Matching the Face to the Room
Start with how much age you want overhead. Reclaimed hemlock shows the most. It was salvaged from mushroom houses, long low growing buildings where it spent decades in steady humidity and little sunlight, and you can order it rough faced or circle sawn.
Rustic white oak is milled smooth, so its character comes from knots, mineral streak, and grain variation rather than weathering. Circle sawn white oak keeps the saw marks from the mill blade in its face. You get texture, and the color still holds to a narrow range.
Pine is worth a look if a dark beam would feel heavy in the room. Rustic white pine is knotty New England white pine with a circle sawn face, nearly cream when unfinished. Of the four it has the palest color, weighs the least, and is the easiest to work with on site.
Then check the ceiling height. A profile is named for the three faces you see, so a 6 by 6 by 6 has 6 inches on both sides and 6 across the bottom. Under a low ceiling, a 3 by 6 by 3 keeps the 6 inch bottom and cuts the sides to 3 inches, so the beam takes up less of the room.
Box beams are decorative and hold nothing up. For a single timber with real age in it, axe marks and mortise pockets included, see our solid reclaimed beams, hand hewn or rough sawn timbers pulled from barns across the Northeast. A solid beam carries weight, so the ceiling needs structure to hold it.
The photos below show a labeled sample of each face, five in all, because hemlock comes two ways.
