Here’s an interesting recipe I just happened upon, and I promise it’s not for a hair conditioner or shampoo: sunflower, soybean and thistle oil + natural waxes carnauba and canella. Indeed, it sounds like an organic hair pomade, but the combination of ingredients actually manifests in the natural finish for DuChateau Wood Floors: “an environmentally friendly, zero-VOC, preservative-free, unique lustrous finish that maximizes natural character and beauty, and gains a rich patina and refinement as it ages.”

Antique-Style Wood Floor. Manufactured by DuChateau Wood Floors.

DuChateau’s Wood Floors Synthesize Sustainability with Old World Craftsmanship

The innovative hard wax oil finish isn’t the only quality of interest apropos of DuChateau, but it does pique the curiosity of yours truly, since my own hardwoods lost their singular luster long ago. This begs the question, can one re-finish an old floor with DuChateau’s signature hard wax oil?

Looking at the beautiful burnished expanse of DuChateau’s Heritage Timber Trestle, or the intricate, dappled striations of Riverstone Thames, I’m tempted to declare the previous query moot. For if you’ve the ways and means (and even if you don’t), you really should do your darnedest to put the stunning beauty of DuChateau’s sustainably-sourced hardwood floors within foot’s reach.

“Putting a modern twist on vintage style flooring,” DuChateau employs textured hardwoods to create floors that are a textural and visual tour de force. The DuChateau line is comprised of eight different styles, each featuring “long-length, wide-plank or parquet patterned floors that have been hand scraped, smoked, and/or wire-brushed for a truly one-of-a-kind appearance.”

Any one of the various colors available within the eight different styles is sufficient to demonstrate the aesthetic ingenuity of a DuChateau floor, yet the recent Riverstone Collection is front and center in my purview. The four distinct incarnations of this collection—Thames, Arno, Seine, Rhine, and Danube—evoke the wondrous rhythm of these four European waterways, as the grain, coloration, and texture of each ebbs and flows. With natural distressing, raised knots, and varied coloration among two different types of hardwoods (oak and walnut), DuChateau’s Riverstone Collection offers understated elegance and timeless beauty.

About the Manufacturer: Modeled after antique wood floors from Old Europe, San Diego-based DuChateau Floors offers reproductions of styles that haven’t been seen for centuries. DuChateau sources all their hardwood for sustainably managed, FSC-certified forests. Finished with Hard Wax Oil—a natural, non-toxic substance that penetrates and protects, imparting a uniquely beautiful matte finish—DuChateau Floors “keep true to their hardwood floor production philosophy… creating textured hardwood floors with changing grain patterns of the natural wood characterizing true artistic design.”