The Veneer Cover-up! Part 1
February 17, 2010
Veneer Over Poor Quality Wood
Veneer can be a confusing term. Here’s our guide to the pros and cons of veneered furniture.
In the first of this two-part blog post we will discover that veneers are often employed by online furniture retailers to disguise the inadequacies of their furniture.
What are veneers?
The Merriam-Webster 2010 dictionary defines a veneer to be a layer of wood of superior value or excellent grain to be glued to an inferior wood†
So, veneers are thin strips of wood that are glued together to form the appearance of solid wood. There is a great case for the use of veneers if you’re a furniture manufacturer or retailer, but as a customer you really need to avoid them at all cost.
There is some expensive veneered furniture out there though; it can’t be that bad, can it?
A surprising amount of retailers who claim to be selling high quality wooden furniture will actually be selling wooden furniture finished with a veneer. In general a lot of customers won’t know what a veneer is, and even less will know what could potentially lie beneath.
Cross-Section of Solid Oak
Cost is the key word when it comes to veneers. As you can imagine, if you’re building a piece of wooden furniture that is going to be covered in veneers you won’t worry very much about the quality of the timber you’re using. If there are splits in the grain, or knots that have fallen out you could easily put some filler in and forget about the loss in rigidity – after all, nobody’s going to see it! You can also afford to be slap-dash in your approach to building it, so long as the veneer is well stuck down it will hide a multitude of sins. In short, you can think of a veneer as a cover-up job.
More on veneers coming soon
In the second part of this look under the skin of veneered furniture we will discover what to look out for to avoid buying furniture with veneer finishes.
