Living Rooms with Hardwood Floors Ideas

Use hardwood floors to enhance the overall color scheme of your living room. Decide on the shade you want to use throughout: light, medium or dark. Light-colored flooring will give the illusion of more space in a room, while medium and dark tones will be easier to maintain. However, the darker the tone, the more closed in and smaller the room will feel.

White maple creates a beautiful foundation for this living room. Its creamy color and subtle grain patterns bring warmth and an airy feel to the space. Maple is one of the hardest hardwoods, making it extremely durable. It's a versatile wood that complements many interior styles. Its natural light color also makes the room appear more spacious.

While the kitchen is a casual gathering spot and is considered the “heart of the home,” the living room is where true socializing, entertaining and relaxation takes place. It sets the tone for the home and reflects the personality of those who live there. As such, the floor should reflect warmth and comfort. If you have a spacious living room, consider installing solid hardwood flooring. A consistent wood tone throughout the space creates a cohesive look. For example, natural red oak flooring (r) adds vibrancy and warmth. This approach is ideal for traditional living rooms with hardwood floors, where durability and timeless style are both important.

Bamboo flooring brings cozy warmth to any living room. The beautiful honey tones add depth and a sense of calm that connects you to nature. The unique grain patterns and color variations of bamboo flooring add visual interest and complements various decor styles. It’s an ideal choice for modern and contemporary spaces.

The quiet elegance of engineered white oak is the perfect foundation for this modern, rustic living room. When you want to curl up on the sofa at the end of a long day with a good book and a cup of tea, this is where you come to unwind. Like many wood floors in modern living rooms, this understated engineered hardwood is durable and designed to age gracefully.

Deep and dramatic, dark hardwood flooring embodies warmth and richness. Shades like walnut, mahogany and cherry oak (r) imbue a sense of luxury and elegance. The rich tones absorb light and create a dramatic and refined atmosphere. Dark woods have a timeless appeal that never seem to go out of style.

The rustic elegance of wirebrushed oak hardwood flooring is a textured, rustic look that adds character and warmth to your living room. The light, open space is welcoming and relaxing. If it feels this good for you, imagine how wonderful it makes your guests feel.

Hardwood floors with wide planks like white oak (r) brings a sense of coziness to a room. Fewer visible seams help reduce clutter and make the room feel neater, more inviting. Wide planks highlight the natural wood grain and allow the character to be more prominent and the beauty of the floor to speak for itself.

Texture introduces a whole new look and feel to hardwood flooring. Hand scraped, wire-brushed, distressed and embossed are popular finishing techniques.

• Wire-brushed technique involves scraping the planks with a wire brush to remove the soft outer layers of wood. This enhances the harder, natural wood grain and creates a look similar to reclaimed wood. It leaves a durable finish and helps hide minor imperfections.
• The hand-scraped finish is achieved by manually scraping the wood planks, creating an uneven texture that mimics that of aged or reclaimed wood. The intentional, distinct imperfections give the wood a unique, rustic appearance on each plank.
• The worn look of distressed hardwood is intentionally added through a variety of methods like wire brushing and hand scraping. The dents and scratches replicate the look of naturally aged wood and provide a lived-in, antique appearance.
• The embossing process involves raising or indenting the patterns on the hardwood’s surface to mimic the natural textures of the wood grain by precisely aligning the embossing pattern with the printed design (embossed in register, or EIR) for a more realistic look and feel.