We went to a flooring place yesterday to pick out some samples of prefinished hardwood. We have debated all of the options for the floors downstairs, and I think that we've decided to go with prefinished, real hardwood, and install it ourselves.

We picked out 4 samples of oak floors. I love the look of dark wood floors, but with our dark woodwork, I think that we need to go with a lighter floor. I think we'll stick with the oak since that is what the floor was originally (although the original floors are quarter-sawn red oak and we're very sad that they can't be saved) and that's what we have upstairs. The guy at the floor show room recommended that we get 5/16" flooring instead of the standard 3/4" thick flooring since we will be putting this floor over an existing floor and we're not planning on removing the baseboards first.... I'm still not sure that's the way we want to go, I need to do some more research on the different thicknesses (and if any of you know anything about that, please let me know!) Anyway, one of the samples was way too red, so we've already ruled that one out. Here are the remaining three:
From left to right - Oak w/ Copper finish, Ash with Gunstock finish, and Oak with Saddle finish. The one sample is ash instead of oak just because that's what they had, the oak and the ash look very similar.

Saddle, Copper, Gunstock (and the dog)

top to bottom - gunstock, copper, saddle

And finally, the samples on the upstairs floor - from left to right, gunstock, copper, and saddle

Any thoughts/opinions? Last night we were leaning towards the gunstock, but in the daylight, maybe the copper is more in line with what we have upstairs and on the stairs... Or maybe we need to keep looking? Help!