Swish Native Hardwood - Blackbutt Natural - 14/3mm Australian Hardwood Flooring

Natural is a grade, not a shade, and in Blackbutt it is the most feature-rich of the three. The swatch shows the colour you would expect from the species — a pale honey blonde with a soft pinkish-tan cast and fine, mostly straight grain — but at ABCD grade the boards are allowed to carry everything the tree gave them: tight knots, fine gum vein and visible differences in tone from one board to the next. Alongside Blackbutt Neat and Blackbutt Select the colour is broadly the same; what sets this one apart is that nothing has been filtered out. It is also the widest board in the range at 189mm, which shows that character off at scale.

Grade is the single most important thing to understand in this range, and it is easy to miss because Natural, Neat and Select sound like colours. They are not. All three of a given species come from the same timber and land in much the same colour family; what changes is how much feature the boards are allowed to carry — knots, gum vein, colour variation between boards and small natural markings. Eco Flooring Systems publish this board as an ABCD grade veneer, which is the full-feature end of the range: nothing is screened out, so you get the whole spread of the species. Neat is published as a cleaner ABC grade, which excludes the busiest boards, and Select is the calmer, narrower option again. Choosing between them is choosing how loud you want the timber to be.

A full-feature floor is the practical choice for a house that gets used. Knots, vein and tonal variation do an excellent job of hiding the scratches, sand and scuffs that accumulate in hallways, kitchens and around pets and children, and Blackbutt's pale honey base keeps rooms feeling light while it does so. The 189mm width suits open-plan living and larger rooms, where a wide board makes the space read generously; in a narrow hallway or a small bedroom, the 136mm Neat or Select boards will look better proportioned.

Here is what you are actually buying. Swish Native Hardwood is an engineered board, not a solid one: a wear layer of Australian Blackbutt bonded to a cross-laminated engineered core, which is why the specification is written as 14/3mm (3mm hardwood wear layer) rather than as a single figure. This board runs 189mm wide by 1900mm long with a micro-bevelled edge and a tongue and groove profile, packs cover 2.155 m² over six boards, and it can be glued down or floated over underlay. The engineered core is the reason it can be laid over concrete slabs and in apartments where a solid strip floor would be difficult, and it moves far less with seasonal humidity than solid hardwood of the same width. It is still timber, though, so it must be delivered and acclimatised in the room before installation — that step is not optional on engineered boards any more than it is on solid ones. Emissions are rated E1 at less than 5ppm, and the supplier product code for this board is BB189NS.

Eco Flooring Systems source the timber for this range from responsibly managed forests, and using Australian species means the hardwood underfoot has not been shipped across the world before it reaches your floor. Engineering the board also stretches that hardwood a long way, concentrating it in the layer you actually walk on. Remember that every board of a natural timber floor is different and that all timber shifts tone as it ages under light — Australian hardwoods in particular tend to deepen and warm over the first year or two. That is the character you are paying for rather than a flaw, but it does mean you should hold a physical sample in your own room rather than judging colour from a screen. Supply and install available across Sydney.

Specifications

• Range: Swish Native Hardwood by Eco Flooring Systems
• Colour / grade: Blackbutt Natural
• Type: Engineered timber floor with an Australian Blackbutt wear layer
• Thickness: 14/3mm (3mm hardwood wear layer)
• Board width: 189mm
• Board length: 1900mm
• Veneer grade: ABCD grade (full feature)
• Edge detail: Micro-bevelled
• Profile: Tongue & Groove
• Installation: Glue down or floating
• Pack coverage: 2.155 m² per pack
• Boards per pack: 6
• Emissions: VOC rating E1, <5ppm
• Supplier product code: BB189NS