Doors and trim that take a knock and still look sharp.

Doors and trim live at the height of everyday contact. A door is pushed at the latch edge and handled dozens of times a day; skirting is kicked, vacuumed against and knocked by furniture; window frames take sun on one face and condensation on the other. The finish has to hold a crisp edge through all of it — and it has to do one of two very different jobs, depending on the look you want.

The first choice is whether the wood shows or disappears. A clear oil keeps the natural grain visible and open-pore: it soaks into the timber and is renewed in place, so a scuffed door edge is cleaned and re-oiled, not stripped. For pale woods — ash, maple, white oak — the oil has to be built not to amber, or years of daylight yellow it. An opaque lacquer does the opposite: it covers the wood in a solid white or colour, building a hard film on a primer for sharp, wipeable joinery.

These are two different chemistries, not one product with two settings. The clear oil — Hard Oil Clear 241 — is a self-priming penetrating oil: the first coat primes, so there is no separate primer. The opaque lacquers are film finishes that need a primer first: Resin Lacquer Primer 810 fills and seals the wood, then White Lacquer 820 or Finishing Lacquer 840 (in ten colours, or machine-tinted to NCS/RAL as 845) builds the painted topcoat. The system below is simply the right chemistry matched to the look you want.