Australian Blackwood

Australian Blackwood is the connoisseur's choice in this range. It is a timber more often seen in fine furniture than underfoot, and putting it on a floor is a deliberate decision rather than a default one.

The colour runs from golden brown through to a warm reddish brown, frequently with darker chocolate streaking following the grain. What sets Blackwood apart is figure: the species regularly produces fiddleback, a rippling three-dimensional shimmer across the grain that appears to move as you walk past it. Not every board will show it, and that unpredictability is part of the character.

It is a softer timber than the eucalypts alongside it in this range — noticeably less dense than Spotted Gum or Jarrah — so it is better suited to living areas and bedrooms than to a high-traffic entry where a dropped tool or a dog's claws will mark it. Specified in the right rooms, that is a reasonable trade for the way it looks.

It suits interiors with some formality: period homes, rooms with good joinery, spaces where the floor is meant to be noticed. Against cream and warm white it looks handsome; against cool grey the red undertone can sit awkwardly. As a real timber veneer it needs the same care as any hardwood floor — no standing water, felt pads under furniture, and a recoat rather than a strip-back when it starts to dull.

Australian Blackwood is a real Blackwood floor. If you want to know how Blackwood behaves underfoot on the Peninsula — how it sands, what coatings suit it, how it handles coastal humidity — read our Blackwood species guide.