The Return of Wood

Wood is the oldest luxury material in a car — Volvo has been using it for close to a century — and a decade of all-glass, all-screen minimalism nearly wrote its obituary. Wood looked like your grandfather's saloon; the future was a black slab of touchscreen. Then something turned. Real wood is back across the premium cabin — Mercedes, BMW, Lexus, Audi, Tesla and Rivian all now offer open-pore wood trim. The most future-facing material in the 2026 interior turns out to be the oldest one, precisely because it is the opposite of a screen: warm, tactile, imperfect and real.

It did not, though, return the way it left. The old wood luxury was high-gloss: burl walnut buried under thick mirror lacquer, wood pretending to be jewellery. The new wood luxury is open-pore — an ultra-thin matte lacquer that uses roughly ninety percent less coating than a high-gloss finish, so you actually see and feel the grain instead of your own reflection. Bentley now makes it a Mulliner signature; Tesla owners retrofit real open-pore veneer; and it has become the matte option buyers reach for by default. The finish itself inverted: gloss used to be the signal of "expensive," and now the absence of gloss is.

This is the interesting part for anyone who shapes surfaces. A high-gloss finish is a layer laid on top of the material; it flattens the wood into a picture of wood. Open-pore does the opposite — it leaves the surface almost bare, so the timber's texture, its tiny ridges and colour shifts, becomes the finish. It is harder to do well and far less forgiving: with the pores unprotected, grime embeds into the grain easily and the wood needs real care, the same bargain you strike with unglazed leather. That fragility is exactly why it reads as authentic — you can tell no one hid the material behind a shell of plastic. It is honesty you can feel with a fingertip. And the eye reads it before the hand confirms it: a matte, open surface scatters light softly and irregularly, the way real things in nature do, while a mirror coating always announces itself as something manufactured and added on top. In leaving the pores open, the designer is choosing to let the material be seen for what it is, rather than dressed up as something richer than it is.

The wood itself changed as much as the finish. Makers now reach for sustainably sourced and even reclaimed timber: Volvo's real-wood inlays are responsibly sourced and each piece is left unique, while Polestar's "reconstructed" birch deco embraces natural variation and cuts material waste. The goal is no longer a flawless, perfectly matched veneer but a surface that visibly came from a tree. And crucially it is genuine material rather than chrome or plastic trying to look like wood — the same real-versus-fake honesty line that runs through every serious CMF decision.

Wood's comeback is not nostalgia; it is a counterweight. As every cabin converges on the same wall of black glass, brands need a surface that does the opposite work — one that says slow down, that ages, that is warm to the eye and the hand. The 2026 luxury interior is now defined by exactly that blend: authentic materials set against integrated screens, the wood there to stop the technology from swallowing the room. Even the argument has flipped — on enthusiast forums the question is no longer whether wood is dated but whether to choose gloss or open-pore, and the matte, natural answer usually wins.

That is the concept-phase lesson. Warmth is not a trim you bolt on at the end; it is a stance taken at the beginning about what a cabin is for. In a car racing toward all-glass, choosing wood — and choosing to let it look like wood, open-pored and imperfect rather than lacquered into a mirror — is a decision about how the space should make a person feel, made long before the first screen is placed. Even a five-year-old open-pore dashboard that strikes some eyes as "unfinished" is doing precisely its job: refusing to pretend. The oldest material in the car came back not despite the digital future but because of it — and it came back honest.

Sources:

• ●Volvo Cars Villa — Design Elements That Define Modern Scandinavian Luxury (genuine wood, ~a century)
• ●FormWood Industries — Wood Veneer for Automotive Interiors (open-pore adoption across brands)
• ●Salon Privé — Bentley Launches New Open-pore Walnut Veneer (90% less lacquer)
• ●Bentley Media — Mulliner extends personal commissioning: fresh textures, colours and finishes
• ●RPM Tesla — Real Open-Pore Wood Veneer for Model Y
• ●Dr. Beasley's — How to Clean Open Pore Wood Veneer Trim in Cars
• ●MBWorld — Natural grain / open-pore wood trim care (owner discussion)
• ●Polestar — Materials: reconstructed birch wood deco, natural variation, less waste
• ●CarXplorer — Luxury Car Interiors: 2026 designs (authentic materials + integrated tech)
• ●BMW i4 Forum — Poll: Interior Trim, To Gloss or not to Gloss
• ●The Daily Dot — What's Up With the Open-Pore Wood Interior in This Mercedes?