A defining floor for a landmark building

Love and Co (John Love) took the former Civic Administration Building on Greys Avenue, completed in 1966 above Aotea Square, and turned it into apartments. Interior design was Josephine Design (Josephine Love). The floor was one of the defining materials, so it had to do two jobs: feel unmistakably premium in every apartment, and read as one calm, consistent surface across the whole conversion.

That ruled out most of the market. A build at this scale, fitted out apartment by apartment, needs boards that match batch to batch and hold their colour and figure the whole way through.

One floor, every apartment

Because the range holds its colour and figure across batches, apartments completing in waves still landed on the same floor. Engineered construction was the sensible call over the building’s original concrete slabs, which is the usual choice for apartment and heritage-conversion work of this kind. The result is a set of interiors that photograph the way the design renders promised and feel the same underfoot from one apartment to the next.

Hard-wearing smokey oak, minimalist feel

The owners wanted a floor that read warm and sophisticated but stayed quiet under a modern, minimalist scheme. The brief called for a hard-wearing smokey grey oak that would suit a busy household and still look considered years on. French 75 answered both: the colour for the mood, the engineered board for the daily reality of apartment living.

A grey that lifts a compact space

In an apartment, light is the constraint. The soft grey of French 75 bounces daylight rather than soaking it up, so the living space reads brighter and more open. Against the owners’ pared-back palette the grain adds texture without noise, and the floor sits back and lets the room do the talking. Exactly the understated, sophisticated result the brief asked for.

A floor that fits everyday life

Sigita Kupača of Sigita Design was renovating her New Zealand home and wanted it built around her family, not the other way around. “I wanted a home that would suit our everyday life. It needed to fit in with us, not the other way around,” she says. Clean architectural lines, open space, natural accents, and room to breathe.

The floor had to carry all of it. She wanted one she and her guests could walk on in heels or boots without a second thought, not a floor to tiptoe around.

The hero of the home

“The flooring is, in a way, the hero of our home,” Sigita says. She built the palette around it, choosing colours and furnishings to complement the neutral oak rather than compete with it. The result is the simple, subtly sophisticated look she was after: architectural lines softened by natural timber underfoot.

Slow-grown northern oak like this is known for its tight, dense grain, part of the reason Sigita trusted it to handle real life. As general guidance, engineered European oak suits busy family homes well, though how any floor wears depends on the finish, the traffic and how it is looked after.

A home with soul

The owners set out to build a home with soul. To them that meant warmth, natural materials and a sense of craft. The house is a renovated 1970s modernist home, not large by today’s standards, with good proportions, big windows and original architectural detail.

They went back to the materials the original architect had drawn but never finished, then improved on them with their builder, landscaper and kitchen designer. The floor had to carry that same idea: honest timber, plenty of grain, laid as individual pieces you notice under bare feet.

Intimate in winter, open in summer

The house is intimate and personal, but it opens on both sides in summer to work as a pavilion for family and friends, then closes in over winter to stay cosy. It also has to run as a busy family home, so the floor gets used.

In the owner’s words, they do not have to be too precious about the floor and it still looks great, and like all natural timber it gets better with age. The herringbone gives every room a quiet rhythm without shouting for attention.

From railway sleepers to your floor

Raftwood began as reclaimed oak railway sleepers from the Eastern Bloc, some of them more than a century old. Those sleepers are long gone now, but the product lives on. Today it is European oak, worked in Dutch and German workshops by the same artisans, using the same hand techniques that show off every split, knot and dent.

It sits in the Flamingo range, a Dutch collection Vienna Woods represents directly in New Zealand. It comes in made to order, arriving only a few times a year, so no two runs look quite the same.

An oiled floor is easy to keep

The oil finish is forgiving. Everyday marks tend to sit into the character rather than stand out against it, and worn patches can be spot-repaired in place instead of sanding the whole floor. See how to care for an oiled timber floor.

A design-led terrace, built to a high spec

These luxury terraces in Auckland’s Inner West are set across three levels of living. The homes are larger than they look from the street, with a generous open living area anchored by an enormous kitchen in natural wood and stone.

The interior was design-focussed throughout, so the flooring had two jobs: hold its own against strong joinery and stone, and tie the levels together without drawing attention to itself. The brief called for a modern, versatile oak in a warm neutral tone.

One calm floor across three levels

Running a single oak family through all three levels gives the homes a sense of scale and continuity: nothing stops the eye at a landing. The taupe tone is the quiet anchor. It lets the kitchen’s natural wood and stone lead, and it stays neutral as the light changes through the day.