I am biased because we are getting the same natural red oak Lauzon floor installed throughout our house right now. It's light but has a richness and depth to it that goes very nicely with the cherry cabinets.

Your kitchen is very pretty.

I like the grain of the maple better with the grain of the cherry. I have natural cherry cabinets and original red oak floors. They're fine, but in a perfect world I would have preferred a finer-grained wood species on the floor.

Hey cloud_swift, 5 years must be the designated amount of time needed to recover from a kitchen remodel before starting Phase Two. We finished our kitchen just after you, and are currently in the last stretch of a 1500sqft addition.

Between those two flooring choices, I like the maple better. To me, the oak looks like more of a "near miss" than a match or contrast. Have you considered any choices that have more varigation in them? Perhaps a varigated wood that has one color that is the same tone as the cabinets would be a possibility.

Glad to hear you saved a piece of your Azul do Mar for the fireplace! That stone is a once in a lifetime find, and you just have to flaunt something like that. :)

The contrast with the maple is very attractive.

Your kitchen looks very warm and inviting. I agree that the grain of the maple works better with the cherry cabinets. Good Luck! Can't wait to see the end result.

Between the two, I vote for maple. I'm a little bit of an oak snob and prefer quarter- or rift-sawn. The red undertones of it seem to want to compete with the beautiful cherry, anyway. The maple contrasts enough without detracting from the cherry.

Gorgeous stone, too!

While I think the maple would look nice, too, I have cherry cabinets and red oak floors and am very happy with the combination. My floors, however, are stained medium dark to match the floors in the rest of the house. The floor finishers did a good job of matching the other floors (which were refinished over 30 years ago and are still in good shape).

Thank you for the advice so far and the complements.

Jerzeegirl, we like the Lauzon flooring because they offer a square edge as an alternative to a dirt catching bevel. We are open to other brands, but many offer only beveled edges. Kahrs has a some square edge, but apparently only in the 3 strip boards (ones with a top layer that looks like three thin boards on one engineered board). We want a one strip - our current floor is 3 strip and I don't like the way all three strips end at the same point when you come to the end of the board. We also are considering sand and finish in place, but are concerned that the surface won't be as durable.

Anenemity, we can be wood snobs too so I understand. Lauzon has a quarter sawn oak, but it is the white oak and the color doesn't work for us.

At the moment, we are leaning toward the maple. The darker parts of the red oak have similar tones to the cherry which makes me hesitate a bit about the decision, but over the long run, the oak might be too busy - the maple might keep the focus on the cherry cabinets and the granite pattern which has plenty going on.

Also, our kitchen table is oak with a bit of stain so the red oak may be too many different assertive wood finishes in the same area. The maple is a better contrast under it and tighter subtler grain so it doesn't compete as much with the table and cabinets. We are adding some cherry cabinets sharing the family room wall across from the kitchen with the fireplace and TV.

Maple, and I don't even like maple normally, but it's a perfect nearly neutral backdrop to the other surfaces. It's a very modern floor I think, and as long as you don't plan on going all vintage kitcheny some day (which you could actually do without much work), do the maple.

What about a less uniform maple or birch? Mid grade birch and maple look amazing with cherry since the darker parts are the same color as natural cherry but the blonde parts make the whole floor read lighter. The select birch and maple floors have all the colored boards pulled out. Often you'll get your best average board length in a mid-grade too since they don't cut the board for color alone.

Also check out Model and Mirage in addition to Lauzon.

We have a natural birch floor and are putting in a ginger stained birch kitchen (I'd prefer cherry but it's out of our ikea budget ;))

Mikomum, do you have a web link for Model? It is one of those names that is nearly impossible to home in on with a search.

The Mirage looks very nice but it looks like all of their boards are beveled.

Fori and alku, it's nice to see some of the folks that I remember from our remodel are still around. I think there is about zero possibility that we would go "all vintage kitcheny" someday. Actually, I can't even see how we would go about it if we did want to.

Our house is a custom fairly MCM built in the 70s. Here is a bit of our dining room, living room and entry (in a picture we took to show our temporary kitchen during the remodel so try to ignore that).

We recently replaced the entry lights with these and put the coordinating larger model over the dining table:

So the plan is to stay with a somewhat softened or transitional modern decor.

I vote maple, but the only problem could be scratches. I think they will show up more on the maple. I don't know if that would bug you. I had Lauzon in birch, and it was too soft. Dented with dog nails and my dog is only 21 lbs. I do think the maple will give it a modern look and is very pretty.

On the other hand, I currently have micro bevels (Mirage) and I don't find them a problem at all with the dirt catching. But mine is a dark floor and not sure how it would look if it were maple. I found that on the Lauzon floor, if water spilled on it and I didn't catch a little puddle within an hour or more, there was swelling on the edge of the board. That never happened with the Mirage. I just looked again at the bevels. No problem with dirt. I've seen dirt on the Lauzon floors with light colors-in between the boards, due to the fact that after a while they can gap just a bit. Saw that in one showroom.

I would think maple would be tougher than oak--depends on all sort of details of course, but maple is generally a denser more dent-resistant wood.

And since this is an MCM house, for goodness sakes, oak would be a crime!

(You could totally go vintage with those cabinets. They are classic! Get some crystal knobs, replace to hood, swap the grey for an orange tabby, get some schoolhouse pendants, and DO NOT TURN AWAY FROM KITCHEN!)

We were told that even thought maple is a harder wood, you are more likely to see scratches on it because of its more uniform appearance. Scratches = patina so maybe that's not so bad.

The micro-bevel is not entirely an aesthetic thing. It has a practical application. When a board has a straight edge, it is easier for the edge to splinter. That is less likely to happen with a micro-beveled board. Also, when installing the straight edge floor if your slab is not perfectly flat one board might be slightly higher than the other and it can cause splintering along the edge (over-boarding). Micro-bevel floors are more forgiving in this respect.

Fori, I think FritzCat would object to being replaced by an orange tabby so we will really have to stay with modern/contemporary rather than vintage. ;)

Jerzeegirl, yes, a lighter colored wood will likely show wear and tear more than something darker (as long as one doesn't go all the way to black) and with more pattern. But the light floor seems to work best with the cherry. Actually - our last floor (beech) was almost as light as the maple and the scratches didn't get bad until some time between 10 and 15 years. Then we refinished and that didn't hold up as long as the original factory finish.

My husband is even more anti-bevel than I am. I did pick up a sample of the Mirage with micro-bevels today so we can talk about it. I've noticed even on the sample boards that I can feel a slight level difference between the square edged boards. The salesman today claimed that the bevel was also an advantage because sand that got tracked in would tend to settle into the bevels until it was vacuumed up instead of sitting on the surface where it could grind against the finish.

We aren't on slab. The tract MCM houses like Eichler and Streng were normally (always?) on slab, but our house has a raised foundation. The back patio and pool area is higher than the ground under the house so that there is no going from the living room or family room to the patio so when people see that, they sometimes think the house is on slab.

I haven't been on in a while (not quite finished -- sigh), but I struggled with the same decision. Maybe the hardest decision for the kitchen -- everything else seemed easy.

We ended up going with maple. I like the finer grain of maple with natural cherry cabinets. The only thing we did different from what you're considering is that we did not go with natural maple. We used a cinnamon stained maple. To us, it's different from the cabinets, but not glaringly so. We had a bad experience with light wood floors going yellow on us before, so I think we were hesitant to use natural maple.

Here are a couple of pictures:

Julieh1926 -- your floors are beautiful with the cherry cabinets. Definitely a nice option for the OP (and I'm facing the same choice, so I appreciate the suggestion, too.) Can you share the manufacturer (and/or model) name of the Cinnamon maple floors you used?

Thanks!!

Thanks! Sometimes I worry that they're too dark, but I definitely felt there were not a lot of options without gonig either really light (which my husband doesn't like) or really dark. I'll get the info tonight when I'm at home from work as I can't recall at all what they are!

julieh, I like what you did there.

Cloud swift- I'm so surprised to hear anyone on the forum has heard of Streng. Il lived in a house he built. Loved that house.

jgs769 -- got the info about our floors. Our floors are Bruce Kennedale Prestige 3" in Cinnamon. We really do love them. We were not only limited by the cherry cabs, but our dining room and hallway are on a slab so we ended up finding a solid plank (for the kitchen) that blended with an engineered wood for the other rooms that were on the slab.
They're holding up well despite a dog who likes to run around. They do have scratches, but that's fine by me. The color has held through -- they're just surface scratches which I would always expect. Our house is to be lived in. Hope this helps.

Thanks for the info julieh-- and since we have also have dogs (two beagles) who will be living on these floors, we're expecting a certain level of "patina" :)