Comparison of wood types, engineered or solid, for furniture crafting

Wood is one of the oldest materials used for constructing just about anything, including furniture. Despite availability of other materials like metals, plastics and artificial composites like carbon fiber, wooden furniture still enjoy a high demand.

However, due to technological advancement and needs like lower cost and more efficient use of materials, wooden furniture nowadays are hardly crafted with solid wood only. Engineered wood emerged from the past several hundred years due to aforementioned need and have currently displaced solid wood as mainstream furniture-manufacturing wood materials.

There are more than a dozen types of engineered wood for different purposes, with plywood and fiberboards being most used for furniture-manufacturing. Here is the comparison between solid wood, plywood and fiberboard.


Solid wood

This is the type used for furniture construction for centuries. Cut directly from lumber without further artificial treatments, furniture of solid wood is touted for its natural beauty, and having durability proven for centuries of crafting and use, is touted to be the most durable compared to furniture crafted from engineered wood and can easily last centuries. Repairs if needed can also be easily done.

However, due to worldwide shortages, solid wood-only furniture has become very expensive. Due to inherent high density, solid furniture is also typical heavier than those crafted from engineered wood of the same size. Due to its premium status, it is recommended for buyers to watch out for the term ‘solid wood’ used in advertising of furniture, as it might turn out to be nothing more than play-of-words.

Plywood

Plywood is a type of engineered wood panel created by gluing several thinner boards of wood to create a thicker board. With the boards being arranged in such a way that the grains runs against each other, called cross-graining, the end result is a material with great resistance against expansion, shrinkage, warping, twisting and breaking, as well as heightened overall strength and stability across all dimensions.

Characteristics depend on the type of wood panels used in manufacturing, but plywood furniture is overall considered as very strong and very stable. Due to being less expensive compared to solid wood furniture in general, plywood is the mainstream wooden material used for furniture-manufacturing, where price is not too much of a priority. Due to plywood furniture being made less than 200 years ago, long term durability is still being debated. 

Fiberboards

They are created as cheaper alternatives to solid wood and plywood, where cost is a greater concern than strength and durability. Fiberboards are created using wood fibers, chips, shavings and even dust, compressed and bonded with adhesives into boards. There are three subtypes of fiberboards – particleboard, medium-density fiberboard (MDF) and hardboard or high-density fiberboard (HDF), differentiated by density.

Characteristics vary greatly according to density, but fiberboard furniture are generally considered inferior alternatives to solid wood and plywood, as with the exception of hardboard, they are known to have poor screw and nail retention, as well as poor resistance against the elements and tendency to split and crack.