It is the step you skip when you are in a hurry, and the one you regret. A floor often represents several thousand euros and twenty years of presence in a room. Three samples and four days of waiting beat a permanent doubt.
Why the screen lies
It is not a question of photo quality, but of physics:
- Every screen has its own colour and brightness settings. The same file looks warmer on a phone, cooler on a laptop.
- A screen emits light, a floor reflects it. A matt oiled finish and a satin lacquer can look identical in a photograph while having nothing in common in reality.
- A photograph freezes one light. The studio resembles neither your north-facing living room in January nor your conservatory in July.
- Grain and texture disappear. A deep brushing, a bevel, the ray fleck of an oak: none of it survives a screen.
How to request them
Our samples are free, only the €3.90 postage is yours, and you can request up to three per order. That limit is not commercial: beyond three you stop comparing and start hesitating.
Add the sample from the page of the product that interests you, like any normal item.
How to pick the three
The classic mistake is to request three very close references — three honey oiled oaks. You will receive three near-identical samples and you will have settled nothing.
Take three different directions instead:
- One light, one mid, one dark.
- Or: one oiled finish, one lacquered, one brushed.
- Or: a uniform Prime grade and a strongly marked rustic grade, to see how much character you can live with underfoot.
Once the direction is chosen, a second order refines within the right family. Two rounds of three samples beat one round of six.
How to judge them once received
A sample is judged on the floor, in the room concerned. Never in the hand, never held vertically, never in another room.
- Lay it on the floor, exactly where the flooring will go.
- Look at it at three moments: morning, midday, and evening under artificial light. A fumed oak that looks magnificent at noon can turn almost black under a warm lamp.
- Hold it against your walls and furniture. What matters is the relationship with what is already there, not the beauty of the wood in isolation.
- Leave it three days and walk past it. You will see a floor every day for twenty years.
- Touch it. The relief of a brushing and the softness of an oil are not seen, they are felt.
What a sample does not show
Let us be honest about its limits. A sample is 20 or 30 cm. It does not show:
- Overall variation. Across 40 m² you will see boards lighter and darker than your sample — that is normal, it is wood. A rustic grade varies a lot, a Prime grade little.
- The effect of format. A 22 cm wide board does not produce the same effect as a 12 cm one, same wood, same finish.
- The pattern. Chevron or herringbone completely changes how a décor reads.
For those three points, nothing replaces seeing a laid surface: our showroom is open by appointment.
A tip that costs nothing
Keep your samples after purchase, in a drawer. Years later they serve to find the exact reference again, to choose skirtings, or to compare a tone when you redo an adjoining room.