2 min read- Erin Napier compared maple wood to a “great brassiere,” praising its sturdy, supportive, and dependable qualities on HGTV’s Home Town: Inn This Together.
- Maple wood is valued for its warm aesthetic, versatility, and durability, making it a popular choice for furniture, cabinetry, flooring, and even basketball courts.
- While maple excels indoors, its low moisture resistance makes it a poor option for outdoor projects where wood rot can become an issue.
We all aspire to have a life full of ease and free of heavy lifting, and Erin Napier thinks our home’s materials could be pulling their own weight a little more. In the latest episode of her HGTV series Home Town: Inn This Together, Erin made a hilarious but very apt comparison that’s inspiring us to take a closer look at how we evaluate our design decisions.
Describing the many benefits of maple wood to a client, Napier began waxing poetic: “It's there for you. It’s sturdy and supportive, and you’re not thinking about it. It’s like a great brassiere.” Also calling the wood choice the “background MVP,” Napier praised maple’s transformative, warm, and homey aesthetic, a detail that she believes makes for the best spaces.
And, it turns out, Napier’s love of maple makes perfect sense. Known for its lighter tones, brightening quality, and versatility, maple is used for much more than just flooring throughout homes. The wood is a popular choice for natural wood furniture like country-style dining tables, kitchen cabinets, and its smooth grain texture also makes it an ideal choice for cutting boards—talk about functionality. Maple wood is also widely touted for its durability and is commonly used outside the home for flooring, basketball courts, dance floors, and even bowling lanes, bearing the impact of up to 16-pound balls effortlessly.
However, its durability only extends to in-house applications. Maple wood has notoriously low moisture resistance, so we wouldn’t reach for it in any outdoor projects—unless you’re itching for a case of wood rot.
Erin ultimately ended up using the wood for commercial casework, shelving, and cabinetry in the episode’s featured renovation. While we’re sure it turned out beautiful, fans just can’t stop LOL-ing at the intimate comparison. But hey, nothing becomes a tried-and-true staple without good reason! Sometimes trading trendy for dependability is less of a trade-off than we think.
