Why Can't I Tell the Wax Colour From the Photos? (And How to Be Sure)

Because a photograph physically cannot show you a wax finish accurately — and that includes ours.

A wax shade isn't a flat colour sitting on top of the wood. It's translucent, so what you're looking at is partly the wax and partly the pine underneath it. Then a camera decides how warm the scene should be, and your screen decides how bright and blue to make it. By the time the picture reaches you, three separate things have changed it.

So if you've been staring at the same photo on your phone and then your laptop and getting two different answers, you aren't being fussy. You're seeing the problem accurately. The only reliable way to settle it is to hold the finish in your own room, which is what the £1 sample is for.

Here's what's actually going on, and how to be certain before you order.

Four things change the colour between our workshop and your screen

1. The wax is see-through. Briwax colours the wood, it doesn't cover it. Every knot, every bit of grain, every board is still visible through it. Two boards with different grain will read slightly differently under the same shade — that's normal for solid pine, and it's most of what people are reacting to when a photo looks "patchy".

2. The light in the room where the photo was taken. Morning light through a window is cool. A warm bulb in the evening is not. The same waxed top genuinely looks like a different shade at breakfast and at dinner. That isn't a photography failure — it's what the table will do in your house too.

3. The camera makes a judgement. Phone cameras set white balance automatically, guessing what "white" is in the scene. Point one at a waxed table next to a cream wall and you'll get a different result from the same table next to a grey one.

4. Your screen. Brightness, night mode, blue-light filters, and simply how one manufacturer's panel differs from another's. Furniture Clinic put a warning on their own colour chart saying the shades shown depend entirely on your screen settings. Briwax's own chart carries a similar note — and shows the wax on ash, not pine.

That last point matters more than it sounds. Most wax charts you'll find online aren't photographed on the timber we use. The same shade on ash, oak or pine gives you three different results, because porous timbers like pine take more pigment than dense ones. So even a perfectly photographed, perfectly calibrated chart is showing you the answer to a slightly different question.

Our photos have exactly the same problem

I'd rather say this plainly than have you find out after delivery.

Our product photos are honest — that's a real table, in real light, in that shade. But they're subject to all four things above, exactly like everyone else's. If you pick a colour from a picture on our site and it arrives looking warmer or darker than you pictured, the photo wasn't lying to you. It just can't carry that information.

I wax every top by hand in the workshop here in Sussex, and I still wouldn't order a shade off a screen if I were matching it to something I already owned.

"Which of your colours is closest to my beech chairs?"

We get asked this a lot — it's one of the most common questions that reaches us. And the honest answer is that I can't tell you from a photo of your chairs, for the same reason you can't tell from a photo of our tables. Your camera and your screen have already altered your furniture before I ever see it.

What I can tell you is that matching wood to wood almost never lands exactly. Timber varies between trees, existing furniture has usually darkened with age and light, and a new piece hasn't. Aiming for complements rather than matches is the more reliable target, and it's the one that tends to look better in the room anyway.

Which is a longer way of saying: get the samples, hold them against the chairs, and trust your eyes over anyone's description. Including mine.

The £1 way to be certain

We sell colour samples for exactly this reason:

• £1 for a single colour, including shipping

• £6 for the full sample pack, including shipping

There are 8 wax colours for indoor furniture. If you're deciding between two, order two singles. If you're matching something, get the pack — a fiver is a small price for not spending the next two years looking at a table and thinking not quite.

Our three most-ordered indoor shades are Dark Oak, Rustic Pine and Antique Pine. You'll notice I haven't described what they look like. That's deliberate — a written description is just another unreliable proxy, and I'd rather you saw them.

Garden furniture uses a different set of 6 outdoor colours, with its own sample pack.

How to use a sample properly (five minutes, and it settles it)

Most people glance at a sample once under the kitchen spotlights and decide. Do this instead:

1. Put it where the table will actually stand. Not on the worktop, not by the window unless that's where the table goes.

2. Look at it twice — daylight and evening. Same sample, two different answers. Both are true. You need to be happy with both, because you'll live with both.

3. Hold it directly against whatever you're matching. Touching, not near. A 2cm gap between two woods lets your eye forgive a difference it won't forgive across a room.

4. Look at it flat, not at an angle. A waxed surface catches light differently depending on how you're standing over it, which is another thing a photo can't show you.

5. Ignore the name. "Dark Oak" is a wax shade, not a promise about oak.

If you're still torn after that, email us a photo of the sample sitting next to your furniture and tell us which one you're leaning towards. We can't judge the shade from your picture — but we can often tell you which way people usually go in that situation, and that's worth something.

Order the sample before the table, not with it

Samples are a separate, small order, and there's no sense in them arriving alongside the table they were meant to help you choose.

Once you do order, your table is made to order and arrives within 10–14 calendar days. Because the tops and the steel legs come from different places, some parts of an order can arrive on separate days within that window — worth knowing so nothing looks wrong when the first box turns up.

The short version

• No photograph can show you a wax colour reliably — not ours, not a manufacturer's chart, not one you take of your own furniture

• It's the light, the camera, the screen, and the fact that the wax is translucent over grain that never repeats

• Most charts online show the wax on the wrong timber anyway

• A £1 single or the £6 pack removes the guesswork entirely

• View it in the room, in two lights, touching whatever you're matching

Once you've settled the colour, you can browse the dining tables here, and the benches here if you want the two in the same shade.

Order a colour sample →

Any questions at all, drop us a message — we'd genuinely rather answer a colour question now than have you unsure at checkout.

Richard South Downs Creations, Sussex