Materials
Teakwood vs White Ash — which wood is right for your home?
Two of India's most popular furniture timbers, completely different personalities. Here's how to choose based on your space, climate, and lifestyle.
Read article →The Journal
Design guides, material explainers, and stories from the studio.
Two of India's most popular furniture timbers, completely different personalities. Here's how to choose based on your space, climate, and lifestyle.
Read article →Custom furniture isn't complicated — but there are a few things first-timers get wrong. We've compiled the questions we answer most often.
Read article →The most common mistake in living room design is getting the sofa scale wrong. Here's a simple guide to proportions, clearances, and layouts.
Read article →If you're ordering custom furniture in India, these two timbers come up in almost every conversation: teakwood and white ash. Both are excellent. But they are very different — and the right choice depends on where the piece will live, how you'll use it, and what you want it to look like in 20 years.
Teak (Tectona grandis) has been the gold standard for Indian furniture for centuries. Its high natural oil content makes it unusually resistant to moisture, insects, and warping — which is why it was historically used in shipbuilding. In furniture, this translates to exceptional durability in humid climates.
The colour starts as a warm golden-brown and deepens into a rich honey tone over time. If left untreated outdoors, it weathers to a silvery grey — but indoors with occasional oiling, it only improves with age.
White ash has a pale, almost Scandinavian quality — straight open grain, light tone, and a smooth consistency that takes stain and finish beautifully. It's significantly lighter in weight than teak, which makes it easier to move and ideal for pieces like bed frames, accent chairs, and shelving.
Ash is also slightly more flexible than teak, which means it's a natural choice for steam-bent forms and curved furniture. If you're going for a cleaner, more contemporary aesthetic, ash almost always looks better than teak in that context.
Durability: Teak wins. It's harder, more moisture-resistant, and more resistant to insects. White ash is still a strong hardwood but needs more care in damp environments.
Aesthetics: Depends entirely on your interior. Teak's warm grain suits traditional and transitional spaces. White ash's pale, consistent grain suits contemporary and Scandinavian-inspired interiors.
Weight: Ash is noticeably lighter. For a large dining table, teak's weight actually adds to the sense of quality. For a bed frame you might need to move, ash is far more practical.
Price: Both are premium timbers in India. Teak tends to be slightly more expensive due to high demand and import restrictions on Burmese teak. The difference is rarely significant at the piece level.
We work with both timbers daily and can help you decide based on your specific brief. In most full-home projects, we use a combination — teak for the dining and living areas, white ash for the bedroom. The contrast between the two is subtle but intentional, and it gives each room its own character.
If you're still unsure, come into the showroom. Seeing and touching both in person usually settles the question in 5 minutes.
Custom furniture in Delhi is more accessible than most people think — and more often than not, it costs less than you'd expect while lasting far longer than anything off the shelf. But first-time buyers often make a few avoidable mistakes. Here are the five things we wish every client knew before they called us.
The single most common issue we encounter: a client falls in love with a design and we build it perfectly — only to discover it won't fit through the front door, up the staircase, or through the corridor. Measure the piece, but also measure every access point between the truck and the final position. Door width, staircase width, any turns in the corridor. A sofa that's 90 inches wide is magnificent in a large living room and impossible to deliver to a 4th floor flat with an 80-inch staircase.
Custom furniture is built from scratch for you. A sofa typically takes 3–5 weeks. A full dining set can take 4–6 weeks. If you're moving into a new home on a fixed date, start the furniture process at least 6–8 weeks before you move in. Rushing custom work is the fastest way to compromise quality, and we'd rather be honest about this upfront than deliver something we're not proud of.
You can have the best frame in the world but if the fabric doesn't suit how you live, you'll regret it in a year. Have children or pets? Avoid light linen and opt for a performance fabric or tight weave. Live in a humid city? Be cautious with velvet. Love to entertain? Choose a fabric that's easy to spot-clean. We walk every client through this — but come prepared with an honest sense of how the piece will actually be used.
The most common misconception we encounter: that custom furniture is a luxury reserved for big budgets. In Delhi, a well-made custom sofa from a reputable studio often costs the same as — or less than — a branded import from a furniture chain. The difference is that the custom piece is made for your exact space, your chosen fabric, and your preferred dimensions. It will also typically last 3–5x longer than flatpack or entry-level manufactured furniture.
Any serious furniture maker offers a warranty. At Walnut Studio, everything we make carries a 2-year warranty covering manufacturing defects. Beyond that, we're available for repairs, re-upholstery, and refinishing because we want our furniture to last decades, not years. Before you commit to any maker, ask them: what happens if something goes wrong 6 months after delivery? The answer tells you everything you need to know about how seriously they take their craft.
Getting the sofa size wrong is the most common — and most visible — mistake in living room design. Too small and the room feels empty and disconnected. Too large and the space feels cramped and hard to move through. Here's a simple framework we use with every client.
The rug anchors the seating area and determines the maximum footprint of your furniture grouping. A standard living room rug in India is typically 6x9 feet or 8x10 feet. Your sofa should fit comfortably within — or just slightly over — the front edge of that rug. If you haven't chosen a rug yet, decide on the rug size first and let the furniture follow.
A sofa should occupy roughly two-thirds of the wall it sits against. So if your wall is 12 feet wide, look for a sofa in the 7.5–8.5 foot range. Going smaller makes the sofa look lost; going larger makes the room feel blocked. This is a guideline, not a law — but it's a reliable starting point.
Sofa to coffee table: 14–18 inches. Enough to put your feet up or lean forward comfortably without feeling cramped.
Traffic path width: At least 30–36 inches for any walkway around the seating area. People need to pass without squeezing.
Sofa to TV unit: At least 8–10 feet for comfortable viewing. More is fine; less than 8 feet and you're straining.
A deep sofa (90–100cm seat depth) is luxurious for lounging but can make the room feel smaller and is harder for shorter people to sit upright in. A standard depth (85–90cm) is more versatile. If you have tall family members and a large room, go deeper. If your living room is on the smaller side or you entertain formally, a slightly shallower sofa keeps the space feeling open.
A 9-foot sofa is stunning — until you discover it can't turn the corner from the elevator lobby. Standard apartment corridors in Delhi are typically 36–42 inches wide. A 3-seater sofa over 84 inches needs to be checked against your access points before ordering. At Walnut Studio, we do this check as part of every consultation.
If you're unsure about sizing for your specific room, bring us your floor plan. We'll help you figure out the right dimensions before you commit to anything.