apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

oooooh....lusty floors. lusty. lusty. lusty.




Http://embritadesign.blogspot.com

i like them.

so beautiful.

want them.

I love them but not in that entryway. I think they'd look best in a really streamlined room with very little architectural detail.

I'm not sure I'm willing to put forth the effort required to keep them looking that pristine. I'm kinda lazy.

We installed them. Beautiful. So hard to keep clean. They show everything.

Looks gorgeous, but not at all practical. Black shows every bit of dirt and dust, and the shiny finish (on black) reveals every single scuff and scratch.

If you've got a janitorial staff who comes in and buffs every night, then go for it. But for home use, it's more trouble than it's worth.

Does look exquisite though! ;-)

They look great, but don't do it. Trust me.

Hate. I think house flippers dye hardwood floors black to hide old pee stains on the floor.

I "contended" with my ex for years during our marriage about doing this with our old beyond-repair-hardwood-floors. When he finally reluctantly agreed he and I both loved them. They took a small, pokey old space up to near glam level, disguised the flaws and made the space feel bigger. He re-did them after I left and added a final coat of acrylic....fantastic!
Not the best choice, however, if you have dogs. Fur and toenails.........

Love the look but the constant cleaning would drive me crazy. Which shows the dirt and dust more, I wonder: black or white?

I did that in several rooms of an old victorian; the painted wood floors had several coats in different colors, and I went over it all with a gorgeous gloss black to even it out. Looked awesome, but you have to damp mop them regularly - the show footprints easily. (I did the floors black, white trim and red walls in the dining room - it looked INCREDIBLE!)

Anyway, love the look but plan on mopping or swiffering regularly to deal with the footprints.

Re: the first pic, I've already lived the white staircase nightmare and shall never go back.

Black floors will definitely take more maintenance, but certainly not as much as any white floor!

What about high-gloss dust-colored floors?

I've had both black and white floors, and black are MUCH more high maintenance. White floors -- unless you're going for a really glossy contemporary style -- look good with a few knicks. They're casual and nautical. Black has to be perfect.

Dark floors are beautiful unless you walk on them.

Like everyone else has said: beautiful, but high maintenance. My brother did some floors in a previous house a really dark wood. He had a dog and every single hair showed. While visiting, I noticed that he was swiffering the floor almost hourly. It looked dusty and hairy and seriously bad towards the end of the hour. Not good.

enjoy your new house shoes!

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I don't have black floors, but mine are rather dark, and I love them. They're kind of a reddish walnut color, and I love them. Dark is good.

Those black ones are nice, but I do think the furniture does need to be very, very modern.

I have black floors in my kitchen. They have gotten a bit nicked a long the way , but I like it. Adds character. DOES show dust, but I probably should mop more anyway.

I love the look of ebonised hardwood, but I would never let myself in for that world of pain. I grew up in a home with polished black, green, and white veined marble tile in the entry hall (this with five hairy dogs, two kids, and no mudroom) and I swear you could hide a small pony in the pattern. The floor looked better when freshly polished, but dirt, hair, and scuffs were very difficult to spot even at their worst. So there is a way to do dark and dramatic but not become a slave to the Swiffer.

Looks beautiful! I'm jealous!!

SHINY!

the consensus:

get maid first, then black floor!

I installed very dark stained floorboards in my last apartment, we have since sold and bought another apartment, but I miss my dark floors so much... they gave the place so much class. I can't wait until we do the same to the floors in our new place.

I love, love, love them!

They're dramatic, but so was Dynasty (i.e., not all drama is good drama).

They look beautiful but are just as difficult to keep looking good as white. I like the little bench.

I installed very dark wood flooring in my tiny dining room; the dark wood contrasts nicely with the blond wood in adjoining rooms. The dark wood defines the room, and I think I made a good decision.

A friend of mine did this on the ground floor of her very large, very stylish London home and every time you go there all you can see is dust and footprints. She has said that while she loved the idea the practicalities of it in real life just didn't quite work.

sexy

I like it but I think I would like a really dark wood better.

I built a new house and did very dark brown, almost black wood floors in the entire house, even the baths and kitchen. I am so happy with it. It makes the wood so rich and lustrous and imparts a very subtle balance in the whole place. But don't be fooled, when new it shows as much dirt as white until it "breaks in".

LOVE! We painted our stairs black. They look fab but with a house full of furry creatures they need to be swept often. Jennyat has a great idea "What about high-gloss dust-colored floors?"—so funny.

Dare I say, the pictures above may have even been photoshopped to look perfect, because that's really the only way to make those things look that damn clean...

to die for!

just installed "ebony" engineered hardwood last week. it makes my smallish apartment look spacious. i love it but the amount of hair that was showing up was gag inducing (i have a white haired dog) so i solved the problem by buying a roomba (which i wanted anyway) and it seems to have solved the problem. i don't see the scuff marks but i've only had the floors for a week. but really the floors by the doorway - there's not a chance in hell they are going to look like that after an hour, no matter what material they are made out of!

Oh, very pretty. But oh-so-not practical. I've had the best results with floors the color of dead grass.

I agree with everybody who commented on pets (fur and claws) and dust.

That said, it IS a gorgeous look. Now I'm wondering if there is a floor paint or coating that would give the glam without as much maintenance? Epoxy? Something slightly matte?

Fabulous in the right space.

We lived in a big, old stable. The top floor of 13 rooms was flooded with light. I stained all the [old wood] floors black and varnished them to a high gloss. It was beyond fabulous. We had dogs, cats, horses (downstairs), rabbits, and birds (doves, crow, owl). That "we" includes three kids, who, I must say, lived a pretty happy life there. Many kinds of fur, feathers, dust, leaves, mud, etc, cohabited with us all. A trail of hay clippings across the living room was not a foreign sight. Yet the whole thing looked fantastic. I'd do it again in a heartbeat, especially now, after the advent of the various Swiffers. . . .

LOVE them. Would be phenomenal.

Do these get dirty fast because people wear shoes in the house?

Would this work for a family with a no shoes policy?

I'm of the persuasion that one's floors should match one's dog. Or in the case of dogs, the blend of their colors weighted by shedding tendency, hair length, and animal size.

I LOVE these floors. I also have a large, fluffy, sheddy black dog and a small, shorthaired, non-sheddy gray dog. Perfect.

With a superdurable finish, black floors would be fabulous. But white? No thank you, even with a different dog configuration.

They're gorgeous...

...but to those folks who complain about dirt, etc - You actually leave dirt & dog fur on your floors if they are a different color???

bepsf - Yes, yes we do.

I love the look, but can't abide the echo.

I tried a dark sooty gray years ago and had to put so many rugs down it defeated the purpose.

Love it, it would definitely work much better for interiors that have brightly coloured furniture, whereas white gloss floors work better with light and neutral coloured furniture (otherwise the reflection of the colours detracts from the overall look)

Glossy white or glossy back? Either one works for me. LOVE the kitchen in the photo. I'd REALLY like that!!

Two words: constant cleaning! Oh, and one other word: beautiful.

If you stained them dark (almost black) so that the grain of the wood still shows, I don't think you will have quite the problem with dust showing that you will if you go with a solid (no grain) painted black effect. You also might want to try a test board with a black background and a gray cerused effect delineating the grain. While the overall result would still be dark, highlighting the grain a bit would allow dust and defects to blend a bit better and would play up the natural beauty of the wood grain pattern.

Also, this would not be an ideal diy. Hire a pro. Black needs to be done properly.

We did this in our apartment as a cheap way to disguise a distracting parquet pattern and LOVED the look- we got so many compliments on how glamorous it looked and how well it complemented the furniture. The Downside: As mentioned above, every speck of dust showed up and so we ended up having a cleaning woman coming three times a week, waxing the floor every few months, and all that in addition to our daily pass with the Swiffer.
After a few years, it looked not so great with all the scratches and dings that come from normal wear and tear, so we replaced the floors. This time, we choose black matte finished oak planks and I find it much more forgiving, while still maintaining the dramatic look of a black floor.

i love them!! excellent.

I am painting my heinous wood floors (they are that cheap looking multiple squares of interlocking wood)of the nyc one bedroom i am moving into high gloss black as we speak! it's absolutely revolutionizing this apartment. it was the only way. i'll post pics at some point. takes two coats. use a roller not a brush (maybe this is a duh but i didn't know) and already i can tell it's going to be a dusting NIGHTMARE. (nyc apts collect an otherworldly amount of dust on the daily) but it's going to look SLICK. literally and metaphorically.

I don't comment much; but I have to say these floors are drop dead gorgeous.