inward, toward rooms that speak in restrained palettes and deliberate proportion. In Ladue, where established estates sit among mature canopies of oak and maple, Black Limba's golden-brown heartwood finds a context that honors its complexity—the grey-to-black veining reading not as spectacle but as a quiet counterpoint to the warm base tones, the kind of figuring that rewards a second glance rather than demanding a first. Where La Jolla's coastal light could flood a surface into transparency, Ladue's filtered midwestern light deepens the wood's natural tendency to darken with age, accelerating the veneer into a richness that feels ancestral even in newly completed millwork. It is precisely this dialogue between fresh installation and earned patina that makes Black Limba a material Lafayette's designers will recognize as adaptable to yet another register—one where the architecture asks something slightly different of the same remarkable species.