How To Use Dark Wood Flooring To Brighten Up Your Home

Helping your house’s palette to pop is an art that requires you to create a solid tone base. If that base is poorly chosen, even the brightest patterns and throw pillows will look dull. Every palette needs a few core colour components:

A neutral hue: Most decorators fill at least three-quarters of their spaces with a neutral, so walls, floors, and cabinetry are usually used.

A primary colour: The hue you want to dominate your room should incorporate various shades of the same colour.

An accent: A saturated colour that creates contrast.

For the past few years, light floors and walls have dominated interior design trends, but they’re tough to work with, particularly if you want to make a bold impression. This year, dark and cool-coloured hardwoods are taking over. Dark engineered flooring performs two colour-related jobs at once: It acts as a neutral and creates an accent for the rest of your palette. Think beyond cherry and other exotic woods, though. Today’s stain options are revolutionary.

The New Dark Wood

Exotic woods are rich and beautiful, but they are difficult to work with. Their red and yellow undertones rarely work with cold colour schemes, but even warmer palettes are difficult to pair. Thankfully, the industry has fabricated some easier and prettier alternatives.

This year, you can choose pitch black, grey, and pure chocolate flooring that work delightfully with both cold and warm hues. The trendiest wood colours of the season have a cool tone, so if you are dreaming about a blue or green palette, there are options that will balance them gorgeously. A dark wooden floor turns an ordinary powder blue into something electric. It can add warmth to your green tones and balance a wilder purple shade. Warmer blacks and greys are just the thing if you want to bring a warm red or orange colour scheme alive. If you are using a neutral palette, it will erase the monotony of your white furnishings and bring freshness to your space. Your interior has never looked this bright.

Working with Texture

Wooden flooring does more than just add colour. A dark stain brings the grain of the wood to the fore without distracting from your other features. It’s sleek and sophisticated, and it adds a new hue to your floors. A black stain on a chocolate wood, for example, spreads both colours throughout your room, unifying your design while giving you one extra neutral to play with. It also allows you to incorporate texture into an uncluttered space. That way, you won’t need to add much texture to the rest of your interior.

You can even play with the way your planks are arranged. A herringbone layout adds an extra dimension to your room’s lines, and if you’re dealing with an expansive space, it’ll trick the eye into seeing a smaller room. This creates a crisp, clean aesthetic that’s beautifully offset by the right rug.

Setting the Tone

Your floors set the style tone of your room. Sleek or distressed, glossy or matt, patterned or minimalist, the wood you choose will add a powerful look to your home. When you are working with engineered woods, your options are even wider. You don’t need to limit yourself to a narrower plank or a red undertone. There are few limits, so dream your best décor dreams. You’ll be so glad you did.

Wood flooring has a textural warmth that few other materials can compete with, turning a house into a home. It’s flexible enough for refinishing, so you can change your colour with the passing of the years.

Author bio: This article was written by Martin O’Callaghan of Wood Flooring Ireland who are passionate about creating bespoke wood flooring for homes and businesses.