For the last 9 years, I’ve lived in an apartment with wall-to-wall carpet. I grew up with carpet in my parent’s house so there’s a certain coziness to it that reminds me of childhood. And, since we don’t wear shoes in our house, carpet actually feels pretty great underfoot. BUT, carpet does feel a bit dated to me, and it’s so much harder to keep clean with kids and pets and life! I can’t tell you how many times a week we bust out our mini carpet cleaning machine to try and get some sort of stain out.

So when we had the chance to start fresh for flooring for our house, hardwood floors were a must. I researched a lot of brands and price points, and going with full-on true hardwood floors was just too costly on top of all of our other costs to build this house. So we decided to go with engineered hardwood flooring meaning that it’s constructed of layers of both hardwood and plywood instead of just hardwood the whole way through. We chose Mohawk’s Coastal Allure collection from Wayfair which features longer, wider planks in light, neutral tones so that the wood doesn’t darken the room and makes it feels bright and open. This hardwood was also engineered to resist dirt and dents, hide scratches, and look oil-finished without all the costly maintenance. While we are waiting till next year to give you all the full final reveals, here are some more peeks showing you the wooden floors and details going in….

In our living room, we have a special hardwood floor detail…on the ceiling! This room has high ceilings and is meant to be the center for our family, so our team at Project M+ suggested adding wood to the ceiling to add a cozy factor to this modern home. This was one of the first areas that the wood flooring was installed and it really started to make the house come together. We chose a slightly lighter shade of the same Mohawk flooring for the ceiling (called “white” but is just a tad lighter shade of the floor color).

We have these hardwood floors throughout the entire house except in areas where the floors are likely to get wet (kitchen and all bathrooms).

And, we also were able to incorporate the wood flooring and mix it with other materials like this terrazzo tile detail on area of stairs!

Have you had experience with hardwood floors vs. engineered hardwood floors before? What do you think?

{Photos by Lily Glass and Morgan Pansing. Construction by Boswell Construction, Architecture by Project M+, Interiors in collaboration with Cleo Murnane at Project M+. Written by Joy Cho. This post is in partnership with Wayfair.}