At Kite, we often get asked “What our favourite floor is?” . The floor that keeps you looking down, when you should be looking up.
But, here’s the thing. It wouldn’t be a Kite floor. And actually, given the history of wood flooring, and the epic floors that have been created and installed around the world we would be pretty arrogant and naive to think our floors were even in the conversation (I often check out Universal Floors DC, to make sure we stay humble 🙂 ).
But recently, on a family trip to Paris, we fell in love. Falling in love in Paris is not unusual, but the surprise was to fall head over heels for the parquet flooring in the Louvre.
The French do many things well, especially around Design and Architecture, so you would not expect them to cut corners with the flooring in the most famous museum in the world.
Interestingly, there is very little data on the amount of wood flooring in the Louvre, but the total space is 210,000m2, with the exhibition space listed as 73,000m2 (wood floors never get the attention they deserve). We were there for an afternoon and almost all the exhibition rooms we visited were fitted with the most beautiful parquet flooring you can ever imagine. This included the famous Mollien room, and of course, the room with the Mona Lisa or La Joconde. Thousands and thousands of m2 of parquet flooring.
We were able to find out that the timber was supplied by a French mill called Ducerf. Apparently, 4cm thick (yes, 4cm…which is unbelievably thick), solid oak flooring was used. If you work in flooring, you will know 1) how difficult it is to manage solid products (they expand and contract more with changes in humidity), and 2) how challenging the alignment on patterned floors can be, especially Chevrons with borders. These floors will have been finished (so oiled..) on site, rather than factory-finished, and given the floor traffic, the oils must have been unbelievably strong.
There are thousands, if not millions, of articles, blog posts, and other web pages dedicated to the famous paintings on show. Yet only four references to the floors. But we thought they were the best art on display. So, if we’re asked what our favourite floor is, this is it.
If you’re a floor geek like us, and have an ultimate floor, we would love to know about it. We could even try and recreate recreate it, as we do on many of our Bespoke projects – Bespoke.
