Staining our dated hardwood floors was our home’s one-way ticket out of the 90s.

You know that cliche scene from 90s romantic comedies where the strange, bookish chick finally takes off her glasses and shakes out her ponytail, and we all realize that she was a super hot babe the whole time (just hiding under that tough girl veneer of overalls and generic suburban feminism…)

Well, that’s basically what happened with our hardwood floors.

Most builds of our home’s vintage were blessed with this orangey-hued red oak flooring, but ours seemed particularly vibrant. The color fell on the more dramatic end of the ‘orange floor’ spectrum, somewhere in the neighborhood of ‘Carrot Top’s ringlets’ and ‘your fingers after eating Cheetos.’

We wanted something dark, and after lots of internet scouring and conferring with our expert floor guy (and holding various objects up to the sample stains that had been applied to our floors for reference), we decided to do a 50/50 mix of Jacobean and Ebony.

In addition to staining the existing hardwood floors and stairs, we decided to have the carpet in the downstairs dining room and office ripped out and replaced with new hardwood flooring to match the rest of the downstairs.

The results were scrumptious:

There have been times during this process where I’ve wondered ‘how long will this be in style?’ Mason jar light fixtures and farm sinks and white carrara marble.. they’re all trends, and no matter how much I love them now (or how much I try to convince myself that, much like the filmography of Tad Hamilton, they will transcend the test of time), I know they’re going to look dated and ‘blah’ someday.

Dark hardwood floors are something I genuinely hope never go out of style. There’s something so rich and glorious about them… how can we top this?!

They were the finishing touch that we needed to bring everything together and make our house look really freakin’ bomb.

The old orange stairs seemed to bring out a blue hue in our new upstairs carpet. Now? Blue no more. The carpet looks so much more… sophisticated? next to the darker floors.

The shoe-molding hasn’t even been installed yet, but the dark floors against the bright white trim and grey walls looks so crisp and snazzy. The walls have taken on an almost greige quality. Totes adore.

The verdict: jacobean and ebony floors = best decision ever.