Petit Château Cannes, a warm, dark oak, laid through a gabled Queenstown home by Cammell Projects and DK Designs.
At Jacks Point, on the edge of Queenstown, a black-clad gabled home opens to the Remarkables. Cammell Projects built it, DK Designs Queenstown shaped the interiors, and one warm oak floor runs the length of it: Petit Château Cannes, laid as a 190mm plank.
The site does the talking. A dark, gabled form sits against the tussock, and glazed gable ends pull the mountains into almost every room.
Inside, the palette is calm and deliberate: white walls, black joinery, stone in the kitchen. The floor had to hold all of that together without fighting it.
The floor
Why Cannes
Cannes is one of our Petit Château oaks, a warm, dark European oak. Laid as a 190mm plank, the long boards suit the open, vaulted spaces, and the warmth keeps the darker tone from feeling heavy against the black cabinetry and the cool stone.
It is an engineered board, 15mm thick with a 4mm oak wear layer, in a lacquered finish. Engineered construction gives a wide board more dimensional stability than a solid plank, which matters in a climate with big seasonal temperature swings.
Through the home
One floor, room to room
The same oak runs from the entry through the open-plan kitchen and living, into the quieter second living room and the study niche.
Underfoot it stays warm and consistent. Against the black joinery and the stone, it reads as the one soft, natural material in the room.
The result
Warm oak, big views
The finished home is built on contrast: dark outside, light inside, mountains through the glass, and a warm oak floor grounding all of it.
Built by Cammell Projects. Interiors by DK Designs Queenstown. Lighting by Mr Ralph. Tiling by Tile Max Queenstown.
A Ponsonby villa, grounded in Bordeaux Herringbone
Petit Château Bordeaux Herringbone, laid through a restored villa by Sticks + Stones Design.
When Sticks + Stones Design reworked this Ponsonby home, one material had to carry the whole level, from the panelled heritage hallway at the front to the open kitchen and living space at the rear. They chose Bordeaux Herringbone: a light, natural European oak, laid in a classic parquet.
The house is a classic Auckland villa. Katie Scott and the team at Sticks + Stones Design wanted to keep its heritage bones, the panelled walls and the long central hallway, while opening the back of the home into a bright, modern kitchen and living room.
A single floor running the length of the house would tie the two halves together. It had to feel period-right in the hallway and completely at home beside a contemporary kitchen. Herringbone does both.
The floor
Why Bordeaux Herringbone
Bordeaux is one of our Petit Château oaks, a warm, light-natural European oak. In the herringbone format it is milled into 120 by 600mm blocks, Prime grade, and set in the traditional zig-zag, a pattern that has dressed European homes for centuries and still reads as current.
It is an engineered board, 15mm thick with a 4mm oak wear layer, in a soft light-natural lacquered finish. The engineered construction gives it the stability a herringbone floor needs across a large open plan, and the pale tone keeps the pattern from feeling heavy.
In the kitchen
Timber in a working kitchen, done properly
Running the same floor into the kitchen was a deliberate choice, not a compromise. Engineered construction gives the board more dimensional stability than a solid plank, so it copes with the everyday traffic and the temperature swings of a kitchen without the movement you can get from solid timber.
A kitchen puts timber close to water, so the installation was detailed to keep the boards clear of the sink and appliance zones where water can sit.
The result
Heritage and modern, held together
The finished floor does exactly what the brief asked. In the hallway the herringbone feels like it has always been there. At the rear it grounds a curved, fluted island, warm oak joinery and a wall of glass that opens to the pool.
It is one material, one tone, from the front door to the back garden, and it is what makes the whole level read as a single home rather than an old house with a new box on the back.
Petit Château Bordeaux
See the full Bordeaux range, five formats in one oak.
Saint Heliers, Auckland · kitchen by Nicola Manning Design
A clifftop home on Cliff Road in Saint Heliers is floored in Sazerac, our European oak from the Distilled Collection, in a wide 220mm plank. The owners wanted calm underfoot to match the water view, and a floor that would still look right years on. Finesse Floors laid it, living room through to dining.
High on Cliff Road, the home looks out over the water. The owners wanted the inside to feel as calm as the outlook, a light-filled space to retreat to at the end of the day. And they wanted a floor that would still read right years from now, not just on day one. A floor they could live on, not just look at.
The floor
Warm, luminous oak
Sazerac sits in our Distilled Collection, a European oak. It runs Light Feature grade, close to Prime, so the natural character stays light and even. The tone is what made it land here. Sazerac is subtle and warm, with creamy oak notes and a gentle luminosity. In a house this full of light, the floor catches the light and softens it rather than bouncing it back, so it sits back and lets the interiors and the view lead. The 220mm width gives each room a generous, contemporary scale, and the long planks keep the lines clean across the open living. It reads as one continuous, calm surface from the living room through to the dining.
The result
The sanctuary they were after
The result is the sanctuary the owners were after. A light oak floor that suits everyday family life, the kind you feel underfoot every day, not just see. The same oak carries up the floating staircase, its treads set against a fine black steel balustrade. A quiet, architectural moment, and a reminder that a floor is not only underfoot.
The detail
A story in the name
There is a story in the name, too. Sazerac is named after an early classic cocktail, the anchor of the Distilled Collection. Finesse Floors laid the timber, the kitchen is by Nicola Manning Design, and Mark Scowen shot the home.
See the Distilled Collection
Sazerac and the rest of our warm, natural European oak range.
Westmere, Auckland · MacFie Architecture, interiors by Spatial Studio
A new Westmere home by MacFie Architecture, interiors by Spatial Studio, floored throughout in Westwood wide-plank engineered oak from our Icons Collection. One light, continuous surface runs across three levels, so the marble, the stair and the view carry the house.
A multi-level new build on the harbour side of Westmere. MacFie’s architecture is restrained: a dark upper volume floating over a lighter base, big sliders out to the deck and pool, a timber stair carving through the levels. Spatial Studio kept the interior tonal and calm, marble splashback, dark cabinetry, plaster and leather. The floor had one job, to sit under all of it without arguing.
That pointed at three things early: wide, long boards that read as one surface rather than stripes; a light-to-mid natural tone that keeps the rooms bright instead of closing them down; and a natural lacquered finish in keeping with a relaxed family home.
The floor
Why wide plank
Westwood is a wide-plank engineered oak from our Icons Collection, chosen here for one reason above all. In an open plan this size, wide boards hold the floor together. A large kitchen, dining and living space reads as a single floor, not a panel layout, so from the island your eye runs clean across the boards, through the sliders and out to the Waitemata. The tone does the rest. Westwood sits light and natural, warm enough to feel like timber, pale enough to keep the rooms bright, so it recedes under the marble and hands the room to the materials around it.
The Icons range is made by a mill holding current FSC certification, and Vienna Woods products are listed on MasterSpec, so architects have a clear specification pathway.
The result
One surface, three levels
The floor now runs unbroken from the entry through kitchen, dining and living, into the bedrooms, down to the lower lounge and up the floating stair. From the landing you look down and the timber carries from your feet to the kitchen below with nothing to break it. The mark of a floor on a house like this is that you stop noticing it. Westwood sets the temperature of every room, warm, calm, grounded, and lets the marble, the stair and the harbour be the things you remember.
The detail · MacFie Architecture / Spatial Studio
The stair carries the floor
The stair is the signature: exposed treads, suspended off the wall. Spatial Studio (Kristen Basra) and MacFie specified the treads in matching Westwood, cut so the stair reads as a continuation of the floor rather than a separate object, grain and colour carried straight through from the same range. That only works when the architect, the interior designer and the floor are chosen together, early. Vienna Woods supplied the boards and the matching stair timber; the project’s flooring contractor laid it, glued down across the whole footprint.
See the Icons Collection
Westwood and the rest of the wide-plank Icons range, our large-format European oak.
Petit Château Bordeaux Herringbone, laid across the open-plan ground floor of a Westmere new build in Auckland. Worth writing up because the buyer works in the timber trade, so he read every board before he committed. He’d spent months hunting for prime-grade herringbone that measured up. Most of what he found in New Zealand fell short. This is the floor that didn’t.
He wanted one thing, done properly: a herringbone floor that reads as quiet and continuous across a large open plan. Minimal knots, no splits, no character flecks pulling the eye sideways every third board. Prime grade in the real sense, tight and calm and consistent, behaving like a single surface rather than a run of separate pieces. Colour warm enough to feel domestic without tipping into orange or yellow.
He’d looked widely. Most suppliers either couldn’t deliver that grading, or could on paper but not in the pack. That gap, between what’s specified and what turns up on install day, is where a floor loses anyone who actually knows timber.
The floor
Why Bordeaux delivered
Bordeaux is European oak, engineered overseas to Vienna Woods’ specification and built to be sanded and refinished later. The boards arrive site-ready with a factory finish, so they look on install day much the way they looked in the showroom.
Grading is where the Petit Château range earns its place. It sits at the value-conscious end of our pricing, but the prime selection is genuinely prime: boards chosen for cleanliness, not just labelled that way. For a floor that needs to be as close to knot-free as a natural product honestly gets, that’s the whole point. The pattern does the talking and the timber stops interrupting.
The tone carries the rest. A mid-warm European oak, neither bleached nor smoked, it holds under natural light and warm interior lighting alike. In a home built around a vaulted, light-filled living space, that neutrality was exactly what the room wanted.
The result
A floor that reads as one surface
Laid through the entry, kitchen, dining and living, the herringbone runs uninterrupted across the ground floor. Because the grading is so even, the eye doesn’t snag on single boards. It follows the pattern instead: the long diagonal pull of the herringbone across the open plan, tightening into the kitchen and softening again where it meets the joinery.
It sits well against the rest of the palette. Pale stone in the kitchen, dark steel on the fireplace, leather on the sofa. Clean prime grade lets the timber be a backdrop with depth rather than a feature laid flat, which is what a home built on a few well-judged moves needs underfoot.
The detail
Selling timber to someone who knows timber
There’s a particular pressure in selling timber to someone who works in timber. They know the difference between a hand-picked sample and a board pulled at random on install day. They spot a ‘prime’ floor still hiding knot clusters in the shadow lines. That scrutiny is welcome. It’s the standard the Petit Château range was built to meet, and on this floor the grading delivered in the pack, not just on the sample.
See the Petit Château collection
Bordeaux is one of seven colours in the range, each available in herringbone and plank formats.
Searching for prime-grade herringbone and hitting the same gap he did? We will send samples so you can lay a board on your own floor, in your own light, first.
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.
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.
The floor
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.
What it solved
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.
The detail · Sumich Chaplin
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.
Project
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.
