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 is the director of YG Studio, her own interior design practice in Auckland. She works in residential interiors, and the house on this page is her own.
You can read her approach off the house 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. In the powder room she hands the room over to the stone and lets it talk.
That is a designer who works in restraint rather than in features, which is exactly the brief a floor has to answer.
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.
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. It is also one of only two in the collection that is smooth-planed rather than brushed, and that is the decision doing the most work. A brushed surface pulls the grain forward. A planed one lets it lie flat, so the floor reads as tone and scale rather than texture.
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 gets the joins, the traffic and the afternoon light like everybody else who buys it. We think that is about as honest as a reference gets.
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.
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.
See Conde in your own light
Order a free sample, or talk to us about your project.