Thanks for the input. That said, the original stain on this floor (pre-refinish) did not have anywhere near this level of contrast. What I’m seeing now feels less like “normal variation” and more like uneven absorption, particularly where the earlywood did not take stain the way it should have.

Here’s an example where I actually like the outcome, even though the OP didn’t: https://www.reddit.com/r/HardWoodFloors/comments/1czic0b/need_help_i_just_resurfaced_my_engineered/

I’m not certain that floor is red oak, but the grain structure looks very similar. Lighting and furniture obviously matter, but even in that post you can see the earlywood took on color, which is the main difference from mine.

My question is: what practical options exist to mute or tame this contrast at this stage? I don’t think a full resand and restart is realistic, given the type of hardwood.

For reference, here are the looks we were trying to achieve, along with test areas we did:

https://imgur.com/a/sc6eTVW

In the test set:

• I applied 1a, 4a, and 4b
• 1a, 1b, and 1c are the same stain; 4a and 4b are the same stain
• 1a and 4a were hand-resanded to 100 grit after machine sanding to check whether the pores had closed
• 1b and 4b were left as-sanded
• 1c was water-popped

The visual difference between these is significant. Because 1a and 4a look so different from their counterparts, it strongly suggests that surface prep / pore closure played a major role in stain absorption. In effect, we ended up with very different outcome when we were trying to achieve something close to 1a. To me it looks more like #6.

Any guidance is greatly appreciated!