Love the look of solid wood but not the steep price tag that often comes with it? Most popular interior design styles today, from Nordic to wabi-sabi, often emphasize the features of wood, allowing its warm colors and natural patterns to shine through. However, solid wood furnishings and decor can be prohibitively costly, which makes homeowners shy away from them.
What if there was another way to get the look and feel of real wood into your home, without spending an arm and a leg for it? This article is an introduction to wood veneer and how you can use it in your interiors.
What is wood veneer?
The word “veneer” is defined as a thin coating over the top of any solid material. In woodworking, wood veneer refers to thin slices of real wood, usually thinner than 3 millimeters, that can be attached to, well, almost any surface that you can think of.
Say you have a piece of furniture from a big box store that is made using MDF panels. You can take pieces of peel and stick wood veneer to make it look like it’s made out of real wood instead.
Real wood veneer sheets can be used in a wide variety of interior design projects, and is often praised for its cost-effectiveness and versatility. In addition to using it on furniture, wood veneer can be applied to your walls, floors, and even ceilings.
What are the advantages of using wood veneer?
Primarily, the advantage of using wood veneer is that it gives you the look and feel of real solid wood without the accompanying expense. Unless you tell them, nobody needs to know the difference!
Another advantage of using thin wood veneer sheets is that there is a much wider variety of wood species that is available in veneer form than in solid form. This gives you access to different wood colors and patterns that are distinctive and unique from other mainstream options that are available out in the market today.
Some variants of wood veneer are also incredibly easy to install. Take peel and stick wood veneer, for example–it works exactly like peel and stick wallpaper! This eliminates the need to use glue or contact cement to adorn your projects; simply cut the piece down to the appropriate size and stick it on. It works even on rounded surfaces and non-sharp corners.
Unlike laminate, wood veneer is made out of real wood, and therefore can be repaired. You can remove damaged wood veneer from a piece of furniture, or simply veneer over it again.
Finally, wood veneer is one of the most environmentally-friendly ways to decorate your home, office, or place of work. Wood veneer is roughly 1/50th of an inch in thickness as opposed to solid wood. This makes for the most eco-friendly use of each tree.
At Oakwood Veneer, you can find a wide variety of wood veneer products, from sheets to entire panels to edge banding. What’s more, the company is committed to replenishing our national forests with their Plant It Forward campaign, where they pledge to plant a tree with every order made. Shop their wood veneer offerings now!
