Dutch flooring brand WOODlife was included in Archello’s list of 25 best engineered wood flooring manufacturers. The company’s WOODlife premium oak multiplank flooring was used by Paulsen & Nilsen, Oslo-based interior architects, in the studio’s contemporary and serene Oslo House project.
Oslo House is a four-story, split-level house. Paulsen & Nilsen designed a truly Nordic home imbued with warmth, tactility, and texture, its spaces a showcase for timeless materials such as European oak floorboards, timber-battened ceilings, soft leather, linen, and metal with a warm patina.
Wood flooring is especially tactile, inviting bare feet on sultry summer days and providing cosy comfort in cold winter months. At WOODlife, the company has an artisanal approach to engineered wood flooring and is able to customize any aspect of a floor, including thickness, length, and finish, all of which improves the user’s experience. WOODlife was founded in 2005 by Thomas van Lieshout and Stefan Verhagen — in 2008, they acquired an existing floor factory close to Marijampole in Lithuania. The two founders have their origins in sustainable forestry and are conscious of the impact of timber harvesting on a forest’s ecology.
WOODlife premium oak multiplank flooring is cut from 100- to 175-year-old Baltic trees — the region’s oak and ash trees grow at a slow and steady pace, providing timber that is stable, dense, and consistent in color. From an architectural perspective, this flooring product offers a number of qualities, described by Stefan Verhagen as: “long-term technical reliability, bespoke production, architectural freedom, and the ability to manufacture and supply matching complementary products that create unity in an interior’s design.” WOODlife’s floors perform well in a range of climatic conditions and with underfloor heating; the company’s floors are made-to-order, fulfilling a specifier’s particular requirements; its complementary products and finishes include cladding for walls and ceilings, window sills, and decking.
Wood is a wonderfully tactile material, but not all wood products are the same. WOODlife sources its raw materials from trusted partners. Top layers are cut fresh from the log, one at a time, and dried at a slow pace in modest temperatures. This approach ensures there are no hair cracks (that often lead to larger cracks over time) and no abnormal discoloration. The company refers to its engineered wooden floors as multiplanks: a top layer of either 4.5 or 6.5 millimeters is glued to a bottom layer of water-resistant birch plywood. Multiplanks use much less noble wood than solid wood floors. “We don’t waste any wood: leftovers are used to produce skirting and home decorations with any remaining pieces and saw dust providing fuel to heat the entire factory and drying kilns,” says Verhagen.
WOODlife’s artisanal approach seeks to balance hands-on craftsmanship and technical/machine innovation. “Working with state-of-the-art and innovative machinery is necessary to ensure a high-quality product standard. In order to be cost-effective, a degree of automation is needed,” says Verhagen. “That said, we have consciously chosen to carry out certain processes manually. This allows us to manufacture custom dimensions, optimize open defects prior to filling, apply butterfly keys on particular products, and so on.”
WOODlife works closely with architects and designers to find the right fit for their projects, asking what the ideal solution looks like instead of simply presenting a range of standard options. “We also offer tailor-made fiDe vloeren en afwerkingen van WOODlife voegen warmte en textuur toe aan het Oslo Housenishes and often advise on the technical design of staircases as well as installation and maintenance,” says Verhagen. “With the Oslo House, I feel we added substantial quality by providing bespoke, long-length stair treads with integrated LED lights that merge seamlessly into the wooden floor. Moreover, the complementary ribbed oak ceiling adds to the seamless interior design.”
The choice of flooring affects the mood and ambience of a space and is a particularly prominent feature. WOODlife prefers to think of its wood floors as an investment, something created to last for many generations.
