Compare lining and imitation timber

Fin­ish­ing with nat­ur­al wood has not lost its rel­e­vance for many years, although mate­ri­als that imi­tate real wood are try­ing to com­pete with it. Among a vari­ety of lum­ber, imi­ta­tion tim­ber and lin­ing are con­sid­ered one of the most ver­sa­tile, but many are con­fused about the intri­ca­cies of each prod­uct. Our experts will tell you how to choose the best one.

Features of finishing materials

Both of these prod­ucts are high­ly regard­ed for their ver­sa­til­i­ty and excel­lent appear­ance, which allows you to achieve the max­i­mum resem­blance to real tim­ber.

clapboard

It is a care­ful­ly processed and fit­ted board made of hard­wood / soft­wood. Clap­board is a real trea­sure when it comes to inte­ri­or design. It is often used in var­i­ous inte­ri­or styles:

1. Scan­di­na­vian — goes well with stone;

2. Hi-tech — in the inte­ri­or is used in com­bi­na­tion with met­al;

3. Loft — var­i­ous types of decor are used;

4. Provence — lin­ing is cov­ered with a lay­er of paint, etc.

The lin­ing made of wood has a num­ber of impor­tant prop­er­ties:

1. Ver­sa­til­i­ty of appli­ca­tion;

2. 
   

3. Envi­ron­men­tal friend­li­ness;

4. Easy instal­la­tion;

5. Afford­able price.

Lin­ing made of wood has a unique abil­i­ty to form a healthy micro­cli­mate in the room. In the cold sea­son, a room dec­o­rat­ed with this mate­r­i­al will be warm, and air humid­i­ty will be with­in nor­mal lim­its.

Among the weak­ness­es of the lin­ing — com­bustibil­i­ty and sus­cep­ti­bil­i­ty to decay. To avoid this, the mate­r­i­al is coat­ed with spe­cial impreg­na­tions.

timber imitation

Belongs to the cat­e­go­ry of planed with a fair­ly wide size range: the length of the prod­uct can be 6 m, and the width ranges from 0.65 to 2 m. con­fig­u­ra­tion. Imi­ta­tion of tim­ber is some­times called a kind of sym­bio­sis of lin­ing and block house.

Advantages of a bar

1. 
   Envi­ron­men­tal friend­li­ness — for the man­u­fac­ture of imi­ta­tion tim­ber, var­i­ous mate­ri­als of nat­ur­al ori­gin are used (in par­tic­u­lar, wood). And mod­ern meth­ods of dec­o­ra­tive pro­cess­ing allow you to cre­ate a safe and aes­thet­ic out­er coat­ing.

2. 
   Appli­ca­tion ver­sa­til­i­ty — pan­els made of imi­ta­tion tim­ber can be used to fin­ish sur­faces of any mate­r­i­al.

3. 
   wear resis­tance — the prod­uct in ques­tion per­fect­ly copes with tem­per­a­ture changes, and, in the pres­ence of anti­sep­tic treat­ment, with humid­i­ty (such a prod­uct is not afraid of fun­gus, mold and mois­ture). The ser­vice life of tim­ber imi­ta­tion can be up to 25 years.

4. 
   Excel­lent sound and heat insu­la­tion – struc­tur­al fea­tures allow the prod­uct to pro­vide suf­fi­cient pro­tec­tion of the premis­es from heat loss.

5. 
   Ease of instal­la­tion — for fin­ish­ing sur­faces (both hor­i­zon­tal and ver­ti­cal) with the help of imi­ta­tion of a bar, no spe­cial skills or tools are required. The con­nec­tion of struc­tur­al ele­ments with each oth­er is car­ried out by the “thorn-groove” method.

6. 
   Afford­able price — low price and ubiq­ui­ty make tim­ber imi­ta­tion an afford­able mate­r­i­al for every con­sumer.

7. 
   

8. To make the prod­uct not seem per­fect, it is worth men­tion­ing its weak­ness­es: des­ic­ca­tion and flam­ma­bil­i­ty.

Main differences

Imi­ta­tion of tim­ber and lin­ing have prac­ti­cal­ly no dif­fer­ences, so non-pro­fes­sion­als often con­fuse these two fin­ish­ing mate­ri­als. You need to under­stand the dif­fer­ence in order to choose the right prod­uct. First, the thick­ness of the prod­ucts. Imi­ta­tion of tim­ber is thick­er than lin­ing: in the range from 16 to 37 mm. The thick­ness of the lin­ing does not exceed 16 mm.

Sec­ond­ly, the method of instal­la­tion. The lin­ing can be installed in almost any direc­tion: hor­i­zon­tal­ly, ver­ti­cal­ly, diag­o­nal­ly. Imi­ta­tion of a bar can­not boast of such ver­sa­til­i­ty — this mate­r­i­al is only suit­able for hor­i­zon­tal lay­ing.

What to choose for exterior / interior decoration

In prin­ci­ple, both mate­ri­als are suit­able for facade cladding. It all depends main­ly on the bud­get allo­cat­ed for con­struc­tion / repair, and taste pref­er­ences. We rec­om­mend using imi­ta­tion tim­ber for out­door work (when it comes to frame and wood­en build­ings), since it is less sus­cep­ti­ble to exter­nal influ­ences.

When choos­ing a suit­able prod­uct, always pay atten­tion to its humid­i­ty — the opti­mal indi­ca­tor is 10–14%. If it is high­er, there is a high prob­a­bil­i­ty of defor­ma­tion of the fin­ish after pro­longed expo­sure to the sun. It will not be super­flu­ous to take into account the type of prod­uct — it is bet­ter to focus on class A prod­ucts. Such prod­ucts do not have defects, they have a strong lock­ing con­nec­tion.

For inte­ri­or dec­o­ra­tion of build­ings, lin­ing is the best option (although it can also be used for exte­ri­or dec­o­ra­tion). By the way, lin­ing is also used for cladding bath walls, since the mate­r­i­al is made from hard­wood, which does not emit essen­tial oils that are poi­so­nous to humans when heat­ed.