I am going with painted trim (white) and white oak shoe molding. I have one place in my house where unstained QS white oak floors butt up against a red oak door threshold and the difference in color is huge. Maybe it would not look so different if they were both stained, but unstained they are quite. the best thing I can suggest you do is get a piece of red oak and a scrap from your white oak flooring and play around with stain colors to see what looks best with both of them. They will look different though. The red oak is much pinker than the white oak.

ccoombs1, thanks for responding I have admired your floor and cabinets in previous posts they are just beautiful. Do you have painted doors as well?

thanks. I am just so happy I chose quartersawn white oak (even though it was an expensive splurge). It is beautiful and unusual. And yes...all of my trim including the doors will be painted white. I used a lot of color in this house and thought that white trim would really set off the colors. In my last house I had stained trim, natural red oak cabinets (which were sort of golden, red oak livingroom floors, tan ceramic tile and off white walls. There was nothing visually interesting or exciting. This time I wanted it to be very different from before so I changed just about everything! So far, I LOVE it!

ccoombs, well you have done a fantastic job so far from what I've seen. Looking forward to seeing more. I love color too. What color white did you choose for your trim? Now to try to convince DH on painted trim.

Thanks Marybeth! It's been such a long road. This is the 3rd house we have built and will be our last one....our forever home. I am getting too old and tired to keep building! It's hard working 8 to 10 hours a day and then coming home to work a few more hours plus weekends on the house. but it's almost done finally and I will be able to relax.

We are using white for all the trim. I painted the majority of the walls a light chocolate milk color except for the yellow in the kitchen and bath and a couple of red accent walls. I thought a pure white gloss would provide a great contract and add visual interest. Another HUGE advantage to painted trim is the cost. I like MDF for baseboards because it is inexpensive and comes in 14' lengths which means less joints. It's pre-primed and very easy to paint.

Cindy

I have white oak flooring, with a natural stain, throughout the house. I have painted baseboard with white oak shoe molding. In the kitchen, the toekick matches the cabinets and there is no shoe molding, and where there are no cabinets, I have the same painted baseboard and white oak shoe molding.

hi,
we went with QS white oak floors too and with a medium to dark stain. I love the floors... we went with random width boards ranging from 4" to 7". The figuring in the wood is just beautiful. We have our baseboards coming right down on to the floors without a shoe molding. We chose a color for our trim that matches the kitchen cabinets and then went 25% of the same color for the walls. I have some rooms in the house with really bold colors, but I wanted the kitchen/eating/family room on the neutral side so that the floors would contrast and stand out and the other elements as well.

Here are a few pics. One is before the floors were stained.

mamadadapaige thanks for the pics your kitchen is phenomenal and momj47, thanks for the response I've seen your kitchen on FKB as well what an inspiration. My problem is I have a typical house built in the 1980 ugly dark stained pine throuhout. My problem is I am afraid if I use painted baseboard and doors it won't look right with the trim on windows which is still in good shape. My other problem is convincing DH on painted woodwork, why do men have such a phobia on painted wood. Is your painted trim hard to maintain? My contractor is trying to convince me to use stained red oak but to me I think it just won't look right. A designer friend of mine suggested just using painted baseboard and using stained and trimmed doors but I'm not crazy abot that either. Thanks again for your help I am really leaning toward at least painted trim.

We use painted 5"h MDF for the base molding, painted wood for the door trim since it can get dinged easily (the windows have deep sills and dry wall returns--no molding), and white oak shoe molding with our white oak floors. We stained our oak doors. We love how it all looks!

Anne

mamadadapaige, What stain did you use on your gorgeous QS floors? I just love your kitchen and the floor you chose makes your kitchen not just beautiful but gorgeous! What size width plank did you choose since that also looks nice in your kitchen. Thank you so much for sharing and showing me that QS White Oak looks beautiful natural or stained.

hi Lynn,
Thank you!! the stain is called indian summer and is by Carlisle where we purchased the oak flooring from. The widths vary from 4" to 7". It gives a nice look. I was just trying not to have the standard 2-3/4" strip flooring... nothing wrong with it, but I wanted something more unique.

Let me tell you a thing or two about staining wood floors. I have learned a lot! First, different woods take stains differently - some better than others. In the front of our house, we put in fir and were trying to match to antique heart pine that was original to the house (couldn't afford reclaimed heart pine so went with fir). This was a bit of a disaster. The fir ended up looking nothing like the heart pine. It is so soft, you can't set anything on it without dings and fir takes stain terribly - the guys did their best but there are many imperfections. I'd have done things VERY differently if I had to do it over.

So then, we moved on to the back of the house, where we ended up (mournfully) having to tear up the original heart pine flooring that we matched the fir to. Now I was not willing to put in more fir and as much as I wanted cohesive flow throughout the first floor, I opted for the QS white oak because of its durability and beauty and decided to live with the fact that where the oak meets the fir it is slightly awkward (we did do a decorative pattern in a small hallway to try to minimize the awkwardness but we had the world's worst flooring guys and they didn't quite get what I was trying to achieve so it is a bit of a failure).

Anyway, back to the staining issue. We had the flooring guys show us some samples of the stain on our floors prior to getting started and the results were startling. First none of the three schemes looked like the sample from Carlisle, second, two of the schemes would have been horrible!!!!!!!

Here is a list of the samples they did: One coat of stain
Two coats of stain
One coat of enhancer topped by one coat of stain.

The third is what we went with... it was the closest to the Carlisle sample.

Word to the wise... have them test out your stain prior to starting and google staining wood to be sure if your wood is one that handles stain well or not (I can tell you that oak is very good... takes the stain very uniformly).

HTH.

Here is a link that might be useful: Carlisle

jimandanne, When you say you stained your oak doors do you mean you painted the trim and stained the doors? Did you use a white oak door or a red oak. I keep trying to get a price on white oak and I keep getting told they can't get it or white oak door would be VERY expensive. But I think a red oak door will look funny.

mamadadapaige, Thanks so much for sharing that some woods do not stain well and should be left at their natural state and that oak stains very well and I guess the is another reason why it is so popular.

The Indian Summer stain on the White Quarter Sawn Oak Floors by Carlisle is stunning. You did a wonderful job with that beautiful floor. I love the varying widths in your size kitchen since it really enhances the look.

Sorry about your fir floor not doing what you wanted it to do. I heard Maple is difficult to stain also and is best buying it prefinished stain or leaving it in its natural pretty state.

I am so glad that you love your floor and you should since it is gorgeous and durable and looks perfect in your kitchen.

Yes, we painted the trim and stained the doors.

The doors are red oak. We stained our floors a lighter color than the doors. Since the light hits the horizontal floor differently than the vertical doors, the colors don't look the same anyway. Our flooring guy mixed up a color that we thought looked good. Since the doors and cabinets were already up, this was one of our easier color decisions!

Our white oak was not quartersawn, but I don't think it would look bad to have the different grains in the two woods; seems like it might add interest.

Anne

Thanks Anne, You have given me a good compromise My husband does not want all painted wood but that would give us both what we want. I bet yours looks lovely. Thanks so much for the idea!

marybeth, what Anne is describing is how we plan to finish our remodel. Our home currently has stained pine doors and I really like them. Our windows are stained wood, as well. We plan to have all of our trim (which is currently stained) done in painted white, but leave the wood windows and doors stained.

I have searched and found a few examples of this online and it looks to be a nice compromise.

Anne, I would love to see pictures of your mixed stain and painted trim if you get a chance!

Also, our floors will be a mix of hardwood and large-scale stone/tile. just fyi.

Sandy

Sandy, You have the exact situation I do! Stained Pine windows and doors. Although I love the painted look I would prefer to keep windows stained, they still look good and I still wish to stay in character of the house.. We have ugly flat doors that we will replace with raise panel and my husband really wants wood. You have done better than I have at finding pics. online, I have been searching for hours to no avail. Hopefully someone will join in with pics.

marybeth1, I'm in a little different situation in that we have QS red oak floors and QS white oak cabinets, but I thought I would chime in share some pictures in case they are helpful. Here are the different types of flooring, trim, etc used in our home.

Floors - QS red oak with NO stain, just a poly finish
Trim - Popular painted white
Window casings - pine, stained to match cabinetry (toned down MW red oak stain with Early American to make it more brown)
Doors - red oak, again stained to match cabinetry
Cabinetry (and pantry doors) - QS white oak with MW red oak stain
Stair trim - QS red oak skirt (stained to match cabinetry) and treads (natural to match the floor)
Stair railings and newels - Red oak stained to match cabinetry

I think you can mix different kinds of wood, you just need to be careful when you think about staining and what you want to match what.

Here is the kitchen, You can see the cabinetry, pantry doors and the floors.

Here is a picture where you can see the floor, red oak doors, white trim and portions of the stairs

Here is a little closer picture where you can see the QS red oak floors with the QS white oak cabinetry

And a more complete picture of the stairs where we used QS red oak in combination with normal sawn red oak. You can also see the stained pine on the window at the top of the stairs.

Not sure if this is at all helpful. I know I had an awful time envisioning how this was all going to come together and what needed to match what. My painters were wonderful to work with and really helped me mix different stains for the different areas to hopefully accomplish a blended look.

jaymelo, thank you sooo much for posting those pics! I had saved a picture of your stairs because I just thought they were so nice. But I could not find your thread for the life of me. I knew someone on the forum had mixed woods beautifully but could not find it. Thank you so much for posting pics of your beautiful home!

jaymielo, thanks for posting your pictures since I don't know how to post ours for Sandy. Your doors are the same 3 panel ones that we have! They're also the same color as ours, although our floor is a tad darker. Our trim is more of an off white, and our walls are more of a beigy taupe--the wrong color for the doors and floors. I always seem to miss on one of the colors, but the paint was chosen to go with the slate fireplace wall and the costa smeralda granite countertops.

Anne