Mill Valley's architects and interior designers have long understood that natural light filtering through coastal fog does something remarkable to figured wood—it quietens the drama, letting the grey-to-black veins of Black Limba speak in undertones rather than shouts. Where Louisville's workshop fluorescents revealed the streaks as bold graphic elements, here they become atmospheric, almost painterly, their contrast softened by the diffused Pacific light that pours through the floor-to-ceiling windows of Marin County's hillside homes. The golden brown heartwood, which darkens gradually with age, finds in these interiors a rare permission to evolve, its slow patina tracking the seasons rather than fighting them. It is precisely this living quality—wood as a surface that participates in time—that has begun drawing specification interest from studios well beyond the Bay Area, reaching now into the material libraries of Milwaukee's own resurgent design community.