Choosing the Burrow Floors

This post is sponsored by Twenty & Oak. All opinions are 100% my own.

We have made up for giving such little thought to the floors in our past houses, y’all. We have POURED over this decision and all of the amazing options. Flooring is such an investment. It’s one of the most expensive things you do in your home. It’s one of the largest surfaces that affects all of your room designs. It’s literally the backdrop of every space! And it’s not something you’re going to change out quickly or possibly ever. It deserves to be given a ton of thought and be exactly right. And we’ve given the floors more thought than probably any other element in this build so far!

I studied and studied our Twenty and Oak samples. We had no doubt that the Veranda by Palmetto Road was the right fit for us when it came to quality and function. If you missed our last post about the Burrow design choices, make sure you click below:

In this post, I revealed the whole house design plan we’re going for, what flooring line we’re using and why and revealed the top two floor colors we were looking at: Sweetgrass and Cottonfield.

I have loved reading all of your opinions! Both are such beautiful options, I knew we couldn’t go wrong. As a refresher, we started our process with Twenty & Oak by exploring their site and ordering our free samples. White Buffalo readers can get six free samples (instead of the usual three) by entering the code BUFFALO! That was a huge step to show us the quality of the flooring and the general color.

But we knew that our ultimate decision would come by visiting our local retailer. The local retailer has much larger sample sizes. With these floors (as with most wood flooring), you need to see a large sample of the flooring if you can. The planks aren’t a flat color. There’s dimension and variation. The Charleston Collection in particular is wire-brushed by hand for age. But that also means there is such beautiful variation in the finish and a larger sample really shows that.

We’re located in Greenville, South Carolina and our local retailer is Greer Flooring Center. To find your local retailer, make sure you check out the Dealer Locator feature on Twenty & Oak’s website. Twenty & Oak has partnered with the best retailers in the Southeast to guarantee customers a smooth experience with an expert. We were blown away by our experience at Greer Flooring and that they weren’t typical sales people. They were flooring experts! They were so knowledgeable about product. They helped us troubleshoot specific issues with our build. They made us confident we were in great hands when it comes to one of the biggest investments there is in home building or renovating.

And one of the biggest advantages to heading into your local retailer in person is that you get to not only see those larger sample sizes in person, but you get to bring them home and see them in your space! I spent a ton of time in the store looking at our two faves: Sweetgrass and Cottonfield.

Chris and I actually liked them both even more after seeing them in person! The smaller samples were beautiful, but the variation and dimension in the finish and color on both was so lovely.

I went in with a clear favorite. And Chris went in with the opposite favorite. Did anybody guess which was which? It may have been a little obvious. I was pretty obsessed with the creamy, white-washed feel of Cottonfield, while Chris was really feeling Sweetgrass. He liked that it had dimension and age, but was a little closer to the color we’ve had in the past that was a bit more “expected.”

Take a look at this video of our experience in the store to check out more about the floors and our final decision!

Yes, COTTONFIELD, y’all.

I knew from the pictures online that this baby was going to have way more dimension in a larger sample than the smaller sample showed us. My gut said this was it.

Some Sweetgrass fans said that for the European feel we’re going for, we needed to do a darker floor and I totally hear where you’re coming from. When you first hear European, you do think darker! But all of the inspiration images I saved of the European cottages of my dreams all had white or completely raw, light floors. Think Scandinavian. Here are two European houses I’m probably drawing the most inspiration for the Burrow from:

First off, if you guys aren’t following Home_Stead on Instagram, go do it now! I’m so inspired by their Scottish home renovation. I’m in love with the super light, creamy planks with all of the cream walls and the occasional rich color layered on.

And then this baby…this house has shown up in every inspiration post I’ve done. I did a secret pin board of all of my absolute favorites for this house as I was trying to sort through design ideas and realized about a month into pouring over them that they were literally all from the same house:

Their floors are literally painted white with white walls. But it has the same affect: very light creamy backdrop with floors and walls and lots of richness layered on.

Can y’all see the vision? After seeing them in person, I did love Sweetgrass even more than I thought I would. Cottonfield already had my heart, but that one is beautiful and I can totally envision it in a space. But after seeing them in person and bringing them home to really study, even Chris agreed Cottonfield was the right choice for where we’re headed. And I cannot wait to see it take shape.

Here’s a look at our chosen floors with the main paint and accent colors we’re using:

I am in love, y’all. And like you can see in that picture, there is a lot of dimension to the color and it isn’t completely light. I’ve read a ton about reviews of white floors and light floors. I know some of you were worried about lighter floors showing dirt, but with what I’ve read and seeing the variation in color these have, I’m not super worried about it. We’ve had slightly darker than this (more tan) to super dark chocolate and the darker always showed more for us (dust, but especially any scratches!).

But what it really came down to for me was this gut feeling. I get them a lot when it comes to design. Something strikes me and I can’t shake it. I can’t really articulate why I’m drawn to it so much, but my gut just says, “Yeah, I can’t NOT try that.” That’s how I felt immediately about Cottonfield, y’all. And my gut says it’s going to be goooooood. I love Sweetgrass and have thought a lot that maybe we should go that route because it’s a bit more of a “typical” (but still so beautiful) choice. But I can’t shake the Cottonfield pull, you guys.

A huge thanks to Twenty & Oak and Greer Flooring Center for working with us on the floors for the Burrow and for making this process so seamless and fun! And for any of you in the market for flooring, Twenty & Oak also offers a coupon of $100 off any flooring purchase of $1,500 or more. After you create an account on their website, it’ll be sent to you in a welcome e-mail! Then, you can take it into your local retailer to apply to your order.

Who’s excited to see these babies installed?! They’ll be delivered soon and have to acclimate in the space for three weeks, but before long, I’ll be able to see these dream floors of mine in our new house!