Ina Rinderknecht x Schotten & Hansen - Living with colour

Swiss interior designer Ina Rinderknecht unveils her collaboration with German wood manufacturer Schotten & Hansen. Both passionate for innovative craftsmanship and sustainability, Ina Rinderknecht and Schotten & Hansen combine their respective aesthetic and technical expertise to create a collection of high-quality coloured wooden veneers.

Working with the Natural Colour System, a scientifically based colour system that allows for accurate cross-industrial colour communication for designers and architects, they are launching a range of 150 colours in an array of unique palettes. Fascinated by wood and its natural evolution of colours caused by sunlight, weather, and time, Torben Hansen, the CEO of Schotten & Hansen, has spent years exploring and experimenting with colours using natural pigments and processes.

Upon visiting the Schotten & Hansen factory in Munich while selecting wooden veneers for a private project, Ina discovered the private lab of Torben Hansen and his experiments with the coloured raw wooden samples.

With the marked shift towards more experimental and colour centric interiors, Ina recognised the possibilities that these woods could provide for the world of interior design, whether used as flooring, cupboards, or even for bespoke furniture pieces. With a meticulous eye and innate understanding for the language of colours, Ina Rinderknecht was able to finetune and create an order to the multitude of possibilities of colour and curate them in a unique system.

By employing the NCS colour system, they can match any coloured material reference, from marble to upholstery, and create corresponding pigmented veneers to complete any interior design scheme.

Subtly colour coordinated and elegant, interior designers can choose a colour that is in perfect harmony of their design and ask for a custom colour of wood reflecting any shade or variation.

One can choose from five neutral canvases in either the Terra or Mineral finish. The veneer canvases start from light to dark, on which can be found a spectrum of ten colours with an additional neutral. The colour palettes are available in yellow, orange, red, pink, purple, indigo, blue, turquoise, green and lime; within each of the spectrums there are fifteen hues.

Working with oak and Douglas fir wood, Schotten & Hansen have mastered the traditional craftsmanship of naturally processing raw wood. Sourcing their wood exclusively from sustainable forests, they begin with the careful hand selection of timber, demonstrating their unrivalled quality and timeless beauty.

To permanently preserve the wood surfaces, they use the fruit of the trees to create a natural treatment with resins, waxes, and oils. The resins penetrate the wood and increase the surface resilience while the waxes connect to a stable film on the surface to add shine. Oils deeply penetrate the wood’s pores and emphasise the natural hue of the material. They wash wood with special technology, cleaning deep into the pores to reduce the substances present in the material that make them sensitive to staining. It also allows surfaces to stay open, making the unique colouring treatment, especially impactful on veneers with an endless world of blues, pinks, greens and many other colours in all varieties and shades.

The individual colouring process is activated by the woods own ingredients and developed using colour pigments obtained from the earth and rocks and extracted from plants and minerals.