Same Color Name, Different Flooring Brand: How to Tell

When two floors share a color name but come from a different flooring brand, they are almost never the same plank. Costco, Lowe’s, Home Depot and Pergo all reuse everyday words like Antique Hickory and Honey Maple, so a leftover search built on the color name alone often turns up cartons that look right in a photo and fail on the lock, thickness or wear layer. The brand strip and the model string on the carton end are what identify a floor.

Same color name, different flooring brand: known examples

The FlooringFX name collisions reference tracks color names that appear on more than one product. A few verified examples:

Color name	Brand and retailer	Model string	Main difference
Antique Hickory	Harmonics (Costco)	AH404S	Hand-scraped laminate with a Uniclic joint and attached pad on archive cartons
Antique Hickory	Pergo Traditional Living	LF000703 / LF000713	Different product line and lock from the Costco floor
Honey Maple	Harmonics (Costco)	819263	Check lock and thickness before mixing with any other Honey Maple
Rustic Honey Maple	Style Selections (Lowe’s)	SSPL700 / 658099	Lowe’s house brand, not related to the Costco product
Fresh Oak	LifeProof (Home Depot)	I96711L vs. I96711LP	Same brand and name, but 6 mil straight edge versus 22 mil micro-beveled

Lowe’s Style Selections also sells an Antique Hickory, often without a published short SKU, which adds a third floor to that name.

Why the names repeat

Color names on flooring are marketing labels, not technical identifiers. A short list of species words (oak, hickory, maple, chestnut, walnut) combined with a tone word (honey, antique, rustic, smoked) covers most of the wood-look market, so overlap between retailers is close to unavoidable. House brands add to the problem. TrafficMaster and LifeProof belong to Home Depot, Style Selections and allen + roth to Lowe’s, and Harmonics was a Costco line. Each was made under contract and named separately, so nothing stopped two of them from landing on the same color word.

The Fresh Oak case shows the problem exists inside a single brand as well. Two LifeProof products share the name, but the wear layer and edge profile differ, so the planks do not sit flush side by side. Only the suffix on the model string tells them apart.

What to check before buying or posting

Before buying leftover boxes from a stranger, or posting your own, confirm these from the carton end rather than from memory or a listing title. The carton label decoder shows where each field is usually printed.

1. The brand strip, meaning the brand and product line, not just the store where it was bought.
2. The full model string, including any letter suffix.
3. Plank thickness, and wear layer in mil for vinyl.
4. The locking system. Two cartons with different click joints will not lock together even when the color matches.
5. Any lot or batch mark, since the same model can vary in tone between production runs.

Marketplace listings on Facebook, Craigslist, OfferUp and eBay often skip these details or misspell the color name. Asking the seller for a clear photo of the carton end before pickup avoids most mistakes. For brand-level tables, the discontinued flooring index lists verified model strings for TrafficMaster, LifeProof, Pergo, Costco Harmonics and Lowe’s lines. FlooringFX does not yet have a verified Sam’s Club model list, so carton photos matter even more there.

Searching by model string instead of color

A search for the model string in quotes (for example, “AH404S” or “SSPL700”) usually returns fewer but far more useful results than the color name. When posting a request, put the brand, color name and model string together in the title so that someone holding the right cartons can recognize them. On the FlooringFX Match board, replies stay on the listing, so anyone can compare a claimed model string against the original photos, and email addresses stay private. FlooringFX does not sell flooring or broker deals.

FAQ

Is Costco Harmonics Antique Hickory the same as Pergo Antique Hickory?
No. Harmonics AH404S and Pergo Traditional Living LF000703 / LF000713 are separate products with different locking systems.

Can two floors from the same brand with the same name differ?
Yes. LifeProof Fresh Oak I96711L and I96711LP share a name but have different wear layers and edges.

What if the carton is gone?
Pull a plank from a closet or under an appliance and check the back and the joint profile, then compare against the brand tables.

Featured photo: wood-grain laminate planks by Brett Jordan, CC BY.