Smoked Oak Flooring in an Award-Winning Tairua Tent House
Vienna Woods supplied Admonter Oak Lapis, a smoked, natural-oiled European oak, through the Tent House at Ocean Beach in Tairua. Strachan Group Architects set a curved timber form into the sand dunes. The floor had to hold its own against cedar linings and a very big view, so it runs deep and quiet.
A floor for a house in the dunes
The Tent House sits low among the sand dunes near Ocean Beach, Tairua. Strachan Group Architects wrapped it in a curved roof and lined it in timber, so the interior already carried a lot of warm, vertical grain. The floor could not add more noise.
What the house needed was a horizontal plane with depth and calm: something that reads as one continuous surface underfoot, holds up against strong coastal light, and lets the cedar and the sea do the talking.
Admonter Oak Lapis, smoked and oiled
Oak Lapis is an engineered European oak floor from Admonter, the Austrian brand Vienna Woods represents in New Zealand. It is made in Austria.
Its colour is not a stain sitting on the surface. The boards are smoked, a traditional process where the timber reacts with its own tannins, which is why the tone carries through the oak wear layer and shifts between lighter and darker grain rather than sitting flat. The result is a layered mid-brown with real depth. It is finished with a natural oil, which keeps the open grain readable and the surface tactile underfoot.
Smoked oak is not a common floor in New Zealand, which is part of why it suits a house like this one.
Quiet underfoot, loud out the window
Laid through the living areas and the curved circulation spine, the floor does exactly what the architecture asked of it. It grounds the cedar linings without competing, and it holds its colour against a wall of coastal glare.
The house won a 2023 NZIA Waikato/Bay of Plenty Architecture Award in the Housing category. That is Strachan Group Architects’ work, not ours, but it is a good floor to have under it.
Architecture: Strachan Group Architects. Photography: Jackie Meiring.
Order an Oak Lapis sample
Smoked oak reads differently in every light. Get a board in your hand and put it on the floor of the room.
See the Admonter range
Austrian-made European oak and larch floors, plus reclaimed alder wall and ceiling panels.
More Vienna Woods projects
Homes around New Zealand where the floor was chosen first and the rest followed.
Thinking about a smoked oak floor?
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