How to Choose the Right Wood Finish

At Tom Raffield, it's no surprise that wood means more to us than just a material, from the lighting we craft to the values that shape how we design and make each piece - we are the wooden light people!

The majority of our lighting is created using three types of sustainable hardwood - ash, oak, and walnut - each with unique characteristics. Perhaps, most importantly, these woods steam bend beautifully, allowing us to shape every design into sculptural, fluid lighting that sits effortlessly within your home.

Diverse, durable, and tactile, wood is the perfect natural material to introduce into your interior design scheme, adding texture, depth and warmth. Read on as we explore the qualities of our favourite trio of sustainably sourced hardwoods, with top tips from Tom on how to combine these versatile wood tones to create a welcoming and curated interior scheme.

Let's Talk Wood

Before introducing one of our handcrafted wooden lights into your home, it’s helpful to understand the unique qualities of the wood we use. Perhaps sustainability is at the heart of your design scheme, or maybe you’re drawn to a more distinct grain or warmer shades. Let’s break it down - starting with ash.

Ash is an incredibly tough, shock-absorbing, pale hardwood that is naturally supple. This versatility allows us to be more experimental, introducing complex bends within our designs, without the fear of wastage. Fast-growing and self-seeding, ash is one of the most sustainable hardwoods, with an ample supply, largely due to ash dieback in Europe, increasing quantities of timber from harvesting and tree felling.

Timeless, full of character and with a straight grain, oak is one of the most well-known and loved hardwoods, offering a warming mid-tone that naturally darkens and mellows with exposure to sunlight, complementing a range of interior schemes.

Last, but by no means least, is walnut, our darkest wood. Rich and chocolatey brown with a tight grain, walnut adds a sophisticated touch to your home.

Read here for more information on how we sustainably source our wood.

Choose Your Lead

When mixing different woods within your design scheme, begin by choosing one type as your primary material. This creates a foundation to build upon, allowing you to set the direction of your interior style, taking inspiration from the varying tone, texture, and finish of your chosen wood.

Tom's Top Tip:

“Choosing a dominant wood tone is a great place to start, whether it’s your flooring, a key furniture piece or cabinetry. Take the lead from the age and architecture of your home for inspiration. For instance, if you're lucky enough to have original features like wooden beams or floorboards, embrace their character and consider how they can become a natural focal point and what wood tone would complement them the most.

We know that ash is a pale wood, working perfectly in Scandinavian-inspired interiors, adding a contemporary, clean look, with its subtle grain. Oak offers a warming, timeless aesthetic, suiting a more rustic and country-inspired interior, while walnut is rich, inviting and cocooning and lends itself to a mid-century style.

Once you've established your leading wood choice, you can introduce other wood tones through lighting and accessories.”

Combining Tones

Combining different wood tones can be a little daunting, much like mixing metals, it might seem unnatural to mix light and dark, warm and cool tones. However, with a considered design scheme and a little continuity, you can create a beautifully layered interior, showcasing multiple textures and colours.

Tom's Top Tip: 

“Mixing wood tones in your home adds contrast, texture, and, when done well, can create a confident, curated interior design scheme. Once you’ve chosen your dominant shade, carefully look at the undertones - ash tends to be cool with grey and beige tones, oak is warm with a golden hue, and walnut is rich with a subtle, cool, almost purple tone.

To create a balanced look, avoid clustering the same wood tone in one area; instead, bring together accents of each throughout the space. Grouping pendant lighting is a delicate way to achieve this – suspending lights at different heights adds visual rhythm. Combining the Urchin Pendant light in oak, ash, and walnut is the perfect example - warm light gathers between the strips of wood, adding an ambient glow that softens the contrast between the varying wood tones.”

Time to layer

The beauty of wood lies in its individuality; no two pieces are ever the same, each with unique grain variation and natural ageing. These characteristics allow you to build a design scheme contributing to a space that feels personal and timeless, creating a home which is unique to you, with textured layers and pops of colour.

Tom's Top Tip: 

“The key to bringing together and softening the contrast between different wood tones is layering. Introducing soft accents of colour, through textiles, such as cushions, throws and rugs, highlights the undertones of the wood, while also adding balance to the contrast of ash, oak and walnut.

Layering a statement ceiling light, such as our Drift Pendant in walnut, with a subtle Hanter Wall Light in oak, allows one type of wood to take centre stage. You can combine a colour scheme that mixes cool and warm tones to balance the tonal variations in wood. Introducing whitewashed panelling also works well, providing the perfect backdrop for a range of wood tones, or you could choose to layer tonally, incorporating our Neap Wall Light in oak to a complementary cladded wall, adding an abundance of dimension and character.”

Posted: 27.06.25