You have probably been disappointed by a piece of furniture at least once. You may have chosen to decorate your first apartment in affordable yet contemporary Scandinavian designs and quickly become frustrated when your desk started to sag or surfaces chipped or peeled away. Later on you may have thought you were getting a deal on solid wood furniture only to find out that it wasn’t actually solid when a scratch broke through the surface and revealed fraying fibers underneath. You may even have been outraged to find out that what looked like wood in the photos was in fact plastic with embossed wood grain.

It’s not always easy to see the difference between real or fake wood furniture online, and sometimes even in person it can be tricky. That’s a deliberate choice on the part of many furniture makers, as manufactured wood products are cheaper than solid hardwood. Covering these products with wood-looking material allows them to charge a higher price for what is in reality a very basic piece of furniture. In comparison, solid hardwood holds up better, lasts longer, and is worth more money. When decorating a family home you’re going to want the lasting beauty and strength of real wood.

So, how do you know if a piece is real or fake wood furniture in order to be sure that you’re getting your money’s worth?

The Advantages and Disadvantages of Fake Wood Furniture

It’s important to first understand the differences between solid wood furniture and furniture that is made to look like wood. There are two different sorts of fake wood furniture: laminate and veneer. In both cases, a surface that has the appearance of solid wood is glued to a less expensive engineered wood product hiding it from sight. The nature of the covering material is the difference between the two types. A laminate is a synthetic material like plastic or vinyl. Usually, a thin layer is glued to the surface. Veneer on the other hand is a layer of hardwood that can range in thickness from paper thin to a relatively thick half-of-an-inch or so. Each type has advantages and disadvantages.

Laminate is a synthetic and will naturally resist moisture. You can set a mug of coffee on laminate tables and desks without worrying about damaging the finish. The glass won’t leave a ring and spills can just be wiped up. A disadvantage of laminate furniture though is that these synthetic surfaces are rather obvious, and they can look cheap and tacky. Even when care is taken in building laminate furniture, it can be very difficult to mask its artificial appearance. While it might pass for wood in a photo, it’s clear in person that they are plainly artificial. The quality can vary quite a bit as well, with the laminate chipping or falling off of lower quality pieces quite quickly.

Veneer on the other hand, can pass for solid wood, and it can be stained and polished similarly. However, veneers are only so thick and this limits the number of times that a piece can be sanded down, restained, and given a whole new look. The veneer covering these pieces may be too thin for refinishing, and it can also peel or be chipped off. A scratch can go through it and reveal the material underneath.

Another distinction to be aware of with furniture that is not solid hardwood has to do with underlayment. There are three types of underlayment common in fake wood furniture: medium-density fibreboard (MDF), plywood, and oriented-strand board (OSB)—none of which are particularly pleasing to the eye unless an industrial look is the goal. All types of manufactured wood products can be prone to absorbing moisture, expanding, and separating from the covering veneer or laminate if left unsealed, and most fake wood is left uncovered and unsealed on the sides hidden from view.

Another issue is particular to MDF. While plywood and OSB maintain long wood fibre structures and have strength because of this, MDF separates these fibers and presses them back together into a panel using glue. The process makes the boards very heavy for their volume and robs them of stiffness. The result is fake wood furniture that sags under its own weight, resulting in dining tables, desks, and bookcases with noticeable dips in the center. Fake wood furniture tends not to last either, with the glue losing its grip after a few years. That’s fine for those who might not stay in one place for long. However, if you’re decorating your home for your family to enjoy for decades to come, you’re going to want the strength of real hardwood furniture.

Knowing the Difference Between Real or Fake Wood Furniture

While isn’t easy to see the difference between real or fake wood furniture online, it’s pretty easy to determine if a piece of furniture is fake wood in person. If a laminate is made to look like wood, the printed grains will lack a certain complexity. A touch of your hand will reveal its synthetic nature. Pieces of furniture covered with veneer will be harder to distinguish, but an eye for detail can help you see the difference.

Veneer is rarely used to cover the bottoms of tables or the undersides of drawers. Pulling out a drawer and checking the back and bottom will show whether it is made of wood products rather than solid wood. Looking inside the space vacated by the drawer you pulled out in a dresser, hutch, or sideboard will reveal what the interior partitions, back, and underside of the top is really made of. Similarly, checking the underside of a dining table or desk will clearly reveal what it is made from. If it is plywood or OSB, stamped numbers may reveal its source and batch number. If it has a core of MDF you will see an expanse of grainless material in gray, brown, or beige.

Whether or not you still wish to buy a piece of furniture after finding out that it is fake wood furniture should be determined by what your plans for it are. If you only expect to use it for a few years and don’t mind replacing it soon then you may still wish to buy it. However, if you are decorating a home to raise your family in and want your furnishing to last, then you will want the enduring beauty, strength, and resilience of real wood.

The only truly reliable way to be sure that a piece of furniture is made out of solid hardwood is to see it in person before you buy it. The best wood furniture is built of solid wood all the way through by craftsmen who take pride in their work. They can build real wood furniture in the style you choose and to the dimensions that you specify. It’s not always easy to find these sort of craftsmen in today’s world of mass production and mass market fake wood furniture. However, if you’re in Kansas City or the Dallas-Fort Worth area, you can see the difference between real and fake wood furniture and the difference between mass produced and custom furniture tailored to you at the Unruh Furniture showroom, where furniture is built to last.

Let Us Help You

Unruh Furniture offers tables, desks, beds, and dressers that are constructed by skilled craftsmen in your choice of any one of six hardwood species and twelve finishes to fit the spaces in your home. Schedule a visit to our Dallas showroom in the heart of Deep Ellum or our Kansas City showroom in midtown today.

When you’ve ever bought furniture, chatted with someone who has purchased furniture, or even looked into purchasing furniture, we can bet you’ve asked yourself, “why is solid wooden furniture are so expensive?”

Before we get started, though, we thought we’d note something important: when you ask why furniture is so expensive, what you’re really asking is something else, something more like, “why is high-quality wood furniture so expensive?”

What even is high-quality wood furniture? It’s no secret that you can find inexpensive “wood” furniture more readily now than ever before. It may look good, it may feel good, it may even come from a store with a neat aesthetic. Ultimately, though, we have reason to believe that inexpensive furniture isn’t going to last, and that means you may end up paying more in the long run.

What are the three main types of “wood” used in furniture?

There are, essentially, three types of “wood” used in furniture: Solid wood, particleboard or MDF, and plywood.

Within these categories, there are high quality and lower quality versions which ultimately will affect the long-term durability of the furniture and the price.

Solid wood is a natural resource that we come by organically rather than through a manufacturing process. Solid wood can be either hardwood or softwood. No surprise, hardwoods are stronger with a higher density and lot of more expensive than softwoods.

Typical hardwoods found in high-quality wood furniture are:

• – Oak
• – Cherry
• – Maple
• – Walnut
• – Birch
• – Ash 

Typical softwoods are:

Featured content:
5 Reasons Why Your Business Needs office furniture？
Everything You Need To Know To Find The Best restaurant chair
What type of chair is best for studying for students?
The economics of buffet
How do I reset my standing desk?
3 Basic Questions To Ask At All Weather Outdoor Furniture Suppliers
How Much Does Digital Signage Cost?

• Pine
• Poplar
• Acacia
• Rubberwood

Hardwoods grow at a slower rate and are more fire resistant than softwoods, making them more scarce to harvest and more desirable for high-quality goods. 

Another factor in the price of hardwood comes from the fact we are only using the best parts of the tree – the heartwood – the central core of the tree where the rich color tones and core strength come from.

Within these hardwoods, there are tiers of price as well. Walnut is more expensive as it is a bit rarer due to natural limitations such as size.

Oak, Ash, Maple, and Cherry are more abundant as they grow larger but have highly sought after aesthetics in the grain which make them less expensive than Walnut but more expensive than some other hardwoods. Birch is slightly cheaper than all of these because the natural tones in the wood grain are not as even. Birch is excellent to use for stained or colorfully painted furniture.

Particleboard and Medium Density Fiberboard

Particleboard and Medium Density Fiberboard (MDF) are both engineered wood composites made up of leftover hardwood or softwood. MDF can be quite dense and sturdy, so reliable that it is near impossible to cut with a table saw.

Particleboard, or chipboard, however, is much less sturdy as it is made up of large chips of wood that are bound together with glue and resin (think wood salami).

Although particle board is less expensive, we recommend consumers steer clear. The voids of space in between wood chips in particle board make it far less durable and more prone to damage.

 That does not mean all engineered wood composites are cheap, MDF puts its strength to good use in certain applications. So what are some of the uses for MDF? You can find it in some media cabinets, for example, because it will not warp with the heat coming off electronics.

Most bookcase shelves are MDF as it can hold more weight and prevents it from warping over time. Most dressers have MDF on the siding to help mitigate cost and weight and ensure the stability of the piece over time.

What are Veneers?

Another term you will hear tossed around in the furniture world is “veneer.” So, what is a veneer?

While there are different quality levels of a veneer, it is a less expensive alternative to hardwood by putting a thin piece of premium wood covering over a type of manufactured wood.

 The single layer provides the look of hardwood grains, but the underlying content keeps the cost down. One of the drawbacks to veneer is that it limits the number of times you can refinish your furniture. We would not recommend veneer on tables for that exact reason.

Tables may see some wear over their lifetime, and one of the benefits of a solid wood piece is the flexibility to sand and refinish to increase longevity. A word of caution to all – not all veneers are created equal.

Make sure, if you are getting a veneer, it is an actual piece of hardwood. Additionally, a cheap veneer is the easiest way to make particle board or chipboard look like real wood. If you have a lower quality particle board underneath your veneer, you are more likely to see wear and tear. A dent or chip the veneer it is not easily repairable. 

How it is made matters just as much as what!

Repeat after me: joint construction is better than staples, nails, or glue. Joint construction is more labor-intensive and costly than the other options, but there’s a reason it is still the go-to method of craftsman today: it’s reliable, simple, and secure. Dowels and screws are fine, but dovetail or mortise-and-tenon joints are best.

Drawer construction may impact the price as well. Wood can swell with humidity, so when it comes to wood-on-wood drawers, expect them to stick on the first rainy day. Stickiness is easy to mitigate with a touch of soap or wax.

If you prefer another drawer configuration – plenty of designs come with metal drawer glides as well. 

As with all finely made products, the devil is in the details. While all the hardwood furniture at Oak Furniture Store comes from the highest quality. Some of these special touches which impact cost include:

• Using a human set of eyes to carefully match wood grains for drawer fronts or a table top
• Hand oiling a finished piece to give hardwood furniture its most natural sheen and texture
• Creating proprietary finishes or hand waxing the inside of drawers to reduce VOCs and our carbon footprint

The Designs

For good or for worse, the most important design icons of our time didn’t work with cost (or mass-production) in mind. They focused on detail and originality and craftsmanship; like high-fashion couture, their designs have trickled down into mass-market production after some time, but not with the same top-quality construction.

Good original design (and by good design, we mean design that it looks good and feels good, marrying form and function) will cost more than their dupes do.

Good furniture is an investment, we know. We hope that after reading this article you understand why: how craftsmanship and attention to detail cost more than mass-manufactured goods, and how extra steps that may be more costly result in a more durable (and often, more functional) product.  

It’s important to consider long-term cost over short-term cost, too. Would you rather buy a cheaper piece of wood furniture every couple years, or buy one knowing that you won’t have to replace it in a couple decades time?