The Art of Creating 1-of-1 Custom Finishes

Ryan, our in-house finishing expert.

SouthLoft finish expert Ryan Church knows a thing or two about creating a custom finish that you can’t buy off the shelf. We sat down with him to learn about the process of creating custom one-of-a-kind finishes that will elevate your furniture in any residential or commercial space.

It starts with inspiration

Understanding your vision is just the beginning of creating a custom finish. Knowing exactly what you want helps us immediately narrow options in order to effectively create finishes from scratch. Therefore, customers have provided us with inspiration in the form of furniture mood boards or textures seen throughout their space. Whatever you are able to provide as inspiration is helpful to the process.

Creating rough samples

Rough samples in-progress.

Once we have a basic understanding of your ideal custom finish, we create rough samples. This is where the artistry enters the process. Our finish expert Ryan begins to create and test unique blends of products. We apply the rough mixtures to one piece of your selected material—therefore you can easily see the subtle differences between our initial formulas.

Further refining your custom finish

Testing further refinements of white finishes. The subtle shift can be hard to see so we use another white as a reference.

After we have created rough samples, we begin the process of refining the best matching sample. From there it gets scientific—altering the formula slightly with each iteration. Resulting in a more refined sample that we can share with you to get further feedback.

Final tweaks

Feedback in mind, we refine your custom finish until you are satisfied with the end result. After you give final approval, we complete the process and apply the finish to your furniture. You might even have the new custom finish named after your project!