The right question isn't which wood is best
It's the question we get most, and the one with the most nuance. There is no best wood: there's the right one for a specific use, place and budget. A species that works perfectly in an interior dressing room can be the wrong call on a seafront terrace.
That's why the first step in any project isn't picking a wood, it's describing the piece properly: where it goes, how much it will be used, whether it gets sun, whether there's humidity, and what load it will carry.
Four criteria that matter more than taste
Hardness: how well it takes knocks and daily use. Cumaru and tzalam are among the hardest we work; cedar is softer and lighter.
Stability: how much the piece moves with humidity swings. Decisive in large doors and wide tops.
Tone and grain: not every species takes any colour. Heavily lightening a dark wood, or staining a very pale one dark, almost always looks forced.
Availability and format: some pieces — a single-slab dining table, say — depend on sourcing wide boards, and parota has the advantage there.
If you arrive with a colour in mind
Starting from colour is perfectly valid: many people arrive with a photo and a tone they like. What we do is find the species whose natural tone comes closest to that reference, and adjust the rest with the finish.
Working this way — rather than forcing a stain far from the base colour — is what keeps the wood looking like wood instead of a painted surface.
Seeing them before deciding
On the woods and finishes page we keep a colour chart with the species ordered by tone, darkest to lightest, and each sample opens full size. It's a good starting point, but the final decision is always made on a physical sample of the finish applied to the chosen species.