Riva MAX — 10-inch European white oak plank

MAX is the board you choose when the floor is meant to read as one surface. At ten inches wide and up to eight feet long a room takes far fewer boards than a standard plank, the joints recede, and the grain of the oak — not the pattern of the boards — is what you see. It is the format the Riva gallery shows most of, because it is what most of the coast asks for.

A plank this wide is honest about the floor under it. Where a narrow board bridges a slab that undulates, a wide one shows it, so the moisture test and the flatness check come before anything is ordered and the preparation is priced as its own line. That is not a reason to avoid the format; it is the reason it looks the way it does when it is done properly.

Ten of the twelve colours come in MAX — every one except Gray and Black — in Prime grade for the cleaner board or Character grade for the knots and the movement.

Where it goes: great rooms, open plans, the long run from the entry to the lanai doors — anywhere the eye travels the length of the floor before it reaches a wall. We lay it straight, usually with the boards running toward the main source of light so the grain catches it, and we stagger the end joints so no two rows break at the same point. In a coastal house the pale colours — Pearl, Cotton, Crystal, Sand — are what most people choose in this width; Cigar and Krypton are the ones that make a large room feel furnished before the furniture arrives.

How it is bought: by the square foot, in the grade and the colour you have stood on in the gallery. A wide board wastes little in a big open room and more in a room with jogs and closets, so the allowance for cuts is worked out from your plan rather than from a rule of thumb, and you know the number of boxes before you decide. Lead times are confirmed with Riva before we quote, not after.

The board underneath is the same as every Riva Spain plank — European white oak over Baltic birch, Bona lacquer, the construction described on the Riva line page — and it stands as full boards in the Riva building at the Bradenton showroom, where SRQ Modern is the authorized dealer and our own crews install it.