So, what does brown look like? Brown means lots of different things, so does dark brown. What does dark brown look like? Reddish dark brown? Warm orangey reddish dark brown with golden undertones. There are so many ways to describe color. Too many. Definitely too many. And there are so many colors. I mean, if you’ve ever been to the paint swatch aisle at a hardware store, you know. And it gets more complicated when you add wood into the mix.
Why is Wood More Complicated?
Wood is a natural thing and we love that! We love it most of the time. It makes the table alive and real, it came from trees that grew for years. The table has history before it even begins. But it also means that not every piece is going to take the color the same. This means that any color or finish you choose is going to have some range in how it shows up. But that’s not all. Wood also has a grain to it. Different woods have different amounts and different kinds of grain, but they all have grain. And that grain always takes oil or stain differently. So the wood ends up with many different colors in it, even just in one piece of wood. This is both magical, and makes the process of choosing colors more complicated.
So. Many. Colors!
Here at Loewen Design Studios we’d like to make this process straightforward. To do that, we’ve done a lot of testing to find colors that will work well, that look a certain way, and that we can communicate clearly online. We work with Rubio Monocoat 2C oil. It’s a fantastic product - they make it in a lot of different colors, and you can mix multiple colors to make new colors. It also looks different on each wood, and we regularly work with 4 or 5 different woods. So all in all, there’s somewhere between 600 and infinite options, which is too many for us to have pictures of, and know what the range in the variation is. Some of those also look really similar. So what we’ve done is picked our favorites. The ones we think are best. And ones that look distinct enough to make them different colors. We’ve tried to pick colors in different woods from different categories so we don’t have only dark browns or only greys. We want a variety.
Narrowing It Down
Now, we did this all once before. About 5 years ago we made a list, chose a white, 2 greys, a black, natural, a medium brown, a dark brown, and a reddish brown. Then put those 8 colors on 3 woods, and made a different list for Walnut. This made sense at the time since we did mostly Walnut, so it got special treatment. But now, we do lots of everything, so everything should have special treatment.
This time around, we wanted to pick colors that made sense for each wood specifically. We picked finishes that look great for Ash, and made those the ones we’re promoting on Ash. Same for Maple, Red and White Oak, and we added a few to our Walnut offerings. This gives more options, and what we think are better options. Finishes that complement both the wood grain and the wood coloring. We’re really excited about this. Hope you will be too.
Now, all 600-infinity options still exist, and if you’re interested in one of those, reach out. We don’t have a ton of photos and we don’t know exactly how they’ll take to a bigger table, but we do know that we can figure out a brown that’s like Cocoa, but maybe just a bit more purple-y.
