European White Oak Flooring

At the end of last year, we decided it was time to begin the process of replacing some of our existing flooring. Our house had six different types of flooring including carpet, engineered and oak hardwoods, travertine, tile and bamboo, and none of them are necessarily reflective of our style. Upon reflection, I am grateful that we were not able to refinish any of our floors any sooner, because it gave me time to ruminate on a plan for the whole house.

Flooring makes such a huge visual impact on any space, and as we have found, it changes the light in your rooms, and tones of your paint, wallcoverings, and textiles. Overall, I wanted a softer palette throughout our house to be achieved by narrowing down the flooring to only two types: European white oak and antiqued limestone tile. I fell in love with European white oak hardwood after devouring all three of Brooke and Steve Giannetti’s Patina Farm books (here, here and here). I admire their uncomplicated way of blending Old World beauty with a clean, modern aesthetic, much of which is done with purposeful restraint in color palette, and use of texture within that limited palette to create interest. In much of their Ojai home, they used wide plank European white oak flooring with a flat wax finish.

I worked with a local flooring company to source something similar and was able to find an excellent pre-finished option, which saved lots of labor hours and mess versus installing raw hardwood and finishing on site. We selected Paramount Flooring ‘Santa Cruz’ European white oak hardwood in ‘Antique.’ The planks are 5” wide, and it has a beautiful wire-brushed finish that feels very soft underfoot. We had it installed in our connected dining and sitting rooms, and our guest bedroom, which was carpeted. Eventually we’ll also have it installed in our master bedroom and connected dressing room/closet. It has dramatically altered and softened the light in each of these south-facing rooms, and they now glow and radiate warmth.