Scroll through solid-wood furniture long enough and three names keep recurring: teak, mango, and suar. They get used almost interchangeably in marketing copy, but they are three different trees, grown on three different timelines, and they end up in three different kinds of furniture for real reasons.
TEAK
Teak (Tectona grandis) is a slow-growing hardwood, and slow growth is most of why it costs what it costs. It carries a naturally high oil content, which is the trait that made it a shipbuilding and outdoor-furniture wood long before it was a living-room wood — the oil sheds water and resists the checking and rot that ruin most other timbers left outside.
That density and oil content also make it heavy and durable indoors: a teak piece is usually the one in a room that outlasts everything else in it. It takes a rustic, natural finish well and tends to darken slightly with age rather than degrade.
What we carry in teak: a Primitive Teak Log Bench ($535), a Teak Console ($1,500) with a live-edge slab top, a 79" recycled teak dining table ($2,499.99), and smaller pieces down to a teak stump side table ($299.99). All handcrafted in Indonesia by The Broward Design Center.
MANGO
Mango wood (Mangifera indica) is a different story entirely, and arguably the more sustainability-minded of the three. Mango trees are grown for fruit, not lumber — the wood only enters furniture production once a tree stops bearing fruit reliably, which is usually after 15 to 20 years. Furniture made from it is functionally a byproduct of an existing food crop rather than timber grown for the purpose.
It is softer and lighter than teak, without teak's natural oils, so mango furniture is generally built for indoor use and benefits from an occasional wax or oil finish to protect the surface — a detail worth knowing before you set a hot mug directly on one. The grain runs lighter and more varied than teak's, often with visible color streaking from pale gold to deep brown in the same board.
What we carry in mango: a Mango Wood Coffee Table ($599.99) and a Reclaimed Mango Wood Bench with metal legs ($299.99–329.99), both from Timbergirl, handcrafted by artisans in western India.
SUAR
Suar (also called monkeypod, Samanea saman) is the wood behind almost every dramatic single-slab table you have seen with a raw, irregular live edge. The tree grows an unusually wide, spreading canopy and a correspondingly wide trunk, which is exactly why it can be milled into slabs wide enough to make a 60-inch tabletop from a single piece of wood rather than several boards joined together. It grows considerably faster than teak, which keeps big slabs more attainable.
The grain is bold and irregular by nature — cathedral patterns, dark heartwood against lighter sapwood, occasional voids that get left as a design feature rather than filled. It is softer than teak and takes finish differently, so most suar pieces you will see are a single statement piece — a coffee table or console — rather than a full furniture set.
What we carry in suar: a 60" x 35" Suar Slab Coffee Table ($2,799.99), the Bumi Round Suar Coffee Table, and the Suar Slab Top Console Table ($1,999.99) — all Indonesian-made, all Broward Design Center.
CHOOSING BETWEEN THEM
If the piece will live outdoors or take daily abuse, teak's oil content earns its price. If you want a lighter, more affordable piece for an indoor room and like the idea of furniture made from a tree that already did its job feeding people, mango is the practical choice. If what you actually want is one dramatic, one-of-a-kind slab as the visual anchor of a room, suar is built for exactly that — and no two pieces will ever look the same, because no two trees grew the same way.
Browse the full solid wood range in our Catalog.