What Color Hardwood Flooring Goes Best With My Walls?

Hardwood flooring is one of the most popular flooring choices among homeowners because it creates a sleek and expensive look without holding onto dust and grime the way carpet can. Plus, wood floors are created to last for generations and come in a plethora of colors, shades, and species to choose from. Whatever the color of your hardwood flooring, you want to make sure it goes well with the color of your walls to create a desirable atmosphere in your home. 

One of the most important factors in selecting a hardwood flooring color that goes well with your walls is defining the vibe you’re going for with your interior design. Do you want the elegant drama that a sharp contrast in the wall and flooring colors can give off? Or do you want a bright, airy feel that relaxes you the second you walk through the door? Do you like the warm, cozy feel that a traditional, mid-toned hardwood offers? Whatever vibe you’re going for, you can achieve it with hardwood flooring. Whether you’re designing a new home or refreshing the interior of your existing home, you want to make the right choice the first time rather than being forced to live with something you don’t love. 

So we’re here to help you make the right decision. We’ll talk about what shades of hardwood flooring go best with the most common wall paint colors and how to achieve balance between your picks. 

Best Hardwood Flooring for White, Tan, Gray, or Other Light, Neutral Walls

Light neutral walls are a timeless classic that brighten up a space beautifully. There are infinite shades to choose from within this range which can seem overwhelming but here’s a pro tip: match the undertones (warm or cool) in the paint color to the undertones in the hardwood flooring. 

The best hardwood flooring to choose if you have walls in any of these shade ranges is light-colored hardwood. Whether you choose bamboo, white oak, birch, ash, or another light wood, any of the above will achieve that light, airy feel that opens and brightens up a space when paired with light-colored walls. 

The trick, like we mentioned, is to stay consistent with the undertones in your wood floors. Let’s say you have a gray wall that has cool, ashy undertones. A wood that has yellow or orange undertones is going to look extremely out of place whereas a wood with cooler undertones, leaning towards shades of blue or green would pair much better. 

Best Hardwood Flooring for Contrast

Dark hardwood flooring generally makes a room feel dramatic, formal, and high-end which is why hardwood flooring in shades as dark as espresso or even black is so popular. While dark hardwood flooring offers those benefits, it does also tend to make a room feel smaller as it draws the eye down rather than up. Our tip here is to pick a pale color to create that dramatic contrast without making the room feel too dark and closed-in. However, if you want to pair a dark color with dark hardwood flooring, by all means, do it! One great way to incorporate this is with a dark accent wall where three of the four walls are light-colored and one is a statement dark wall. 

But again, try to stick to dark wood colors that have the same undertones as the colors you have on the walls. For example, if you go for a dark cherry hardwood, you may want to pair it with a wall that is in the red family. You may also consider going with a complimentary color by choosing the color opposite on the color wheel. In this example, if you have walls in the green family, a dark cherry wood would work well because of the red undertones. 

Medium-Tone Hardwood Flooring

We generally recommend picking your flooring color first then finding paint colors to match but if you are dead set on having a certain color on your walls, there’s no harm in picking a flooring color second. Medium-tone hardwood flooring is great if you don’t want to go too light or too dark and want something that falls in between. Medium tones are extremely versatile and go with most paint colors.