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.
