Distilled Collection oak flooring running through an open-plan coastal home on Waiheke by Sojo Design

Vienna Woods · Project story

The Floor Came First

Waiheke, Auckland · Sojo Design

A Distilled Collection European oak runs through this coastal home on Waiheke, designed by Sojo Design. The team picked the timber before anything else, then built the whole interior around it. The finished house is warm and relaxed, a beachside home that feels lived in rather than styled, with the floor holding the palette together.

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The brief · Waiheke

A home away from home

The client wanted a home away from home. Somewhere beautiful but still relaxed, comfortable for guests of every age, and coastal without being over-styled. It also had to age well. Sojo Design started where they always do, with the floor that would run right through the house, because everything else would be chosen to sit against it.

The floor

Warm oak, coastal light

Sojo Design chose Manhattan from the Distilled Collection, a European oak. Wide boards, a warm natural tone, and real timber grain that reads as texture rather than pattern. On a coastal site that mattered. The oak carries the daylight without fighting the cedar ceilings and dark joinery around it, and its warmth stops an otherwise restrained palette from feeling cold. The boards are lacquered, a warm finish in keeping with a relaxed family holiday house.

Distilled oak grain beside linen in a coastal bedroom on Waiheke

The result

Warm and calm throughout

The installed floor does exactly what it was asked to. It runs unbroken from the kitchen and living space to the stairs and into the bedrooms, so the eye never lands on a change of material. Against dark cabinetry, linen and stone, the oak keeps the whole house warm and calm, and low sun across the grain shows why the team led with it. It looks like it belongs on the beachfront, which was the point.

Distilled oak flooring tying the living space to the outdoor deck

Oak staircase in raking sun, the Distilled floor continuing up through the house

The detail · Sojo Design

Flooring, never an afterthought

For Sojo Design, flooring is never an afterthought. They work from the ground up, choosing the material that sets the tone before the rest of the palette follows. Here that meant contrasting fabrics and dark furniture set against warm oak, a mix of natural textures for depth, and a restrained scheme that stays out of its own way. In their words, “It all started with Vienna Woods.”