A style guide for the period house
The mid-century modern house, in oak
New Zealand built some of its best houses between 1950 and 1975. Low roofs, long glass walls, timber ceilings and open plans, designed for the way people actually lived rather than for the street. Most of them are still standing, and most of them are being renovated by people who want to keep what was good about them. This page is for those houses: what the period asked of a floor, which of our oaks carry its tones, and how to take one colour from the floor to the ceiling and into the kitchen.
What makes a house mid-century modern?
A mid-century modern house is defined by its plan and its materials rather than by decoration: a low-pitched or mono-pitch roof, exposed rafters and a sarked timber ceiling, full-height glazing to a garden or a view, open living, and materials used honestly, so timber reads as timber and block reads as block.
In New Zealand the style arrived through the Group Architects in Auckland and a generation of architects who followed them through the 1950s and 60s, working in native timber, brick and concrete block on modest budgets. The result is a house that feels light and unforced, and that rewards restraint when you renovate it.
What colours are mid-century modern?
The mid-century palette is warm timber first, then a small number of saturated accents: teak and walnut browns, mustard, olive, burnt orange and teal, held together by white walls and a lot of daylight.
The floor sets the temperature of the whole scheme. Get it right and the accents can be bold without the room feeling loud. Get it too grey or too pale and the period reference disappears.
Which oak flooring suits a mid-century house?
A warm oak with visible grain, a matt finish and a wide board: wide enough to read as a plane rather than a pattern, matt enough that the timber looks like timber rather than a coating. Three colours in our range do this, from light to dark: Saint-Tropez, Marron and Bordeaux.
Light
Saint-Tropez Oak
A warm natural oak, matt, on a micro bevel. The lightest of the three and the closest to the pale teak of a Danish sideboard. For rooms that already carry a lot of timber overhead, where the floor should sit quietly beneath it.
Shown at Twin Peaks, Wānaka.
Saint-Tropez
Mid
Marron Oak
A warm mid-brown, matt, on a micro bevel. The truest mid-century tone in the range: brown without red, depth without going dark. The floor to put under olive, mustard and tan leather.
Our newest colour. Order a sample to see it in your own light.
Marron
Dark
Bordeaux Oak
The deepest brown in the range, brushed, with a handmade bevel. This is the walnut end of the period: for a house with a lot of glass, a lot of view and white walls, where a dark floor grounds the room.
Shown at McDrurys Road, Canterbury.
Bordeaux
Walls and ceilings
The ceiling is half the room
A timber ceiling is the signature of the period, and the part of a mid-century renovation that most often goes missing. Our wall and ceiling boards are the same European oak as the floor, in every colour, at half the floor board width so the joins line through.
They are tongue and groove, fixed directly to the framing without plasterboard, and a genuine alternative to cedar where the budget or the colour match will not stretch to it.
The mid-century kitchen
A kitchen in the same tone as the floor
Flat-front timber cabinetry is the mid-century kitchen, and the hardest thing to get right is the colour: veneer chosen from a swatch under shop lighting rarely matches the floor it lands on.
We colour match cabinetry to every oak in the range, in oak veneer or melamine depending on the budget, so the floor, the ceiling and the kitchen read as one material. Our in-house interior designers work the whole scheme with you, from the floor up.
In New Zealand houses
The period, borrowed
None of these is a period house. Each takes something from it. Minaret Ridge is a modest gable-formed home in Wānaka, reimagined with a second storey and laid in Saint-Tropez. Winders sets Saint-Tropez beneath cedar-lined ceilings and bagged schist. Chalmers Street runs Bordeaux through split-level apartments and up the stairs.
Minaret Ridge
Winders
Chalmers Street
Renovating the period house
Questions we are asked
In New Zealand, usually native timber strip flooring (rimu or mataī) on piles, parquet in the better houses, and cork or vinyl in kitchens and bathrooms. A wide engineered oak board is a modern reading of the same idea: real timber, one material across the plan, with the width and stability the originals did not have.
Either is faithful to the period. Narrow strip is what most houses were built with; wide plank is what the architects would have used if it had existed. A 240mm board reads as a plane and lets the ceiling and the glazing do the talking, which is why we recommend it for open-plan living. Where a room is small or the original strip survives elsewhere in the house, herringbone in 120mm pieces gives rhythm without pattern.
Yes, over a level timber subfloor or a concrete slab, including a heated slab. A 20mm board with a 6mm oak wear layer on a eucalyptus core is dimensionally stable in a way solid timber is not, and can be re-sanded four to five times over its life. Our installation guide covers subfloor preparation and moisture, and we can advise on your specific house.
Warm, and matt. The period palette runs from pale teak to walnut, never grey and rarely bleached. From our range, Saint-Tropez is the light end, Marron the middle and Bordeaux the dark end. Samples are free and unlimited, and a week in your own light tells you more than an hour in a showroom.
Yes. Our wall and ceiling boards are colour matched to every flooring colour, supplied tongue and groove at half the floor board width, and fixed directly to the framing. A timber ceiling is the single element that most reliably returns a renovated house to the period.
Our flooring is one rate across every colour, $190 per square metre plus GST supplied, with installation typically $55 to $80 per square metre depending on the subfloor and the lay. Wall and ceiling boards are $130 per square metre plus GST. Flooring is quoted per project; samples ship free anywhere in New Zealand.
Order the three samples
Saint-Tropez, Marron and Bordeaux, free and unlimited, delivered anywhere in New Zealand. Lay them side by side under the ceiling you have.
Order samples
Build the whole scheme
Floor, ceiling, cabinetry, carpet and cladding tones resolved together, with an indication of budget. Start with the scheme guide, then talk to one of our interior designers.
Scheme guide
Book a consultation
Free, about an hour, in Christchurch, Auckland or Queenstown, or by video call anywhere in New Zealand. Bring plans and photographs of the house as it is.
Book a consultation