As this is a relatively new field much of the emphasis of this study was on a literature review to help develop a theoretical platform to work from. It was found that the colour of wood appears in the literature in two ways. It appears qualitatively in marketing and value-added research, and it appears quantitatively in colour matching and quality control research. The present research study is the first known occurrence of the quantitative comparison of measured colour with measured consumer preference.
There has been considerable research into character marks in wood. This research has largely been based around traditional hardwoods as the result of increasing scarcity of high grades of lumber. However, more fundamental characteristics such a grain profile, rings per inch, and the presence of visual features such as rays and vessels have not been considered with respect to visual preferences.
Consumer preference data used for this study originated from the study “Consumer visual evaluation of underutilized Canadian wood species” (Fell, 2002). This was chosen as it has a great variety of species to analyze. However, in the survey consumers evaluated the species for overall appearance and not for specific end-uses. Therefore results of the current study are general to wood used in the home and do not apply to specific end-uses.