Decorating Around Orange Floors

For two trend cycles, brown and grey, orange oak floors were the enemy.

They were too orange for the Tuscan brown trend, so people stained or replaced them with espresso. Then they were too warm for the gray trend, so they were bleached out, replaced, or covered in gray vinyl and called an upgrade.

That’s two full trend cycles where no one wanted them. People weren’t just avoiding orange floors—they were actively trying to get rid of them.

Warm wood is quietly coming back

And now, quietly, warm wood is coming back and the black, white and cognac trend singlehandedly did that, even cherry is back in the conversation.

Designer Josh Young’s home with warm wood floors. A swoon worthy inspiration for the black and white trend done expertly. Notice the warm wood floor under the very large area rug breaking it up. And how he’s repeated the warm wood with an elegant animal print.

But it’s important to note: just because warm wood is trending again doesn’t mean everything from the 80s suddenly looks good.

Trends don’t come back the same way they left. And the fastest way to make orange floors look wrong today has very little to do with the floor itself.

It’s the furniture you might still have in your breakfast or dining room (below):

Specifically, those heavy, matching dining room sets from the ’80s and ’90s—the table, the chairs, the hutch, the sideboard—all in the same orange oak finish. That’s what dates a home and makes people feel like their floors are bossy.

I once walked into a client’s home where they had an oversize matching dining set and hutch squeezed into a dining room that was clearly too small for it. They had moved, and the furniture came with them.

As I was looking at it, pondering how to tell her it had to go, she immediately shrugged and said, “It was a wedding gift from my father-in-law and cost $18,000.”

And then she gave me that look.

The one that says: I know it’s not working, but we can’t get rid of it.

This is such a common scenario.

Here’s the thing, we don’t just decorate with what we love—we decorate around what we feel obligated to keep. Expensive pieces, inherited pieces, “perfectly good” pieces that quietly take over the room and dictate every other decision.

And before long, it feels like the entire space is being controlled by one heavy, dated element.

So of course floors that don’t feel current start to feel like a problem.

Enter the common assumption that there is nothing to do until the magical day where the expensive renovation can finally happen.

But that’s almost never the best answer. Like I demonstrate in home after home in my Decorate or Renovate YouTube series, if you raise your decorating game, the need for renovating often magically goes away.

So when some of that dated dining room furniture is removed, or painted, or replaced with something lighter and less matchy, the floors suddenly don’t feel nearly as dominant.

If you have an old matched wood dining room set weighing you down. Paint the chairs chairs for contrast for a look like this room below. This combination looks collected, like a designer was here, with the painted side board and chairs.

@jogalbraithhome 

Which brings me to the biggest misconception I hear all the time.

People think the solution to orange floors is paint.

They want a wall colour that will tone down their orange floors, as if there’s a white or a greige that will magically cancel them out. There isn’t, because paint doesn’t work that way.

A wall colour can relate to your finishes, it can harmonize with them, it can make a room feel more cohesive—but it’s not going to erase your orange wood floors.

And if your floors feel too strong, the issue usually isn’t the colour on the walls.

It’s what’s happening on the floor. Or more accurately—what isn’t happening. Because so many people are living without enough area rugs.

When you have wall-to-wall hardwood with no interruption, your eye has nowhere else to land. You end up staring at a continuous expanse of wood, and of course it feels dominant.

But the moment you introduce a properly sized rug, everything shifts.

Katie Davis Design

The room starts to read as a furnished space instead of a floor with furniture sitting on top of it. The rug defines the seating area, adds softness and pattern, and changes the proportions of what you’re seeing.

Instead of noticing the floor first, you notice the room.

Last year when I posted about my new custom size area rug that covered up my entire living room, I got a lot of questions why I covered up my hardwood floors.

Because I have an open layout, the rug is what defines the space. It anchors the furniture and makes the room feel finished. And since the same flooring runs throughout the rest of the house, I still experience it everywhere else.

You don’t need to leave your floors fully exposed to appreciate them. That’s not how beautiful rooms are designed. And once the rug is in place, the next step is simply to make sure the warmth of the floor doesn’t feel isolated.

A few touches in the same warm, orange-brown family—like a basket, a cognac ottoman, a wood coffee table, or even small accessories—will connect the floor to the rest of the room so it feels intentional instead of accidental.

Now, you’re no longer trying to fix the floor. You’re giving it context.

In this room above, the designer has both layered up the floor with a generous sisal area rug and repeated the warm browns in the upholstery and window covering. Brown is trending again and this time around, it’s paired with pale neutral walls for contrast.

Embrace the warm wood

When a floor feels wrong, most people instinctively try to fight it. They look for a paint colour to neutralize it or a way to make it disappear.

But in most cases, the issue isn’t the floor at all.

It’s a combination of too much outdated wood furniture, not enough layering, and a room that hasn’t been fully finished.

Once you address those things, orange floors stop looking like a problem.

They just look like wood floors again.

This is how knowing the smart fix can save you tens of thousands of dollars in your home projects.

Which is what I teach in my Create Your Dream Home Colour Foundations. The last session (until Fall) starts March 30th! Be sure to sign up now before the price goes up for late registrations on Friday.

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