Defining Dark Cabinets
Woods like Ceylon, Ebony, African Blackwood, Brazilian Rosewood, Cocobolo, or Katalox (Mexican Ebony) naturally appear nearly black to dark chocolate in color. They offer gorgeous materials for cabinets, but installing the same color flooring would create an oppressive room. Staining cabinets to a dark color, such as mahogany, or painting them navy blue or fern green creates the same issue.
Follow This Simple Interior Design Rule
Follow one important rule of design and choose a flooring material at least two shades lighter than the cabinet color. The most common materials suited to these color schemes include ceramic tile, bamboo, or wooden floor options.
Choose Your Flooring Color
Dark cabinets with a light floor provide a kitchen with a sophisticated, subdued appearance. Light doesn’t mean white. You can choose from white, gray, tan, beige, whitewashed, or stained a light wood stain, such as ash or oak.
- If you choose black, green, or navy-blue cabinets, use white or gray flooring.
- If you choose rust, dark red, or chocolate brown cabinets, use a shade of light tan or beige flooring.
- If you choose dark red, burnt orange, or warm brown cabinets, use a shade of reddish tan flooring.
Choose Your Flooring Material
You’ve got many options for light flooring that works well in kitchens and bathrooms, especially when you want wood or the look of wood. Whether you desire traditional hardwood floors or a modern peel and stick or interlocking laminate, wood offers the options.
Naturally Colored or Color-Treated Wood
You can paint natural wood floors any light color and have it complement your dark cabinets. While staining wood proves far more common, whitewashing offers another choice. White Oak and White Pine offer two natural white options that create a modern look when paired with black cabinets. Grey hardwood looks great with black or dark grey cabinets.
Natural Wood
Forget adding anything to it because natural hardwood looks great. Options like ash, maple, or oak nicely offset darkest browns, dark reds, and rust-colored cabinets. Use light cherry with dark red or orange and warm brown cabinets. Use a marine varnish on light cherry wood to ensure it doesn’t deepen in color with exposure to sunlight.
The natural cream or light honey color of maple wood offers a lovely offset to black or dark blue cabinetry. When using oak flooring, you can choose between red oak or white oak. The grainier red oak contains a reddish hue, but white oak features mineral streaks with a brown tint.
Bamboo or Cork Floors
Both bamboo and cork flooring offer lighter colors with warm undertones. Bamboo is more durable than the two options, but cork offers a springier floor, which can help if you spend a lot of time standing in the kitchen, whether doing dishes or cooking. Bamboo and cork work well with burnt orange, warm brown, and dark red cabinetry.
Matching the Undertones
Here’s another trick to answering the question, “What color wood floor with dark cabinets?” Study the undertone of the wood or other material used in your cabinets. Every material has either a warm or cool undertone, even human skin.
- Warm undertones appear yellowish, reddish, or orangish.
- Cool undertones appear bluish or greyish.
Ensure you pair warm-toned cabinets with warm-toned floors and cool-toned cabinets with cool-toned floors. Get samples of your favorite flooring to compare with the cabinets to match undertones perfectly.
What if You Want Black on Black?
It is your kitchen, so you can design it however you like, but a black or dark brown floor would typically not work well with black cabinets. How can you make it work, you ask?
Your kitchen needs light and lots of it. If the room features a bank of windows and a skylight, your kitchen probably gets enough bright, natural light to handle a black floor.
Add glass or metal accents. Copper or stainless-steel works well. Copper adds a cozier, old-timey kitchen feel, while stainless steel evokes a chef’s kitchen vibe. Glass adds instant elegance and opulence.
Paint the walls a pale color to offset the darkness. Use bright colors on the backsplash to liven up the room. Install lighting fixtures throughout, including in recessed areas under cabinets, where LED lights can brighten shady areas. Use 100-watt bulbs for bright light. Every kitchen needs three layers of light:
- Ambient
- Accent
- Task lighting
Explore methods of allowing natural and artificial light to brighten the black-on-black room scheme.
Ebony on Ebony can offer a gorgeous look when pairing cabinets and flooring. Combinations like this and espresso on espresso require a large room. Break up the dark scheme with lighter area rugs, using either white or bright colors. Red works well if you desire a more traditional kitchen, while grey rugs complement decor using stainless steel fixtures.
Shopping for the Perfect Flooring
Where do you go for such a diverse selection of wood flooring? Shop the wooden floor options at From the Forest, where you can find plank hardwoods, click-and-lock planks, and tongue and groove flooring. From the Forest also offers installation supplies, plus cleaning and repair necessities—orders totaling $100 or more ship for free. Get started on your kitchen remodeling or renovation project by requesting flooring samples from us. Let us help you create the kitchen of your dreams.