Compare veneer and solid wood | Determine the best material

Nat­ur­al wood prod­ucts are high­ly val­ued among con­sumers. Orig­i­nal­ly made doors or fur­ni­ture, for exam­ple, can become not only a func­tion­al, but also an aes­thet­ic addi­tion to any inte­ri­or. One of the most pop­u­lar “rep­re­sen­ta­tives” of the wood­work­ing indus­try are veneer and sol­id wood. What is the dif­fer­ence between them and what is the fea­ture of each mate­r­i­al? Our experts know the answers to all ques­tions.

Luxurious durable array: features, benefits

Sol­id wood is a com­plete­ly nat­ur­al mate­r­i­al, rep­re­sent­ed exclu­sive­ly by wood. In its raw form, it often looks like bars, boards, wood sheets, which are used as the basis for cre­at­ing fur­ni­ture. The pro­cess­ing tech­nique can be dif­fer­ent, but one thing remains the same — for this, whole pieces of wood are always used and nev­er — waste from the wood­work­ing indus­try.

The mate­r­i­al in ques­tion is envi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly, high qual­i­ty and price. But it is con­sid­ered an elite prod­uct not because of the high price, but because of its noble appear­ance and incred­i­ble dura­bil­i­ty.

The tree array is of two types:

1. Sol­id — the more ide­al the wood sur­face, the more valu­able such mate­r­i­al will be. Accord­ing­ly, the absence of knots, chips and oth­er defects in the tex­ture of the wood array sig­nif­i­cant­ly increas­es its val­ue. Pure pieces of wood are gen­er­al­ly con­sid­ered to be of high­er qual­i­ty, and they are usu­al­ly sol­id. Fur­ni­ture made from a sin­gle piece of wood is pres­ti­gious, has an excel­lent appear­ance and is expen­sive. When form­ing the price, not only the cost of the expend­ed mate­r­i­al is tak­en into account, but also the work itself. After all, such a prod­uct is cre­at­ed man­u­al­ly: in the pro­duc­tion of fur­ni­ture from sol­id wood, only saws, grinders and pneu­mat­ic pis­tols are used as tools.

2. Glued is a less expen­sive alter­na­tive to the first option. Often, when saw­ing trees, there are many pieces that are unsuit­able for the man­u­fac­ture of boards or sol­id tim­ber, but it is also imprac­ti­cal to use such “tasty” raw mate­ri­als for saw­dust. It is these bars that are used to cre­ate glued wood. It con­sists of sev­er­al lay­ers (lamel­lae) inter­con­nect­ed by a spe­cial com­po­si­tion. At the same time, the lamel­las are super­im­posed on each oth­er so that the alter­na­tion of fibers “along and across” is obtained.

It is worth imme­di­ate­ly clar­i­fy­ing that high-qual­i­ty sol­id wood fur­ni­ture made by a mas­ter has no price lim­it. You can, of course, object, cit­ing an inex­pen­sive array of pine as an exam­ple. But it is often made of lamel­las and will last at least 5 times less than the sol­id ver­sion.

The main advan­tages of the wood array:

1. Dura­bil­i­ty — many peo­ple mis­tak­en­ly con­sid­er fur­ni­ture made of nat­ur­al sol­id wood to be short-lived. This is so only in the case when the prod­uct was cre­at­ed with­out observ­ing the dry­ing tech­nol­o­gy (which implies dry­ing for 1 year and 1 month). A high-qual­i­ty piece of fur­ni­ture will last about 20 years.

2. Envi­ron­men­tal friend­li­ness — the sol­id wood is 100% envi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly. The excep­tion is prod­ucts cre­at­ed in work­shops where unnat­ur­al oil is used.

3. Sophis­ti­cat­ed appear­ance — an incred­i­bly styl­ish look empha­sizes the sta­tus of the own­er of sol­id wood prod­ucts. None of its imi­ta­tions can achieve a sim­i­lar effect.

4. Aes­thet­ic sen­sa­tions — one can­not fail to note the unique sen­sa­tions that arise when con­tem­plat­ing and touch­ing prod­ucts made from sol­id pieces of wood. In addi­tion, the unique smell of wood has an incred­i­bly calm­ing effect.

5. Unique­ness — since the prod­ucts are made only indi­vid­u­al­ly, you can cre­ate any prod­uct you like: wood crafts­men are unlim­it­ed in their capa­bil­i­ties.

Among the dis­ad­van­tages of sol­id wood prod­ucts, only two can be not­ed: the high price and the need for care­ful main­te­nance.

Practical veneer: features, benefits

For those who are sat­is­fied with the visu­al iden­ti­ty of wood, prac­ti­cal and ele­gant veneer will be to their taste. This is the gold­en mean between nat­ur­al and syn­thet­ic wood mate­ri­als. Veneer is cre­at­ed by sep­a­rat­ing thin lay­ers from the wood sur­face. As a rule, one of three tech­nolo­gies is used for this: peel­ing, saw­ing or plan­ing. The mate­r­i­al in ques­tion is in most cas­es used as a fin­ish­ing coat­ing for walls, doors and fur­ni­ture.

The main advan­tages of veneer:

1. Afford­able price — prod­ucts, in the pro­duc­tion of which veneer was used, are dis­tin­guished by demo­c­ra­t­ic cost. Such prod­ucts are, as a rule, a third cheap­er than ana­logues from the array.

2. Styl­ish appear­ance — veneer allows you to achieve a very effec­tive appear­ance. At the same time, prod­ucts cov­ered with veneer are prac­ti­cal­ly indis­tin­guish­able (either visu­al­ly or tac­tile­ly) from prod­ucts made from sol­id wood.

3. Ease of care — veneer fur­ni­ture does not require del­i­cate han­dling, and when using a spe­cial treat­ment it becomes “insen­si­tive” to exter­nal influ­ences.

4. A vari­ety of pat­terns — when order­ing veneer prod­ucts, you can eas­i­ly choose a suit­able tex­ture, pat­tern, its direc­tion, etc. With sol­id pieces of wood, by the way, every­thing is more dif­fi­cult here, because it is impos­si­ble to pick up two iden­ti­cal pat­terns.

Despite all its attrac­tive­ness, veneer has a num­ber of dis­ad­van­tages:

1. Non-envi­ron­men­tal — veneer is a lay­er no more than 0.5 cm thick. Every­thing else is a “sym­bio­sis” of wood chips, formalde­hyde, glue, resins, paint, etc. And this fact will not change at an afford­able price.

2. Low qual­i­ty (with bro­ken tech­nol­o­gy) — if veneer prod­ucts are made with­out fol­low­ing the tech­nol­o­gy, the prod­uct will fail very quick­ly: the veneer will sim­ply peel off. By the way, if you com­pare the price of an array and high-qual­i­ty veneer, the dif­fer­ence will not be so great.

ON A NOTE. There is one more nuance that not every­one will con­sid­er a dis­ad­van­tage, but, nev­er­the­less: the veneer does not have the charm of an array and does not give aes­thet­ic plea­sure when touched.

Comparative characteristics

Hav­ing exam­ined in detail both prod­ucts of the wood­work­ing indus­try, cer­tain con­clu­sions can be drawn. Our experts have com­piled a detailed com­par­i­son of the mate­ri­als described above. Here’s what they got.