Wood Species for Custom Boardroom Tables | Walnut, Maple, Ash & More
All species available as epoxy river builds
Black Walnut
Rich chocolate grain with natural figure and warmth. The most requested species for executive boardroom tables — delivers presence and authority in any room.
Hard Maple
Tight, consistent grain with a clean blonde tone. Hard maple is exceptionally durable and suits formal institutional settings. Used in our Canadore College and Peak Products Canada builds.
White Ash
Open cathedral grain with warm blonde tones and a more pronounced figure than maple. Excellent structural integrity at large panel widths — used in our 22ft ETFO governance table.
Oak
Bold ring-porous texture with strong visual character. White oak in particular offers a contemporary look with excellent hardness and long-term stability.
MOST POPULAR
Spalted Maple
Spalting creates dramatic black line patterns through the maple grain — no two slabs are alike. Best suited for statement pieces where visual impact is the priority.
Ambrosia Maple
Ambrosia maple (also known as "wormy maple") is not a distinct species, but rather standard maple infused with character by the ambrosia beetle. As the beetle burrows, it introduces vibrant gray, brown, and blue streaks.
Burls
Maple burls, crotch figures, highly grained curly species, and other specialty slabs available on request. Ideal for one-of-a-kind executive tables where standard species aren't enough.
The species you choose sets the character of your boardroom table — its colour, grain figure, hardness, and how it ages over decades of use. Every build at the.Boardroom starts with hand-selected slab stock sourced for grain quality, structural integrity, and visual presence at executive scale. The six species below represent our primary working inventory. If you have a specific species in mind that isn't listed, get in touch — we regularly work with special-order stock.
Black Walnut
Black walnut is the most requested species in the.Boardroom's portfolio — and the reasons are evident the moment you see a finished table. The heartwood runs from medium brown to deep chocolate with natural purple and grey undertones that shift in different lighting conditions. The grain is typically straight but frequently shows figure: subtle waves, feathering at crotch sections, and occasional curl that no two slabs share.
Beyond aesthetics, black walnut is an exceptionally practical boardroom species. It's hard enough to resist daily wear from laptops, documents, and regular surface contact, but not so hard that it's brittle — a critical distinction at table dimensions of 12 to 22 feet. It machines cleanly, holds joinery well, and accepts hardwax oil finishes with a depth that synthetic-coated species can't replicate.
Black walnut also ages beautifully. Freshly milled walnut is its darkest; over years of UV exposure it lightens slightly and develops a warm patina that makes decade-old pieces look more refined, not worn out. For a boardroom table that's meant to last the life of a building, walnut is the obvious first choice.
Janka hardness: 1010 lbf. Best for: executive tables, epoxy river builds, live edge statement pieces.
Featured Example: Used in our Polaris Epoxy River Table Build
12ft x 5 ft Black Walnut Epoxy River Boardroom Table
Hard Maple
Hard maple is the species we reach for when the brief calls for clean, formal, and built to last in high-traffic institutional use. The grain is tight and consistent — closer-grained than any of the other species we work with — which gives finished maple tables a refined, almost architectural quality. The colour is light blonde to cream, with occasional reddish-brown streaks in the heartwood that add warmth without disrupting the overall neutral tone.
At the.Boardroom, hard maple has been the species of choice for our two largest solid wood builds: the 20ft x 4ft table for Canadore College and the 21ft x 4.5ft table for Peak Products Canada. Both of these builds demanded a species that could handle large panel widths without excessive movement, accept a satin finish without yellowing, and look at home in a formal institutional boardroom rather than a residential setting. Maple delivered on all three counts.
Hard maple is also the hardest species in our primary inventory — harder than walnut, ash, or oak — making it the most practical choice for boardrooms with intensive daily use: rolling chairs, regular presentations, and surfaces that rarely get to rest. It's not the most dramatic grain in the lineup, but for an executive table that needs to perform as well as it looks, hard maple is unmatched.
Janka hardness: 1450 lbf. Best for: large institutional builds, formal boardrooms, high-traffic conference tables.
Featured Examples: Used in our Canadore & Peak Products maple boardroom table builds.
White Ash
White ash occupies an interesting middle ground in the species lineup: it has the light, warm tones of maple but with a far more pronounced grain figure — an open, ring-porous structure that creates bold cathedral patterns running the length of each slab. The colour ranges from cream to light tan with occasional olive-brown streaks in the heartwood, and it responds to hardwax oil finishes with a warmth and depth that lighter species like maple don't always achieve.
The proof-of-concept build for white ash at the.Boardroom's scale is the 22ft x 14ft governance table built for ETFO — the Elementary Teachers' Federation of Ontario. At that size, wood movement management is as important as anything else in the build, and white ash's structural integrity at large panel widths made it the right species for the job. It held flat, machined cleanly across the entire 22-foot run, and delivered a surface that reads as refined in a formal governance setting without the cool neutrality of maple.
White ash is also worth considering for clients who want a pronounced grain figure without the cost premium of black walnut. It's a genuinely beautiful species that remains underused in Canadian boardroom furniture — largely because it doesn't have walnut's name recognition — but for the right brief, it's the strongest choice on this list.
Janka hardness: 1320 lbf. Best for: large governance tables, U-shape conference builds, clients seeking walnut-level presence at a more accessible price point.
Featured Example: ETFO build.
Oak
White oak has become the defining species of contemporary Canadian interior design over the past decade — and the reasons are structural as much as aesthetic. The ring-porous grain structure creates bold, visible rays and a medullary ray figure that catches light differently from every angle. The colour sits between maple and ash: a warm grey-tan to light brown that reads as distinctly modern without the stark neutrality of maple or the darkness of walnut.
From a performance standpoint, white oak is one of the most dimensionally stable hardwoods available — it moves less across its width with changes in humidity than almost any other species we stock. For a boardroom table that lives in a climate-controlled office environment with consistent HVAC, this matters less than it would in a residential setting, but for builds that span unusual widths or need to travel to installation sites across different climate zones, white oak's stability is a genuine practical advantage.
White oak also accepts a wider range of finish effects than most species. Wire-brushing the surface before finishing enhances the ray figure dramatically. A white wash or Rubio Monocoat "White" finish produces a limewash effect that no other species replicates as cleanly. For clients who want a boardroom table that looks like it belongs in a contemporary architectural interior rather than a traditional executive suite, white oak is the natural choice.
Janka hardness: 1360 lbf. Best for: contemporary boardroom interiors, wire-brushed or limewash finishes, clients matching existing white oak flooring or millwork.
Spalted Maple
Spalted maple is hard maple that has undergone a controlled early stage of fungal decay — stopped before structural integrity is compromised, but far enough along that the fungal mycelium has drawn black zone lines through the grain. The result is a grain pattern that looks hand-drawn: bold black lines cutting across the pale maple background in patterns that range from subtle tracery to near-abstract compositions. No two spalted slabs share the same pattern. No amount of manufacturing process can replicate it.
The practical reality of spalted maple at boardroom scale is that it requires careful selection and processing. Spalting reduces wood density in the affected zones — slabs that have spalted too far become structurally compromised and can't be used at table dimensions. The slabs in our inventory have been assessed and selected for appropriate spalt depth: dramatic pattern without structural loss. Once milled, dried, and finished with a penetrating hardwax oil, spalted maple produces a surface that is structurally as sound as clear maple while being visually incomparable.
Spalted maple works best as a statement table — a piece around which an entire boardroom or meeting space is designed rather than a species chosen to complement existing furniture. If the brief calls for the most visually arresting table in the portfolio, and you want something no other organization in your industry will have, this is the species to consider.
Janka hardness: ~1450 lbf (varies by spalt depth — assessed per slab). Best for: statement boardroom pieces, creative industries, organizations where visual differentiation matters.
Burls
For clients who have exhausted the standard species list and are looking for something categorically different, we work with specialty and exotic slabs on a per-project basis. The category is broad — what unites these species is that no slab is interchangeable with another, and no finished table will ever be replicated.
Maple Burls produce a three-dimensional swirling grain figure caused by irregular growth around a wound or stress point in the tree. Burl slabs at boardroom scale are rare and expensive — the grain instability that creates the figure also creates challenges in flattening and stabilizing — but a properly processed maple burl boardroom table is unlike anything else in the species lineup.
Crotch Figures occur at the junction where a trunk divides into two major limbs. The grain fans outward symmetrically from the crotch point, creating a feathered or plume figure that reads as almost architectural. Book-matched crotch sections on either side of an epoxy river channel are one of the most dramatic table designs we produce.
Curly and Figured Species — curly maple, tiger maple, figured black walnut, and others — develop their iridescent shimmer from interlocked grain that reflects light differently depending on the viewing angle. Under boardroom lighting, a figured walnut table appears to shift and move as people walk around it.
All exotic and specialty builds begin with a conversation about what's in stock and what's achievable at your required dimensions. Lead times are longer, pricing reflects material rarity, and final species selection is confirmed after slab assessment. Get in touch →
Best for: flagship boardrooms, C-suite meeting rooms, one-of-a-kind builds where the table is the centerpiece of the space.
Which Species Is Right for Your Boardroom Table?
The right species depends on three things: the aesthetic of your space, the intensity of daily use, and whether you want a table that blends into a room or anchors it. Black walnut for presence and warmth. Hard maple for institutional durability and clean formality. White ash for large governance builds. White oak for contemporary architectural interiors. Spalted maple or an exotic species when nothing else will do.
Every build starts with a conversation. Tell us your room dimensions, your seating requirements, and what you're drawn to — we'll help you narrow it down from there.