WOODCARVING & ACCESSORIES

Advantages of choosing solid wood furniture rather than veneer products

Solid wood furniture is gorgeous and classic. Irrespective of whether you love contemporary or rural designs, a solid wood piece of furniture looks fantastic for years.

Oak furniture is probably the most well-liked and has been much-loved for hundreds of years.

Whilst it undoubtedly looks really good, are there more benefits of using solid wood? Well yes, there are.

Solid wood is more expensive than particle board covered up in a wood veneer but there’s a reason for that – the product quality is significantly higher. Solid wood is structurally stronger and will not bow like a veneer piece of furniture can – this is really important if you are looking for a bookcase.

Another positive point for wood is it can be repaired fairly easily if it gets damaged. The broken parts can be filled and finished with wood treatments. Particleboard in comparison is very difficult to mend. This is often due to structural failure and this type of thing is just too major a fault to repair.

Moving particleboard furniture can be a hassle because it preferably should be dismantled first to protect it from knocks.

Solid furniture can last for many years and can be seen as an investment. A good looking piece also makes a great family heirloom and it may well give pleasure to your family members long after you don’t have any more requirement for it.

For those who have no-one to pass your pieces of furniture on to, solid wood will have a much higher resale value than particleboard (which frequently has simply no real value at all).

There are lots of types of wood such as pine, ash and oak so you can pick something that suits your needs. All of these woods have their own characteristics and appeal so make sure you find a showroom to view a good selection and you’ll find that you are attracted to one wood over all of the others.

It can also be finished with a natural wax or a tinted wax. Stains and paints might also be applied but wood is so gorgeous anyway that you should consider altering the colour very carefully, however it can still be sanded back and given a natural wax or varnish at a later date (something you can’t do with veneer).

On balance, wood by far outweighs veneered particleboard as the sensible choice for any home. So long as you can afford it, invest in solid wood – you won’t regret it. If the cost is initially off-putting, bear in mind that in time it could even work out less money because you are unlikely to ever need to replace it.
Lancaster Art Gallery – Dean Fox – Live Wood Carving