A cabinet made of wood veneer or solid wood? Is one better than the other, or does it not matter? Especially for you, we have listed the advantages and disadvantages of these different types of materials!

What is veneer?

The word veneer comes from the French word 'fournir', which means 'to provide'. In Dutch, veneer means 'to provide with a layer of wood'. The verb fineren also means 'to cover with veneer'. Veneer is therefore a layer of wood or plastic that is applied to other sheet material.

Plastic veneer

Plastic veneer may look like wood, but as the name suggests, it is not made of wood, but of plastic. There are many different types available. Most people are familiar with laminate, but also melamine and formica are a type of synthetic veneer. It has been used since the 1970s in mostly cheap furniture.

The advantage of synthetic veneer is that it is cheaper than wood veneer. Synthetic is easier to clean, so rings do not easily appear in the top and you can easily wipe away dirt with aggressive cleaning agents. In addition, you do not have to treat the furniture further - which is necessary with wood.

But besides these advantages there are also many disadvantages:

• Less attractive: it looks 'fake' and cheap
• Not repairable: a scratch or dent is not/difficult to repair.
• Not sustainable, plastic is an unnatural product and is difficult to recycle
• Usually used on low quality furniture

Wood veneer

As the name suggests, wood veneer is made from… wood. In a wood factory, tree trunks are shaped into thin sheets of wood starting at 0.7 millimeters thick: wood veneer. They do this by, as it were, planing the tree trunk. In the past, wood veneer was often slightly thicker, up to 1.5 mm thick, but nowadays 0.7 mm wood veneer is common.

Because wood veneer is made of real wood, it looks the same as solid wood. Almost all mid-century cabinets are made with wood veneer. Also design cabinets. Wood veneer is also often combined with solid wood. Take this for example design furniture (photo 1).

The edges, the beautifully finished handles and the legs are made of solid wood. The rest of the furniture is covered with veneer.

With wood veneer, there are different types of finishes possible. You can make wood veneer from almost all types of wood, so wood veneer comes in many different types of colors and surfaces. These surfaces can be smooth or not, do you want a surface with knots, cracks or grains, or do you prefer without?

All the benefits of wood veneer:

• Because wood veneer is made of real wood, you can renovate or adjust it – to a certain extent. Stains or light scratches in wood veneer can be repaired. Wood veneer can be sanded and, just like solid wood, can be finished with wood oil, wax, stain or lacquer. When renovating veneer, it is important to be careful not to go through the veneer. Veneer is only about a millimeter thick and when sanding, you have to be careful not to go through the veneer. If you do, the underlying wood will show through and you will still have to replace the veneer.
• In addition, you can customize a piece of furniture if you are not happy with the color. You can use a colored lacquer or stain to give it a different color while still showing the wood grain.

• In case of larger damages in veneer it can be replaced. Wood veneer can be bought at a timber merchant or ordered online.
• It has the same appearance as solid wood
• A piece of furniture made with wood veneer is cheaper than a piece of furniture made of solid wood. Because the core of the furniture is made of, for example, chipboard, only the outside is made of the beautiful wood type.
• It is lighter than solid wood, which is useful during moving.
• There is less chance of warping or working of the wood. It is less sensitive to humidity and therefore does not warp less quickly.

Solid wood

Where wood veneer is glued to sheet material, solid wood is where multiple parts of the trees are glued together to form a sheet. This makes solid wood heavier.

Solid wood is easier to apply beautiful details. Because it is made entirely of wood, all shapes can be applied, and it can easily be carved without an underlayer appearing, as with wood veneer. The fact that there is no underlayer in solid wood has another great advantage: It can always be sanded and therefore almost always repaired.

A disadvantage of solid wood: it is a lot more expensive than wood veneer, because a cheaper core cannot be used. In addition, solid wood always continues to work, so will always warp faster than veneered sheet material.

Bee vintage chairs solid wood is almost always used. This is the most solid and with it you create the most beautiful shapes and finishes. With qualitative mid century cabinets a combination of solid wood and wood veneer is often made. This gives you the charm of solid wood, but also the advantages of wood veneer.

For example, the frames and handles of a cabinet are often made of solid wood, but the rest of the cabinet is made of wood veneer.

What is better?

All three materials have their pros and cons. Solid wood is the best to repair, it creates the most beautiful details, and it is very strong. But it also comes with a price tag, the weight is heavy, the wood works and it can warp. In addition, it differs per category. Mid-century cabinets are almost always made with wood veneer, but when it comes to chairs, solid wood is almost always used.

If you prefer furniture that is as cheap as possible, then furniture with plastic veneer is an option.

How do you tell if something is solid wood or wood veneer?

To find out whether something is made of solid wood or wood veneer, the easiest way is to look at the edges of a piece of furniture.

A tree is logically sawn lengthwise in the sawmill. The head of the plank is not visible when something is veneered. With solid wood you do see it. Below are some examples.