Cut a teak log and you see two distinct zones: a pale outer band of sapwood and a dense, honey-dark core of heartwood. They look similar on a showroom floor. They behave nothing alike in year ten.
Heartwood is where the tree stores the natural oils and rubber that make teak famous — the compounds that repel water, resist insects, and let a dining table sit through two hundred rainstorms without complaint. Sapwood has almost none of them. Furniture cut from sapwood weathers unevenly, checks early, and drinks water at the joints. Furniture cut from Grade A heartwood silvers evenly, stays tight, and simply keeps going.
That's the entire argument for Grade A: not how the piece looks at delivery, but the difference between a chair that needs replacing in year eight and one your customers stop thinking about entirely. Every Royal Teak frame is cut from Grade A heartwood drawn from sustainably managed plantations — the slow-grown center wood, CNC-cut for precision where the load matters and hand-finished where the eye lands.
When you compare quotes, ask one question: heartwood or "teak"? The price difference is real. So is the difference in year ten.