Seina Yan, the designer behind Conde
A colour she helped shape for our Icons collection, and then chose to live on.
Most designers specify a floor. Seina Yan helped shape one. She worked on Conde with us for the Icons collection, then laid it through her own home in Hobsonville, which is a good deal more commitment to a colour than a sample rack asks for.
Seina Yan, YG Studio
Seina trained with a Bachelor of Arts majoring in Interior Design in New Zealand, then worked at two established commercial studios, Wonder Group and Material Creative, across retail, workspace and hospitality projects. She started YG Studio about a year ago and now works mostly on high-end residential interiors, from renovations through to larger new builds.
Her own description of the job sits closer to interior architecture than interior design: she is involved in spatial planning and architectural detailing as much as material selection, and treats a house as one cohesive whole rather than a set of rooms designed separately.
You can read that approach off the house on this page better than off any statement. Timber runs on three planes at three different scales: fine dark flutes on the living room wall, mid brown boards at the stairs, and the palest of the three underfoot. The kitchen joinery goes dark, the living room joinery goes plaster-pale, and the same floor does a different job in each.
Shaping a colour, rather than choosing one
Icons is our designer collection: each colour developed with a New Zealand interior designer instead of picked off a supplier’s range. Seina helped shape Conde while she was choosing flooring for her own home and couldn’t find what she wanted on the market, so working with us was a chance to help make it herself.
She had a say in the tone, the grade and the surface before a board was milled. What came out is the palest of the six Icons colours, a creamy blonde carrying the faintest smoky grey, kept deliberately neutral rather than yellow, grey or washed out, so it sits under a wide range of materials without taking over.
It is also one of only two colours in the collection that is smooth-planed rather than brushed. A brushed surface pulls the grain forward; a planed one lets it lie flat, for a cleaner, more contemporary read that still lets the natural variation show. There is a practical reason too, hers: it wipes down easily, which she says her two young children make good use of.
A floor built to sit under everything else
Conde is a 220mm wide plank up to 2.2m long, on a 15mm engineered build with a 4mm European oak wear layer. The width is the point: fewer joins across a big floor means the eye reads the timber as one surface instead of a pattern.
The finish is an ultra-matt lacquer, so it stays low-glare in a room with this much light in it. Pale and even, under an open plan, it gives the walls and the joinery and the stone room to move. That is what a designer is actually buying when she picks the quietest colour in the range.
The harder test
Drawing a colour is one thing. Living on it is another. Seina specified Conde through her own house in Hobsonville, from the entry through the living and dining areas and into the kitchen, with the same oak carrying on up the stairs. She designed the colour around her home’s own palette, warm whites, brick, natural stone and dark timber cabinetry, but built it to work well beyond that one interior too.
Having lived on it, she says she would specify it again without hesitation. Conde has become one of her go-to choices for other YG Studio projects, easy to pair against different stones, timbers, metals and fabrics.
We asked how it is actually wearing, rather than how it is supposed to wear. Her answer, in full: “It’s wearing really well, especially considering we have two young children, so the floor definitely isn’t treated delicately. There are inevitably a few small marks from everyday family life, but I actually think that is part of living with a natural timber floor. The desaturated, natural tone is quite forgiving; it doesn’t highlight every little mark, bit of dust or scratch. I wouldn’t want a timber floor that I felt I had to be precious about. A good natural material should be able to age with the house and still look beautiful, and so far Conde has done exactly that.”
The panelling, the joinery and the stone in these photographs are not our product. They are Seina’s, and they are the reason the floor works as hard as it does.
The specification
| Colour | Conde, by Seina Yan |
|---|---|
| Collection | Icons |
| Construction | Engineered, 4mm European oak wear layer over a multi-ply core |
| Plank size | 220 × 2200mm |
| Thickness | 15mm board / 4mm oak wear layer |
| Grade | Feature |
| Texture | Smooth-planed |
| Finish | Ultra-matt lacquer |
| Profile | Tongue & groove, 0.5mm micro-bevel |
| Installation | Glue down |
| Warranty | 20 years residential |
Interior design: Seina Yan, YG Studio. Photography: Jono Parker.
See the house
The full project: Conde through a Hobsonville home by YG Studio.
A second Conde home
The same colour, carried into a rural home at Taupaki.
Icons Conde
The full spec, live stock and a sample of the board itself.
The Icons collection
Six colours, each developed with a New Zealand designer.
YG Studio
More of Seina’s residential interiors.
See Conde in your own light
Order a free sample, or talk to us about your project.