We get excited when a client suggests dark kitchen cabinet colors during our initial consultation. White kitchen cabinets will continue to dominate our market but we continue to see a rise in the number of customers asking for dark brown kitchen cabinets, dark grey kitchen cabinets and even darker shades of blue and green cabinets are being discussed more today than every before. The key to creating harmony in any room is having a balance of colors, lighting and a visually appealing ambiance. We are here to say, don’t shy away from blending dark wood cabinets with hardwood floors. We make it work all the time. Here are a few suggestions to the question…

What is the best wood floor for dark cabinets?

It is important to have some contrasting colors working together. So, let’s take a look at some dark kitchen cabinets and wood flooring color combinations that work well together. In 2020 we are seeing a trend towards lighter colors for wood flooring in the kitchen and we believe this works in your favor. 

• Dark Grey kitchen cabinets pair well with whitewash or high variation floors.
• Expresso Wood cabinets pair well with honey or blond wood colors
• Dark Green cabinets pair well with light oak wood floors
• Black kitchen cabinets benefit from grey engineered wood floors

Below is a dark expresso color coupled with a honey color hard wood floor. Next to it is the dark green cabinets with the light oak floors we have implimented. As you can see, we have opted for white countertops and stainless steel appliances to help bring all these colors together. It is important to have some diversity in your color pallete and to consider the lighting and natural sunlight available when making these choices. Dark wood cabinets really do shine best when we take a look at the whole picture that includes kitchen lighting rather than being narrow sighted on just cabinets and floors.

Dark Wood Cabinets with Light Wood Floors

This seems like the most obvious thing to do when working with dark brown kitchen cabinets and dark green cabinets but you would be surprise how many DIY homeowners opt for trying to match an expresso colored cabinet stain with a dark wood floor.  Matching flooring and cabinet color shades always ends up in disaster. The color shades from a flooring manufacturer will never match a cabinet manufacturer no matter how hard you try. 

Hickory, cherry and maple wood laminates do very well with various red stains and we do love seeing a rich red wood flooring when we are working with some dark kitchen cabinets. Engineered vinyl plank flooring for kitchens is great to work with and the prices often fit our client’s budgets. 

In this example below, we are using a dark walnut kitchen cabinet with raise panels partnered with a wide plank hickory flooring. You will see that the center island cabinet color and quartz countertops offer the contrast we look to achieve in kitchens using dark woods. This combination, including the exposed beams, offers a luxurious country feel that our client was asking for.

Kitchen Interior Designer in NJ

Lisa and her team of kitchen designers keep their fingers on the pulse of what is trendy. Wood floors in your kitchen are trendy. You will see from our modern kitchen design pictures here and the blog post on sleek cabinet design that dark kitchen cabinets and smooth lines are also the craze. We do appreciate the customer that is confident enough to shake things up a bit. We love getting creative and invite you to test out our skills. Give us a call today and together we can develop a plan that works best for you.