Discontinuing Carriage House and Manor Collections

Discontinuing any of our Collections is always a difficult decision and one that we don’t make lightly.  We are fortunate to have the opportunity every day to work on the front lines of design, not only with the designers themselves but also with the homeowners who are going to live in these incredible spaces.  The creative process is always so rich with change and evolution that we are constantly reevaluating what we think is on-trend.

The good news is that design, like other arts, never stays the same, resulting in a dynamic exchange of ideas that, in flooring, revolves around dimensions, textures and color.  At Carlisle, we identify what is trending, and what is no longer trending, and from these exchanges, we are able to take those learnings into our Collections offerings.  We always want to be reflecting on what is new while retiring what is no longer front and center in the design world. What we have seen trending more recently is a general movement away from floors with heavy character such as knots, mineral streaking or ingrown bark; as well as, a continued movement to natural or light tone floors that use white or gray washes in the grain.

Based on these trends we decided to discontinue our Carriage House and Manor Collection and work on launching new Collections that address more recent trends.

It is important to remember that just because a trend shifts it doesn’t mean those floors are not desirable.  There are still many styles that call for a more rustic feel or the more formal look of a dark Walnut floor.  The truth is these floors are timeless and will never truly go out of style.  For that reason, we will always share these options with our clients and make them available inside our custom design process.

As a matter of fact, even our newest Earthen Collection has a darker Walnut color as one of the options.  However, In general, our Collections are intended to try and reach the broadest audience through products with the widest appeal, which is why we made this alteration to our offerings.

Newest Carlisle Collection: Earthen

Our newest Collection is Earthen, which uses Hickory as its foundation.  This choice was dictated by the very beginning of what we sense is a movement away from White Oak.  White Oak  has been the dominant choice of wide plank flooring for quite a few years and although it will always be a big part of what we do we also get a lot more inquires asking “what other species can I use?”  Hickory is an extremely hard and beautiful wood and has always been our second most popular species, making developing a Collection around it a natural fit.

Although the Collection can be customized to change the amount of character found in the floor our standard offering uses our Signature Grade.  The reason for this is twofold:

1. We are seeing that our clients want to have some character to show that the floor is natural and handmade, but they do not want the character to be so heavy that it takes it into a rustic style.  The subtle character can still be used in highly contemporary, or even refined designs, as the naturalness of the plank lends to the authenticity of material which is essential in even the more formal styles.
2. When we are discussing wood grade options with our clients it is easier for them to look at pictures with some character and visualize the floor without knots.  While it is much more difficult to look at a cleaner, more formal, Heirloom grade and try to visualize the knots into the floor.  We feel that starting the discussion by showcasing the character in the floor really helps in setting expectations around what each grade may look like.

The sheen of the Earthen Collection are also alterations to move more on-trend. Both the Manor and the Carriage House Collections were finished in a satin sheen and the current trends are moving much more toward extra matte, or even lower, sheens to create a very natural unfinished look to the flooring.  A satin sheen will measure in a range of around 30 degrees while our Earthen Collection uses an extra matte sheen that measures between 5-9 degrees.  This lower sheen always helps in disguising small scratches as there is not a high gloss that has been disrupted by the scratch.

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Earthen Collection: Wood Colors and Stains

The color choices in the Earthen Collection are also reflective of how we see color breaking down in current designs.  We maintained a darker Walnut color in Humus which has rich brown tones that will never go out of style and we also created a medium brown in Alluvium which takes the reddish-orange tone out of the brown.  Our clients typically want a more “true brown” and we think Alluvium meets this request without fully covering the character in the wood.

We are also offering 3 levels of gray stains in the Earthen Collection.

Argil is the lightest and just barely visible in the grain, Kaolin takes the same pigments and just uses more to get a slightly greater awareness of the gray tone over the wood.

And then there is Regur, which although a dark gray tone still allows the beauty of the wood to play through.  The choice for this progression of grays is due to the fact that many grays appear very cold and those particular tones seem to be less popular today.  People like the universal attraction of gray, but they want it warmer and that is where the brown of the Hickory heartwood, pushing through the stain, really brings an exciting new blend of browns and grays to flooring that works to warm up the overall feel of each board.

And then finally we have the always popular whitewash look in Chalk. Whitewashes work to neutralize some of the wider variation in the colors of the wood by muting them overall.  You can certainly see the dramatic variation in a Hickory floor, and by throwing a veil over this breadth of color you get a slightly more homogeneous feel, allowing the client to match it to a wider variety of interiors.

A tremendous amount of thought and development goes into our curated Collections and we never believe any floor should be “discontinued”, but we do believe that other floors should take center stage and bask in the spotlight.  So while we move our Carriage House and Manor Collections to the custom side of our business we are excited to welcome our Earthen Collection to the stage!

Want to see how we push the boundaries of traditional product development into artistic concept exploration?  Read the blog post Flooring Reimagined on Bright Bazaar