This centuries-old Japanese technique is adding a surprisingly contemporary vibe to luxury homes, inside and out
5 min
It’s the kind of edgy design trend you might have scrolled past on a social media feed: homes bearing beautifully charred facades or feature walls, a charcoal patina that seems as if it emerged from fire itself—in fact, that’s exactly how it came into being.
Shou sugi ban, also known as yakisugi, is a Japanese wood-burning method with roots that run deep. The craft emerged during Japan’s Edo period, from 1603 to 1868, as a way to clad cedar buildings to withstand temperature fluctuations between seasons and render them fire retardant and insect repellant. Aside from its practical benefits, the look has exploded in the West as a way to give homes—mostly luxury ones—a brooding, dramatic exterior that fits with an earthy minimalist aesthetic as much as texture-rich maximalist one.
The preservation technique, which can be achieved by hand or machine, involves burning wood until the surface is charred, cooling and cleaning it to remove soot and dust and finishing it with natural oils to reinforce its durability and aesthetic appeal.
Dark and charred and decidedly grained, the look of shou sugi ban is altogether distinctive.
“When you burn the clean wood, it creates a textural surface that highlights the beauty of the wood grain and colour,” said Mia Jung, director of interiors at Ike Kligerman Barkley in New York and San Francisco.
Depending on the degree of charring and finishing, the wood can produce a range of looks from deep black with pronounced grain patterns to a more subtle dark brown or grey with a smoother finish, said Jiun Ho, founder of Jiun Ho Inc., a multi-disciplinary interior and furnishings design firm in San Francisco.
Defining Detail
Unlike the purely functional role of the shou sugi ban technique of the past, today, it’s most commonly used for decorative purposes—both inside and outside the home.
“It has a modern yet earthy aesthetic,” said Stephanie Hobbs, design principal at Marmol Radziner in Los Angeles. “Clean lines and details help this naturally textured and rough material feel modern and luxurious.”
The old-world application can, ironically, have a very contemporary vibe. “The simplicity of the wood offers a beautiful and natural look that honours the Japanese aesthetic of wabi-sabi, which embraces imperfections,” said Teresa Boyd and Helena Finkelstein, co-owners and lead designers of Verona, New Jersey-based Olive Hill Design Company.
While traditionally rendered in cedar, modern variations of the art utilise different types of woods, such as Douglas fir, cypress, pine or oak, creating many diverse looks. The cost of shou sugi ban varies widely based on factors such as the type of wood used, the degree of charring and the finish applied.
“It can be more expensive than untreated wood due to the labor-intensive process,” Ho said. Typically, prices range from $15 to$20 per square foot on average.
What’s Old Is New Again
There’s no denying the technique is having a moment, and it aligns with so many other trends, such as the growing emphasis on artisan-made things as well as biophilic design, a concept that aims to connect people with nature, in part, through natural materials.
“In this age of fast everything, there is a growing respect and appreciation for traditional craftsmanship,” Kornak said. “Shou sugi ban is a great example of that—it has a rich and beautiful history, especially in architecture and design. In addition, it’s both modern and rustic, which is aesthetically intriguing.”
The matte finish and distinctive wood graining create a striking impression that is different from what people are used to seeing, Hobbs said, noting how it balances with a natural landscape.
“People love the warmth and natural qualities of wood siding, but it often comes with a large commitment to maintenance. This method of finishing ages naturally and beautifully over time and requires less maintenance than a typical wood siding application,” she said.
What makes shou sugi ban even more relevant is that it’s eco-friendly. The wood retains the carbon-dioxide absorbed during the tree’s growth, making it more durable and expanding the life of the wood, said Philip Consalvo, principal of PJCArchitecture in New York City. It also naturally protects the wood from the elements, eliminating the need for harsh chemicals.
“As darker home exteriors continue to trend, we will likely see this material becoming increasingly popular for cladding,” he said.
Fresh Ways to Play With Fire
These days, shou sugi ban, in all of its smoky glory, is showcased in a multitude of ways—as siding and fencing, decking, interior and feature walls and furniture.
Ho loves using shou sugi ban for wall cladding because “it adds a multi-dimensional texture making the interior feel rich and warm.” For a new restaurant he’s designing called Enclos, which is opening later this summer in Sonoma, California, he covered the dining room’s walls and ceiling with shou sugi ban. “This created a dark black texture that serves as a blank canvas, allowing everything in the room, including the guests and the food, to stand out,” he said.
Jeffrey Dungan, founder and creative director at Jeffrey Dungan Architects in Mountain Brook, Alabama, prefers to apply the technique inside a home for a dark and moody vibe. While Hobbs tends to add the charred wood as a finishing material to connect interior walls with exterior siding.
Siding is the most common way to showcase the Japanese technique. Consalvo used the material as siding because of its “eco-friendly nature and seamless integration with the home’s natural surroundings,” for a recently completed lake house in the Adirondacks.
“The unique appearance of shou sugi ban enhanced the modern aesthetic we desired for the house. By incorporating this traditional craftsmanship in a modern way, we aimed to honour the Japanese wood preservation technique,” he said.
However, Consalvo noted that since the charring process is unfamiliar to many builders and contractors, “proper training and understanding of the technique are essential to achieving the desired results and maintaining its integrity and benefits.”
Aside from walls and siding, Shou Sugi Ban can be used to fashion bespoke items such as furniture, light fixtures or objets d’art. Design firm Holly Hunt has used geometric figurines by Martha Sturdy called “Reflections” as well as hand-carved solid cedar bowls from A Space.
“For both of these, the ashen black finish and minimalist lines are a graceful yet robust accent for interiors,” said Jo Annah Kornak, senior vice president and executive creative director of Chicago-based Holly Hunt.
Homeowners who are curious about the look but don’t want to commit to decorating large expanses can add a small side table or console crafted with the shou sugi ban technique for a natural and minimalist addition to their décor, Boyd and Finkelstein suggested.
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Weary of ‘smart’ everything, Americans are craving stylish ‘analog rooms’ free of digital distractions—and designers are making them a growing trend.
5 min
James and Ellen Patterson are hardly Luddites. But the couple, who both work in tech, made an unexpectedly old-timey decision during the renovation of their 1928 Washington, D.C., home last year.
The Pattersons had planned to use a spacious unfinished basement room to store James’s music equipment, but noticed that their children, all under age 21, kept disappearing down there to entertain themselves for hours without the aid of tablets or TVs.
Inspired, the duo brought a new directive to their design team.
The subterranean space would become an “analog room”: a studiously screen-free zone where the family could play board games together, practice instruments, listen to records or just lounge about lazily, undistracted by devices.
For decades, we’ve celebrated the rise of the “smart home”—knobless, switchless, effortless and entirely orchestrated via apps.
But evidence suggests that screen-free “dumb” spaces might be poised for a comeback.
Many smart-home features are losing their luster as they raise concerns about surveillance and, frankly, just don’t function.
New York designer Christine Gachot said she’d never have to work again “if I had a dollar for every time I had a client tell me ‘my smart music system keeps dropping off’ or ‘I can’t log in.’ ”
Google searches for “how to reduce screen time” reached an all-time high in 2025. In the past four years on TikTok, videos tagged #AnalogLife—cataloging users’ embrace of old technology, physical media and low-tech lifestyles—received over 76 million views.
And last month, Architectural Digest reported on nostalgia for old-school tech : “landline in hand, cord twirled around finger.”
Catherine Price, author of “ How to Break Up With Your Phone,” calls the trend heartening.
“People are waking up to the idea that screens are getting in the way of real life interactions and taking steps through design choices to create an alternative, places where people can be fully present,” said Price, whose new book “ The Amazing Generation ,” co-written with Jonathan Haidt, counsels tweens and kids on fun ways to escape screens.
From both a user and design perspective, the Pattersons consider their analog room a success.
Freed from the need to accommodate an oversize television or stuff walls with miles of wiring, their design team—BarnesVanze Architects and designer Colman Riddell—could get more creative, dividing the space into discrete music and game zones.
Ellen’s octogenarian parents, who live nearby, often swing by for a round or two of the Stock Market Game, an eBay-sourced relic from Ellen’s childhood that requires calculations with pen and paper.
In the music area, James’s collection of retro Fender and Gibson guitars adorn walls slicked with Farrow & Ball’s Card Room Green , while the ceiling is papered with a pattern that mimics the organic texture of vintage Fender tweed.
A trio of collectible amps cluster behind a standing mic—forming a de facto stage where family and friends perform on karaoke nights. Built-in cabinets display a Rega turntable and the couple’s vinyl record collection.
“Playing a game with family or doing your own little impromptu karaoke is just so much more joyful than getting on your phone and scrolling for 45 minutes,” said James.
“Dumb” design will likely continue to gather steam, said Hans Lorei, a designer in Nashville, Tenn., as people increasingly treat their homes “less as spaces to optimise and more as spaces to retreat.”
Case in point: The top-floor nook that designer Jeanne Hayes of Camden Grace Interiors carved out in her Connecticut home as an “offline-office” space.
Her desk? A periwinkle beanbag chair paired with an ottoman by Jaxx. “I hunker down here when I need to escape distractions from the outside world,” she explained.
“Sometimes I’m scheming designs for a project while listening to vinyl, other times I’m reading the newspaper in solitude. When I’m in here without screens, I feel more peaceful and more productive at the same time—two things that rarely go hand in hand.”
A subtle archway marks the transition into designer Zoë Feldman’s Washington, D.C., rosy sunroom—a serene space she conceived as a respite from the digital demands of everyday life.
Used for reading and quiet conversation, it “reinforces how restorative it can be to be physically present in a room without constant input,” the designer said.
Laura Lubin, owner of Nashville-based Ellerslie Interiors, transformed a tiny guest bedroom in her family’s cottage into her own “wellness room,” where she retreats for sound baths, massages and reflection.
“Without screens, the room immediately shifts your nervous system. You’re not multitasking or consuming, you’re just present,” said Lubin.
As a designer, she’s fielding requests from clients for similar spaces that support mental health and rest, she said.
“People are overstimulated and overscheduled,” she explained. “Homes are no longer just places to live—they’re expected to actively support well-being.”
Designer Molly Torres Portnof of New York’s DATE Interiors adopted the same brief when she designed a music room for her husband, owner of the labels Greenway Records and Levitation, in their Lido Beach, N.Y. home. He goes there nightly to listen to records or play his guitar.
The game closet from the townhouse in “The Royal Tenenbaums”? That idea is back too, says Gachot. Last year she designed an epic game room backed by a rock climbing wall for a young family in Montana.
When you’re watching a show or on your phone, “it’s a solo experience for the most part,” the designer said. “The family really wanted to encourage everybody to do things together.”
Don’t have the space—or the budget—to kit out an entire retro rec room?
“There are a lot of small tweaks you can make even if you don’t have the time, energy or budget to design a fully analog room from scratch,” said Price.
Gachot says “the small things in people’s lives are cues of what the bigger trends are.”
More of her clients, she’s noticed, have been requesting retrograde staples, such as analog clocks and magazine racks.
For her Los Angeles living room, chef Sara Kramer sourced a vintage piano from Craigslist to be the room’s centerpiece, rather than sacrifice its design to the dominant black box of a smart TV. Alabama designer Lauren Conner recently worked with a client who bought a home with a rotary phone.
Rather than rip it out, she decided to keep it up and running, adding a silver receiver cover embellished with her grandmother’s initials.
Some throwback accessories aren’t so subtle. Melia Marden was browsing listings from the Public Sale Auction House in Hudson, N.Y. when she spotted a phone booth from Bell Systems circa the late 1950s and successfully bid on it for a few hundred dollars.
“It was a pandemic impulse buy,” said Marden.
In 2023, she and her husband, Frank Sisti Jr., began working with designer Elliot Meier and contractor ReidBuild to integrate the booth into what had been a hallway linen closet in their Brooklyn townhouse.
Canadian supplier Old Phone Works refurbished the phone and sold them the pulse-to-tone converter that translates the rotary dial to a modern phone line.
The couple had collected a vintage whimsical animal-adorned wallpaper (featured in a different colourway in “Pee-wee’s Playhouse”) and had just enough to cover the phone booth’s interior.
Their children, ages 9 and 11, don’t have their own phones, so use the booth to communicate with family. It’s also become a favorite spot for hiding away with a stack of Archie comic books.
The booth has brought back memories of meandering calls from Marden’s own youth—along with some of that era’s simple joy. As Meier puts it: “It’s got this magical wardrobe kind of feeling.”
