modern touch. Looks great against our white walls - it was one of the reasons we purchased this home as we could see adding modern style decor (lighting, etc) to make this house more to our taste. So far, so good!

I always wondered about this sort of question. It comes up a lot on this forum. Do you mean modern in the traditional sense or modern as an evolving concept in responce to today's environment?

Another option is to bleach the floors. We are building a new house and are likely to use reclaimed oak planks. We had originally considered using a limed (whitewashed) finish, but opted against it when we saw some samples. What we wanted was less of a white finish and more of a desaturated wood finish. Bleaching the wood is the perfect look.

That said, I have read that bleaching the planks can harm the integrity of the floors. I am currently in the process of investigating the truth of this claim.

Good luck.

When we started remodeling our home we had a similar dilemma.
The golden oak floor was only two years old at the time so we decided against replacing it. With some modern furniture, a modern rug, and the right wall finishes you can make the room look reasonably modern.
i've attached some before and after shots.

And here's the shot after.