Bandsawn Oak Flooring at Pohutukawa House
Bandsawn oak flooring is timber cut so the saw marks stay in the surface, giving a textured, worked grain rather than a flat polish. For Pohutukawa House, a coastal home on the Coromandel by architects Sumich Chaplin, we developed a custom bandsawn finish in dark European oak from our Distilled Collection.
A floor that could hold the coast
Pohutukawa House sits on the rugged Coromandel coastline, built to sit in quiet dialogue with salt wind, sea and sky. Sumich Chaplin wanted a floor with presence and patina: warm and tactile inside, but unbothered by sandy feet and boots off after the beach. Polished and precious was never going to work here.
Custom Distilled Bandsawn Oak
The floor is a bespoke finish we developed for this house: Custom Distilled Bandsawn Oak, part of our Distilled Collection. It is European oak, made in Europe, with a visible bandsawn texture and a deep, distilled tone that picks up the pohutukawa-stained rock and wind-tempered timber outside.
Underfoot it reads solid and grounded. Up close, the grain shows how each board has been worked. If you want the detail on how a sawn surface is made, read our guide to bandsawn timber floors.
Rugged where it needs to be
The Coromandel is never polite about weather, and the bandsawn texture earns its keep. A worked, sawn surface tends to disguise the everyday marks of a coastal home more forgivingly than a flat, glossy floor, though as a natural timber product it will still show wear over time. The distilled finish lets the oak settle into its setting rather than fight it.
The result is a floor that feels luxurious without asking to be treated preciously, at home for a barefoot morning or a boots-off evening. You can see the same Distilled oak in a very different setting in our Auckland apartment project.
Where the floor meets everything else
Sumich Chaplin’s detailing pushed us to make a floor that could hold its own alongside concrete, stone and vertical cedar. The care shows in the transitions: stair treads that flow straight off the main floor, and thresholds that all but disappear at the indoor-outdoor edges. That is the payoff of custom work done close between architect, builder and flooring consultant. Flooring consultant Miguel Uribe ran the project with the studio, and Finesse Floors laid it.
The credits
| Detail | Credit |
|---|---|
| Project | Pohutukawa House, Coromandel Peninsula |
| Floor | Custom Distilled Bandsawn Oak (Distilled Collection) |
| Architect | Sumich Chaplin |
| Flooring consultant | Miguel Uribe, Vienna Woods |
| Interiors | Peta Davy, Yellow Fox |
| Installation | Finesse Floors |
| Photography | Thomas Cannings |
Order this colour as a sample
Get the Distilled tones on a real board and see how the bandsawn texture reads in your own light before you commit.
The Distilled Collection
European oak, made in Europe, with textured, hand-worked finishes built for homes where the floor does more than sit quietly.
Engineered timber flooring
How our engineered European oak is built, why it suits New Zealand homes, and what to weigh up before you choose.
Start with a sample of Distilled oak
Order the Distilled tones as free samples, or tell us about your project and we will talk through a custom bandsawn floor for it.
