Walnut internal doors
Walnut internal doors are almost always engineered — a real walnut veneer over a stabilised core, because solid walnut at door sizes is rare and expensive. Walnut reads darker and browner than oak, with paler sapwood streaks running through it, and unlike most timbers it lightens in daylight rather than darkening.
- In this range
- 8 doors
- Guide price from
- £115.20 inc VAT
Walnut is the timber people choose when they want the door itself to be the thing you notice. It is darker than oak, browner than it too, and the grain is more obviously figured — swirls and streaks rather than the long straight rays of a quarter-sawn oak leaf. In a hallway of white walls it does most of the decorating on its own.
It is also the timber most often bought on a single photograph, which is where the disappointment comes from. Walnut varies more from leaf to leaf than oak does, and it does not stay the colour it arrives. Both of those are worth knowing before the doors are on the landing rather than after.
8 doors
Prices are guide prices including VAT, taken from the smallest size and plainest finish of each door. They are not an offer to sell — confirm the price for your size and finish before ordering.
Walnut Flush Internal Door
An uninterrupted walnut face, no panels and no mouldings, on the plainest door shape there is. Darker and warmer than oak.
- Engineered walnut
- 35mm
Guide price from11 sizes£115.20inc VATWalnut Shaker Door
Two square-edged panels in a dark walnut veneer. The plainest shape this catalogue offers, in the timber least likely to be described as plain.
- Engineered walnut
- 35mm
Guide price from11 sizes£166.80inc VATWalnut Ladder Door
Horizontal panels stacked up the leaf in dark walnut. The most contemporary shape in the darkest timber, and the pairing most often specified in a new-build refit.
- Engineered walnut
- 35mm
Guide price from11 sizes£170.40inc VATWalnut 4-Panel Door
The traditional four-panel shape with raised mouldings, in walnut rather than the oak it is usually cut from.
- Engineered walnut
- 35mm
Guide price from11 sizes£175.20inc VATWalnut 4-Light Glazed Door
Four square lights in the upper half of a walnut leaf, with a solid panel below. More daylight than a three-light door, more timber than a fully glazed one.
- Engineered walnut
- 35mm
Guide price from4 sizes£177.60inc VATWalnut 6-Panel Door
The Victorian six-panel arrangement in walnut: two small panels over two long ones over two short. More line-work than any other shape here.
- Engineered walnut
- 35mm
Guide price from7 sizes£184.80inc VATWalnut Glazed 3-Light Door
Three lights in a walnut frame, for the room off a dark hallway where a solid walnut door would take the last of the daylight with it.
- Engineered walnut
- 35mm
Guide price from4 sizes£226.80inc VATWalnut 10-Light Door
Ten small panes gridded across the upper leaf, with the glazing bars in walnut rather than paint. The strongest contrast in this catalogue between frame and glass.
- Engineered walnut
- 35mm
Guide price from4 sizes£258inc VAT
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Walnut or oak?
These are the two timber faces most internal door ranges are built around, and the choice is usually made on colour alone. Colour is the least reliable part of it, because neither timber stays where it starts.
| Walnut | Oak | |
|---|---|---|
| Colour | Mid to dark chocolate brown, often with grey or purple in it | Pale honey through to mid tan |
| Grain | Figured and variable — swirls, streaks and visible sapwood | Straighter, with medullary rays where it is quarter-sawn |
| How it ages | Lightens and mellows in daylight | Darkens and warms in daylight |
| Variation across a set | High — expect leaves to differ noticeably | Moderate |
| Usually sold as | Engineered veneer over a stabilised core | Engineered or solid |
| Typical cost | Higher | Lower |
| Suits | Rooms where the door is meant to be a feature | Rooms where the door should read as joinery |
Walnut lightens. Plan for it
Most timber darkens with light and age. Walnut is the well-known exception: ultraviolet light pulls colour out of it, so a walnut door mellows from the deep brown it arrives as toward a warmer, lighter, redder brown. It is a slow change and, to most people, an improvement.
It becomes a problem in exactly one situation, and it is a common one. A door on a sunlit landing and a door in a north-facing box room will not still match each other after two years. The same goes for a leaf left standing against a wall in the sun while the rest of the set is being fitted.
Two practical consequences. Order the doors for a floor together and hang them together, so they age at broadly the same rate. And if you are matching new doors to walnut joinery that has been in the house for years, expect the new ones to look darker at first and to close the gap over time — matching them on day one usually means over-correcting.
Finishing walnut
An unfinished walnut door is raw veneer and needs sealing on every surface, for the same reason an unfinished oak door does: bare timber takes moisture out of the air and moves. The top and bottom edges are the two everybody misses, and they are usually the two the manufacturer names in its guarantee conditions. Read the finishing instructions supplied with the door before you open a tin.
What differs from oak is the choice of product. Oil deepens walnut and makes the figure much more obvious; a clear lacquer holds it closer to the colour you saw in the showroom. Neither is more correct, but they land in very different places, so try whichever you have chosen on an offcut or on the top edge before you commit the faces.
Bear in mind that a veneer is thin. Sand lightly and along the grain, and stop well short of anything that could be called stripping — there is no second attempt underneath.
What goes next to it
Walnut is dark enough that the ironmongery shows. Polished chrome and satin nickel both give a deliberate cool contrast against the brown. Matt black is the quieter option and tends to disappear into the door rather than sit on it. Antique bronze and aged brass sit closest to the timber itself, which reads as the most traditional of the three.
The other thing to settle is the architrave and skirting. Walnut doors in a house with white-painted trim give you a hard frame around each leaf, which suits the door being a feature. Walnut doors in walnut-veneered linings read as one continuous piece of joinery and cost considerably more to do properly. Decide which of the two you are doing before ordering, because the lining is the part that is awkward to change afterwards.