We now sell bare brass two ways: raw and matte, or polished bright. Both are uncoated, so both will change with use. The choice is really about how you want it to look on day one.
Unlacquered brass is the only finish we sell with nothing on top of it. Satin brass, matte black, satin nickel and the rest all have a sealed layer that keeps them looking the way they arrived. Unlacquered has no layer at all. The metal is bare, so it reacts to the air in the room and to the oils on your hands, and it changes.
Until now we sold it one way. There are now two, and the difference between them is worth explaining properly, because it is not the difference most people assume.
What unlacquered actually means
No lacquer, no coating, no plating. Solid brass, left as metal.
Over a few months it darkens towards a warm brown. Where hands touch it most often it stays brighter, so a handle ends up with a lighter track along the part you actually hold. That is patina. It is surface oxidation, not wear or damage, and indoors it goes honey and brown. The green you see on statues comes from years of rain, not from a kitchen.
Because there is no coating, you cannot really get the cleaning wrong. A dry cloth handles marks. Brass polish takes it back to bright whenever you want it back. Or you leave it alone, which is where most people end up. Our finish and care guide covers the detail, and we wrote separately about brass in the bathroom, which is the room where it moves fastest.
An older idea than it looks
Unlacquered is not a new fashion. It is the original condition. Brass door furniture, letterplates and window fittings in Georgian and Victorian houses were left bare. Keeping them bright was simply one of the household jobs, done with a cloth and a tin of polish. Lacquer arrived later to put a stop to that, and sealed finishes gradually became the norm.
Brass then fell out of favour for a long stretch, while chrome and brushed steel took over kitchens and bathrooms, and it has only come back in recent years. What came back was mostly the sealed version.
So a bare brass handle is not a modern idea at all. The genuinely modern part is choosing not to polish it, and letting the metal go where it was always going to go.
Two starting points
Unlacquered brass is the original: raw and matte, unpolished, a soft dull gold. It looks quiet and slightly undressed against a painted door, and plenty of people choose it for exactly that.
Polished unlacquered brass is the same bare metal, polished to a bright shine before it ships. It is the brass most people picture: bar rails, pub door pushes, the letterbox on an old front door. Bright, warm, and still completely bare.
One thing worth saying plainly. This is not the same as our Polished Brass (PVD), which is sealed and stays a mirror indefinitely. Polished unlacquered brass will not stay bright. It starts bright.
What actually happens over the first year
Both finishes end up in a similar place, which tends to surprise people.
The polished one softens. The shine goes first where fingers land, and the colour deepens everywhere else. Within a few months it reads as mellow rather than shiny.
The matte one does the opposite at first. Handling smooths the spots you touch most, so they come up to a low sheen while the rest darkens around them.
Give it a couple of years and, on the same drawer front, you would struggle to say which had started where. Both settle into a warm brown with a brighter path where the hand goes.
So the choice is about the first year, not the tenth.
Which one to choose
If you want a kitchen or bathroom to look finished the week it goes in, choose polished. You get the brightness straight away and the ageing happens gradually afterwards.
If the shiny stage is the part you would rather skip, choose matte. It starts quiet and stays quiet.
If you are matching brass already in the house, matte is usually closer to anything more than a couple of years old. Polished is closer to something newly restored.
A living finish also sits well next to sealed ones. It works best on the piece you touch most: the front door, or the drawer you open every morning. We made that case in mixing metals at home.
A note on expectations
The one thing you cannot do with either finish is keep it exactly as it arrived. That is not a fault to be managed, it is how bare metal behaves, and it is the reason people choose it.
Everything else is reversible. Dark back to bright with a little polish, bright back to dark by leaving it alone. After a few years you have a piece of hardware that looks like yours and nobody else’s, and now you get to decide whether that story starts bright or quiet.
meraki. designs and sources solid brass hardware in sealed and living finishes, so you can choose a piece for where it starts as well as where it ends up.
