How to Choose Materials and Finishes You Won’t Regret in Five Years

Every project reaches the same moment: dozens of samples on the table, and a decision that will live on your walls, floors, and counters for years. Materials and finishes are where good design either holds up or falls apart, so we treat these choices with as much care as anything else in a project.

Favor natural materials over their imitations. Honed marble, white oak, unlacquered brass, plaster, linen — these are the materials that age the way luxury is supposed to age, developing a patina rather than simply wearing out. A quartz counter or a laminate finish may look identical to the real thing on day one, but only natural materials continue to look considered a decade in.

Choose finishes that live, not finishes that shout. A honed stone reads quieter and more refined than a high-polish counterpart, and unlacquered brass will deepen into a soft, burnished gold that no amount of trend-chasing can replicate. The most elevated interiors are rarely the loudest — restraint, done with the right materials, is its own form of luxury.

See every material in the room it will live in. Natural light, artificial light, and the surrounding palette all change how a stone, a wood tone, or a fabric reads. A slab that looks luminous in a showroom can go flat under different light, which is why we always bring large-format samples into the actual space before anything is finalized.

Think in terms of an heirloom, not a trend cycle. The finishes worth investing in are the ones a future owner would want to keep, not replace. Reclaimed white oak flooring, hand-applied plaster, a well-veined marble — these are choices made once, and made to be lived with for a very long time.

Selecting materials is one of the most consequential parts of any design process, and it deserves the same level of expertise as the architecture or the layout of the room itself. If you’re weighing finishes for a project and want a second, more discerning eye, we’d love to walk through your options together.