When you discover that a household item has a veneer, does it cause you to wince a bit? A lot of people are repelled by the idea of veneer. Yet, Wood Veneer, truth be told, is a conventional and noteworthy part of furniture-production that is still an integral factor in contemporary design.
“Wood veneer has been utilized in furniture-production and millwork strategies for more than 200 years,” says interior designer Cate Caruso of Studio C in New York, who utilizes them for a wide range of excellent custom decorations.
In carpentry, a wood veneer is really a “paper slim” slice of wood that is applied to the two sides of a solid center surface, similar to furniture-grade MDF or substrate material, to seal and balance out it—which is critically important when you’re fashioning built-in furniture or anything with a mechanism. The explanation is simple: Solid wood grows and contracts as the temperature changes. For example, a dining table can be made from hardwood (and many are), yet a wood piece with moving parts can not. “With kitchen cabinetry, drawers, and anything worked in or framed, you truly must have veneer,” Caruso clarifies to Architectural Digest. “A solid piece of hardwood simply isn’t in every case structurally sound enough to fabricate a millwork.”
But she isn’t speaking of fake wood.
“Often times, when people see a veneered furnishing that’s cheap, it’s actually not wood at all — it’s a laminate material,” Caruso states, placing a name to the faux surface that gave veneers unfavorable criticism some place along the line.
“Those are produced using plastic, paper, or even foil that has been printed with a wood grain design that frequently erodes at the edges—a definite method to spot them”, she goes on to state.
But obviously, there’s additionally a range in nature of legitimate wood veneers relying upon who makes them.
“All woodworking can be done well or it can be done poorly — but an expert will make the wood veneers look seamless, with perfect corners,” Caruso says, which clarifies the “misconception that a wood veneer is cheap when it’s anything but.”
Other than keeping a panel stable, wood veneers have different advantages and purposes. They’re viewed as an environmentally cognizant alternative since you’re actually maximizing a log into thin sheets. The core then, is grade MDF or substrate material.
In a lot of cases, they can even be cost-sparing.
There are several rare woods, such as Rosewoods, that are very expensive and exceptionally difficult to get — that if you wanted to do a Rosewood paneled room in solid wood, you’d need to be at least the Prince of England to afford it.
The same would go for any project in an expensive wood; veneers would bring down the cost of it.
Beyond millwork, veneers are also required for certain special techniques: Book-matched wood doors (or book-matched wood anything) would have to be fashioned using veneers because you’d never find wood planks with grains that perfectly match—it’s necessary instead to have a series of veneers cut from the same log. Then there are labor-intensive inlay arts like marquetry and parquetry, which require veneers cut to certain sizes and shapes that are then fit into the top of a structure. A far cry from plastic laminate surfaces, right?