Marri has three real disadvantages: it is the softest of the three Australian species we sell at 7.1 kN, it is the most varied floor in our range, and the black resin filling a gum vein can occasionally come out. Every one of those is manageable, and I would rather set them out myself than have you find them somewhere else.
But before the ledger, one correction, because it is the thing most often said about Marri and it is wrong.
Marri is 7.1 kN on the Janka scale. French oak is about 6.5 kN. Oak is the most popular flooring timber in the world, and we sell both.
So "Marri is too soft for flooring" is a misunderstanding rather than a finding. We have been installing Marri in living rooms, kitchens and bedrooms across Western Australia for over ten years, and not one floor has come back because it could not take the day-to-day wear of everyday living.
What is true is that Marri is the softest of our three Australian species. Blackbutt is 9.1 kN. Spotted Gum is about 11. Jarrah is 8.6. If your brief is maximum hardness, Marri is not the answer and I will say so in the showroom.
Any timber floor will.
Over the last ten years customers have rung us about scratching and denting on their Marri. Almost always the kitchen. Almost always a dropped bottle or a heavy jar. That is normal for most floors, and it is worth knowing before you buy rather than after.
Most Australian families do not take their shoes off indoors, and a lot of them have a dog. Those are the conditions the floor actually lives in, so that is what I ask about before recommending Marri: how you live on your floor, whether you have large dogs, whether you have young kids, and whether you have lived on a timber floor before.
What we do about it: every floor ships with a care kit containing a wax kit and a repair kit, so you can deal with most marks yourself. If a mark is too unsightly to live with, the board can be cut out and replaced, because the floor is prefinished rather than sanded on site.
We do not get people who are angry or upset about this. Most come to see marks as the patina of a natural timber floor — either fixable, or part of how the floor ages.
Marri is varied in colour and carries a lot of gum vein. Honey through to deep brown, with black veins through it. It is a beautiful floor and it is a little busy.
That is the single most common reason someone walks away from Marri, and it is a legitimate reason. If you want a floor that reads as one even tone across a room, Marri will not do it and an oak will.
The related risk is that a small sample does not tell you what a whole floor looks like. We deal with that directly: before we install, we show you your own batch — the actual boards going into your home. Our Osborne Park showroom has Marri down beside every other species we sell, which is the only honest way to judge it.
This is the one nobody else will tell you.
Every gum vein in every Marri board is filled by hand at our factory. The loose sap is brushed out with a wire brush, sometimes a small chisel, brushed again, then black liquid epoxy resin is poured in and left days to cure hard before the board is sanded and coated.
We have had a customer or two whose black gum vein came out over time. It is less likely with the epoxy resin we use now, but it is not impossible.
That is why the care kit includes black wax specifically for the gum veins, and why we would rather tell you now. What makes Marri beautiful also makes it challenging.
The hardest test of a Marri floor I can point to is not a family home. It is a builder's display home.
In 2017, Q Homes laid Marri 130mm through their display home in Coolbinia — 230 square metres and fifteen steps, with curved walls, bookcases, open stairs and an unbroken transition from inside to out, professionally interior designed throughout.
They chose Marri because they wanted to create a lasting impression and stand out from other builders by using only premium finishes. Marri represented something unique.
That floor is still down, and in nine years we have never been called back to sand it, polish it or repair it.
A display home is a harder test than your house. Strangers, in shoes, all day, for years, with none of the care an owner gives their own floor. If Marri could not take everyday living, that is exactly where it would have shown.
A timber that grows nowhere else in the world except the south-west of Western Australia.
Most people here recognise Marri as a premium choice for luxury furniture. They also recognise it is hard to find and getting harder to source. When something is rare, it is seen as valuable — and Marri is genuinely rare, for a reason worth understanding.
Open a Marri log and much of it cannot be used as a traditional floorboard: cracks, split gum veins, rot, termite attack. Less than 30% of a Marri log can be used as conventional flooring. Our Stabilised Solid® process recovers 65 to 75% of the same log, because the gum-veined and blemished pieces go into the middle layer and the back of a three-layer board.
Marri is also an heirloom timber in a way Blackbutt is not. Once you have a beautiful Marri table you hold onto it and pass it down. People carry that same sense of value with their floor.
And it can be brought back. A Marri floor can be re-sanded a minimum of three times, because the wearing surface is a full 5mm of Marri.
If that trade sounds right to you, download the Lifewood price guide for current pricing, or call us and we will tell you honestly whether Marri suits your house.
Here is the conversation we have most weeks.
Blackbutt has a higher Janka rating than Marri, so it is better suited to households with active families, large dogs, or anywhere likely to see more wear and tear. It is also $30 a square metre cheaper and far easier for us to source.
We often see people come in wanting Marri and end up buying Blackbutt, simply because it is a more durable surface.
That is not a failure of the sale. It is the right floor going into the right house. If your household is hard on floors, start with Blackbutt flooring and come back to Marri another time.
Marri will mark, like every timber floor. It is varied and busy, which is either the reason you want it or the reason you do not. The gum vein filling can occasionally need attention, and we give you the wax to do it.
In exchange you get a Western Australian timber that exists nowhere else, a floor that can be sanded back to new three times over its life, and a lifetime structural warranty.
Come and stand on it at Osborne Park before you decide — Marri looks different under every light and no screen will tell you whether it is your floor. Everything else is on the Marri timber flooring page.