1 tequila, 2 tequila, 3 tequila, floor

Internet, these are some of the hardwood floor options we considered. Ultimately, we were looking for the Goldilocks of floors: not too dark, not too light, jussstttt right

The only hard and fast rule we had was no red or cherry flooring because we thought that was too traditional and we wanted a contemporary space:

Laurel Oak in Cherry...buh bye!

We were really set on darker hued floors for a long time, until a trip to Restoration Hardware changed everything. They had the most beautiful floors.  After a lot of googling - how has no one figured this out?! - I pieced together that the magic was in the natural knots of the wood and some kind of matte stain.

Beauty, rapture

Also, we figured out that the main element we liked was the texture - we really wanted something visually interesting with a lot of texture. That had been missing from a lot of the other flooring we had looked at that was mainly just 1 color.

So we waited until a sale at Lumber Liquidators, and finally decided on this beauty. Apparently, the Lumber Liquidators have a blog where you can share a pic of your pet on your flooring, CLEARLY they know their audience, so I will reveal to you the final selection with someone else's adorable dog:

You had me at hello

The final color we chose is called Tobacco Road - and I couldn't have named it better myself!