A restaurant top lives a hard life: keys, plates, cleaning cycles, and the occasional standing customer. Choosing the wood comes down to three questions — how hard is the board, how does the finish fail, and what does the room need it to look like.
Hardness, measured
The Janka scale measures resistance to denting, and for daily service the dense end of the spectrum earns its keep: Wenge at 1930, Hard Maple at 1450, White Oak at 1360. Walnut at 1010 and Genuine Mahogany at 900 are gentler boards — beautiful in dining rooms that treat them accordingly, happiest where they are admired more than abused.
How the finish fails matters more than how it shines
Film finishes fail by chipping and peeling, and repair means stripping the table. A hardwax oil fails by wearing thin — and repairs in place: spills wipe, scars buff out, a tired top gets refreshed overnight without leaving the room. Formhaus tops ship in our UV-cured protective coating — a zero-VOC hardwax oil cured solid under LED light, at commercial grade.
Tone is the wood, not a stain
Ten species run pale to black with no pigment: maples keep a room light, White Oak anchors it, Walnut and Wenge carry the dark end. Matching existing millwork usually means matching the species rather than chasing a stain chart — and a sample in hand beats a screen every time.