I have super-dark maple floors in my bedroom and family room:

We have darker brazillian walnut in our kitchen. We were told it's one of the denser woods to work with and it was a challenge to install (DIY) but the results are beautiful. Something I found interesting is, it's 3/4 inch ply and isn't stained, the color you see is the color of the wood with only a clear coat on top. Here's pics but please excuse the mess, we're a work in progress. This a close up
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And this is standing back
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It's very possible that the gray walls will be fine with the dark wood floors. THe contrast of warm wood tones and a cooler wall colour can be really nice, especially tied in with another accent color.

We have red oak, which was really hard to get ebony! The trick (which my husband discovered and taught our floor men) was to first "pop" the wood with water (wetting them down opens the grain, allowing the stain in to better and more deeply / densely penetrate) and then using Dura-Seal in Ebony. The Bona stains just couldn't get dark enough, inc. their ebony stain; Minwax similar (and our floorman won't use Minwax -- go figure).

Closer-up (yes, the floor is dirty in this photo!):

I agree with the above poster. to get the floors really dark, your installer has to "pop" the grain. Sorry, I don't have any pictures. We added red oak in the kitchen and living room and had the dining room and foyer ( combination of red and white oak) sanded and stainded. They look exactly the same and I love the look. The installer that I hired was the only one that talked about wetting the floors and "popping" them. He said that was needed for the stain to really penetrate deep into the wood.

Good luck.

Beth

I'll have some very dark floors down next week. They are Mohawk chocolate maple. I'll post a picture when its done.

Hi Again!

I just realized I have a photo of the floors with our grey walls (BM Cedar Key):

Of course, the walls appear a bit lighter in the photo than they really are, but it's something. ???

RMKitchen, how many times did u stain your floor, to achieve that darkness?

fieldser - when you water popped your floors, did you put down one or two coats of stain (before the urethane) to get dark floors?

I bought the: Anderson Hardwood-Casitablanca Collection- Hickory-Hammered Clove. Not sure how to upload the pictures??