Parquetry
Custom Parquetry Flooring
Parquetry is flooring built as a pattern rather than a covering. Pieces are cut to a drawing, fitted dry, then laid so the geometry stays true against every wall in the room. One of ours took NWFA Wood Floor of the Year.
The discipline
Pattern work, cut from solid wood
A parquetry floor is assembled from individual pieces of hardwood arranged to a geometric design: squares, diamonds, stars, running bands, or a field pattern that fills the whole room. Marquetry, the related term you may see in parquet flooring design references, describes the same cutting done in thin veneer. On a floor that gets walked on, solid stock earns its place.
The practical difference for a client is scale. A pattern that photographs well at 6 feet can read as noise across a 30-foot great room, so the parquetry floor design starts from your dimensions and sightlines, then works back to the motif.
The award
The living room that won the category
Interlocking squares and diamonds run corner to corner across the room, framed by a sawtooth band and a dark outer border, then meet the surrounding plank floor at a clean line. Judging in the Parquetry category looks at design, execution and difficulty, which is a fair description of what a full-field parquet floor asks for.
The award and the shop behind it
Placement
Entries, great rooms, thresholds, stair landings
Entries carry the most obvious case, since a medallion in the center of a foyer is the first thing anyone sees and the last thing they walk on. Great rooms take field patterns, because there is enough floor to let a repeat develop. Thresholds and landings take borders, where the pattern does a job: it tells the eye where one room ends.
Parquetry floor installation is also possible into an existing floor. The pattern is routed in and the surrounding boards are woven back, so the finished floor reads as one surface rather than a patch.
How that works on a floor you already own
The commission
What a parquetry commission includes
- A scaled drawing of the pattern set into your actual room dimensions
- Species selection with samples viewed on site, in the room's own light
- Cutting and dry assembly on the bench before anything is glued down
- Field layout to a drawn centerline, so the pattern stays square to the walls
- Integration with existing floors, stone or tile where the pattern meets them
- Sanding and finishing across pattern and field as one surface
Questions
Before a parquetry commission
How much does a custom wood floor medallion cost?
Four things drive the price, roughly in this order: diameter, the number of individual pieces in the design, the species used, and whether the medallion goes into a new floor or is routed into an existing one. A simple four-species circle and a scrolled compass rose of the same diameter are very different amounts of work. We price each medallion after the drawing, so the figure covers your piece rather than an average.
What is the difference between parquetry and a herringbone floor?
Herringbone is one pattern. Parquetry is the whole discipline of building a floor out of individually cut pieces arranged to a geometric design, and herringbone is the most familiar member of that family. Parquetry also covers medallions, borders, inlays and full-room fields of squares, diamonds and stars, and those are typically cut to a drawing made for one specific room rather than laid from a repeating stock unit.
Can you match a pattern to my rug, ceiling or cabinetry?
Frequently, and it is one of the better starting points for a design. What changes is the level of detail. Motifs that live in fabric or plaster often carry fine strands that will fail underfoot, so the pattern gets redrawn at floor scale with the delicate elements consolidated. You see that drawing before anything is cut, and it is usually the moment the design stops being an idea and becomes a floor.
How do I care for a parquetry or hardwood floor?
Sweep or vacuum with a hard-floor head so grit stops acting as sandpaper, damp mop with the cleaner made for your finish, and keep standing water off the wood. Felt pads under furniture and mats at exterior doors prevent most of the damage a floor takes in its first years. Every commission leaves with care instructions specific to the finish that was used, since an oiled floor and a urethane floor want different treatment.
Commissions
Send us the room
A floor plan, a rough square footage, or a photo taken from the doorway is enough to start. You get a drawing and an estimate back before anything is cut.