Art and science meet at PID Floors
Time-honored woodworking techniques alongside the most cutting-edge in biochemistry.
Our inLove Collection offers bespoke services that allow us to create custom flooring locally in Brooklyn, New York. If you can dream it, we can create it, and the possibilities are endless. Any and every aspect of our product can be customized—from the species and grade of wood—to the construction and dimensions of the wood planks. This exciting collection embraces both tradition and innovation, employing time-honored woodworking techniques alongside the most cutting-edge in biochemistry. Art and science meet with the use of reactive color processes: wood smoking (also known as fuming) and reaction-based stains.
Done by hand, our reaction staining process uses techniques developed over 300 years ago, before the advent of pigment stains or paints. Flooring stains, made from pigment or dye, saturate the wood with color. This saturation of color often masks or conceals the inherent qualities and unique beauty of the wood. Our natural reaction-based stains and wood smoking processes are quite different because they chemically alter the physical structure of the wood, on a molecular level, to produce a desired color or effect.
In reactive color processes, natural chemicals or elements are applied or introduced to the wood, via stain or smoke, which then react with the tannins, sugars, and minerals found inside wood cells. It is this chemical reaction inside the wood’s molecular structure that changes the color of the wood and creates the desired outcome. This reaction also makes the wood harder and denser, adding to the wood’s overall durability. Visually, this reaction preserves the unique look of each piece of wood. *Each plank of wood has a slightly different mineral content prior to being treated, which will result in a more varied, natural, and less uniform appearance than traditional staining. Our custom colors take about eight steps to produce, replicating the true chemical weathering process that wood experiences in nature. We have the ability to produce a wide variety of beautiful effects and colors.
The final piece in the craftsmanship of our inLove Collection is the finishing process; ours is detailed and meticulous. Each board of wood has its finish carefully applied by hand and will then be air dried separately. This process can take weeks; timing will depend on the type of finish used and how many layers of finish are required to create the desired look. Our in-house finishing team is constantly developing new and exciting proprietary finishes.
Our wood is sourced from specific forests, both locally and in Europe, where we have discovered the perfect molecular and cellular wood signature that yields the most beautiful finished product. PID’s specialized internal manufacturing system and global logistics network allows us to source and produce everything your project requires while allowing you to observe every step along the way. The inLove Collection is all about creativity, science, inspiration, and collaboration.
*The final material that we deliver will have more variation than a typical prefinished product and may deviate from the original samples. These samples are intended to show the overall tonality of the final product, but not the extremes of the spectrum.
Taking into consideration that personal tolerance for color variation varies, we kindly recommend our clients order an extra 5-10% of the product. This enables our clients to sort through the material and eliminate certain planks that may fall outside of their preferred range.