These tips you mentioned really helped me while decorating kitchen. Thank you for sharing this.

This is really interesting. I am remodeling a kitchen that currently has oak floors that are contiguous from the living room and dining room, and flow also around the kitchen past a bedroom and into a bathroom. I like oak, and while after 35 years, it's worn, I'm considering refinishing it to match the rest of the house again. Why are some designers opposed to using wood floors in kitchens? This is a Victorian in San Francisco?

Great Article. Thanks for sharing these tips for designing a balanced kitchen.

I don’t know why designers are opposed to using wood floors in kitchens. In fact, with most kitchens on Houzz having wood floors, it looks like there are quite a few who like them. I have both—one house that has a stone floor in the kitchen and hardwood in the rest of the house and another house that has hardwoods throughout. While I love the look of a wood floor in the kitchen, I love to cook and I cook a lot. I’m also a little OCD about cleanliness. The wood floor in the kitchen shows the wear and tear of a well-used kitchen more than the stone floor house. In order to protect the wood floor, I have to have rugs in front of the two sinks, the cook top, and the fridge. (I hate rugs in kitchens.). Missed drops of some liquids on a wood floor will stain it. A leaking fridge, sink, or dishwasher can ruin the whole thing. That said, I would still have a wood floor in an open concept house because it looks better. My house with a stone floor is semi open concept so there is a definite start/stop separating the kitchen from the rest of the house so it looks fine. We just bought a townhouse in Colorado that we are renovating. While the kitchen is separate from the rest of the house, I’m still doing wood floors for no other reason than it looks better in my opinion especially if you are dealing with a small place, which this is. It’s a PITA wanting one thing for practicality but another thing because of esthetics.

It always looks better to have a little contrast in the wood tones- otherwise it is all a wash..

After looking at hundreds (thousands?) of pictures of kitchens, we went with a darker knotty alder wood mixed with white linen cabinets. Lighter wood floors that flow from the rest of the house contrast the large darker wood island with matching dark wood pantry and double stainless oven. We have a rubbed walnut countertop on our wine bar area and a granite look quartz with copper flecks for the rest of the counters. A minimum number of white upper cabinets along with dark wood open shelves give a more spacious feeling as we have a standard 8.5” ceiling. We chose a copper/bronze glass tile backsplash to bring in some shine. The white and wood effect is beautiful, classy, soothing, and timeless. Highly recommend it. If you are planning a remodel, look at MANY pictures on the Web to get ideas. (Wood floors do start to show wear quickly, but if you just “go with the flow” and don’t stress about them, they will get a used “homey” feel. At least that is what we are telling ourselves! My wife says wood is much more comfortable to stand on for longer periods than stone or tile too. We chose not to put any rugs on it as they just get nasty in a kitchen.)

House projects—would you please post some pictures? We are thinking of medium alder cabinets with a lighter colored wood floor and white countertops. How are you liking the alder? From what I have read, it is considered a hard wood but that it is the softest of the hard woods and that it scratches easily and “dents.” Are kids are grown and gone so I’m thinking of risking it.

Sure Lori. We love the rustic alder wood. We don’t have kids in the house either but use the kitchen heavily and multiple times a day. So far, so good! The good thing about wood instead of painted cabinets (especially if it’s already “knotty/rustic”) is that you can easily touch things up or just let any dents be a part of it. Note that this applies to solid wood cabinets/doors—a veneer could chip.

Attached is a picture of the oak floors against our dark knotty alder with the ovens next to the white linen painted cabinets with a rubbed walnut top. The backsplash tile here is a ceramic gold tone relief leaf pattern. The other pic is of part of our island which is all knotty alder and has a quartz countertop. Our wood floor color was set for us because it flows into other rooms and we didn’t want the kitchen to be different. We are happy with the contrasting results.

Not sure how white countertops would look. For me, that may be a bit too much, but we like earth tones. One thing I did to get some idea was to use a simple photo paint software app to color areas of pictures with different tones. You could take this one for example and color the countertop white to see if you like the look. In the end, it is your kitchen so put in what you enjoy!

All is fine and beauty only as they said why the ground to be wooden work

I have kitchen cabinets that are in good condition and an island. The cabinets are a chestnut brown shade.
What I want to do is brighten up the space by painting the island cabinets
white, but not bright. What shade of
white would you suggest? Thanks, Marietta

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gwence There will always be someone saying that what you want to do is stupid, a bad idea, blah blah blah. As long as it's great for who will be living with it then rock that sh**! I think the main reason people baulk at wooden floors in kitchens is they will be harder to clean than tile which is dumb because grout is harder to keep clean than wood. Just my 2 pennies...

Marietta Palermo I've seen Sherwin Williams Alabaster and Benjamin Moore Dove White mentioned a few times.

I don’t think I’ve heard anyone say that hardwoods are harder to clean as a reason for not wanting them in the kitchen. Instead, it’s more that wood floors in a kitchen suffer more wear and tear and suffer permanent damage if you end up with a water leak.