Alluminio Elivia Horizontal Wood Grain 2VS2 - Wenge - Swing

This highly elegant and only slightly mysterious interior door model is a full-fledged member of the Elivia interior door family. Buying it would be a good move on the customer’s part once the following is considered:

It comes in all standard sizes and configurations, plus, as is the case with pretty much all Almese interior doors, custom options are most certainly available.

It was built using the latest engineering breakthroughs in interior door technology. More on that later.

It comes with our state-of-the-art, ultra-modern hardware, including (but not limited to) the Italian-made 3D-adjustable, self-lubricating concealed hinges (which, apart from their aesthetic value, make the installation ten times easier and faster), soundless magnetic lock, and automatic sweep.

It is warp-resistant.

It has excellent (way above industry standards) sound-proofing and thermal insulation qualities. The former is an invaluable feature where privacy is important – or if you just want to have a bit of a quiet time. The latter will favorably affect your electric bill.

As for what inspired the designers to create this particular interior door model:

First off, horizontal means the direction of the wood grain (or, to use a technical term, the latitudinal orientation thereof), no more and no less. If one of your goals is to impart additional visual space to your interior design (as in, make the room appear wider), this interior door is for you.

Visual tricks have been used by designers and architects since time immemorial. Specifically, ancient Greeks may or may not have invented “optical correction” (as they humorously referred to it), but they certainly turned it into an art in and of itself. Roman engineers, less romantic and more practical, were nonetheless just as fond of it. There isn’t a structure in the world dating back to antiquity that does not bear traces of this. Folks realized very early on that in architecture, perception is everything. That is why, if you look closely at the Parthenon (to pick a structure at random), you will see that each column is wider at the bottom than at the top; that all those columns are tilted inward; that the base of the facade slopes down from the center on either side; and that all of the temple’s geometry seems to be slightly off – all this in order to achieve perfect visual symmetry. For, lo and behold, it does appear quite symmetrical – and quite light – from a distance.

The two vertical stripes spaced closely together (2VS2) are elegant-looking – and a bit of a mystery. The designers are somewhat reluctant to reveal what, exactly, they’re supposed to symbolize, but we can guess. The two towers of Notre Dame in Paris? The majestic supports of the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge linking Brooklyn (or, more precisely, Long Island, with its glacial history of the kame and terminal moraines formed by the advance and retreat of two ice sheets so long ago) to Staten Island? (By the way, if the latter is true, the notion isn’t altogether accurate: those two massive gates are vertical, all right, yet not quite parallel: because of the bridge’s great size, they’re sufficiently far apart to be tilted outward from each other – in keeping with the Earth’s curvature!)

Let’s move on to the finishes.   

Would it look good on your interior door? You decide.

This finish breathes equatorial passion. Modeled on Millettia laurentii, a legume tree commonly known as African rosewood, it will impart to your doors an air of cozy warmth, a feature that so many ultra-modern, deliberately matter-of-fact modern interiors so often lack. As a tropical timber, wenge is dark in color with a distinctive figure and a strong partridge wood pattern. It is known for its quaint (and curious, yes) striations of wavy grain. The wood is dense and quite heavy. When kiln-dried, the surface becomes perfectly smooth, with tight pores and very few variations in the grain.

Suitable for many types of interior door, a good wenge finish can serve as the final touch – the master stroke, if you will – in any type of decor, bringing out or emphasizing, depending on the arrangement, the most striking qualities of each nuance. It invariably conjures up images of the whispering tropical rainforest interrupted here and there by red rock ridges and cliffs rising haughtily out of the jungle; or alpine meadows and swirling mists of the wild slopes leading up to Margherita Peak. The mighty Congo River dissects the landscape, calm and confident, having exerted so much influence on the human imagination over the centuries, mysterious and alluring: so many travelers, adventurers, and explorers from various countries and cultures treated it as the destination of choice.

In certain European traditions, wenge (both the wood and the color) has long been associated with high-end products and has been vastly popular in luxury homes, as well as offices. Small wonder: it is amazingly easy on the eyes. It has that soothing quality one finds oneself coveting after a long day’s work, and it can also work wonders creating a cozy atmosphere when one is hosting a banquet, a conference, or simply has guests over. It should be able to serve as a perfect (and utterly tactful) background for one’s antiques collection; it brings out the best features of, and focuses a viewer’s attention on, paintings and photographs; it accentuates the modern interior door’s convenience and adds to the classic style interior door quiet dignity. One of wenge’s most intriguing qualities as a color is it is almost impossible to compare with anything. Is it anything like Van Dyck brown? Not really. Italian espresso? Hardly. And so forth. Singularly enough, it goes equally well with flat surfaces and raised moldings; unapologetic “functional” simplicity and intricate ornamentation.