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Here’s the Truth About Wood Veneers

When you learn that a piece of furniture has a veneer, does it make you cringe a little? Admittedly us, too. But wood veneers, in fact, are a traditional and structurally significant aspect of furniture-making that still come into play in contemporary design. Wood veneers have been used in furniture-making and millwork techniques for over 200 years, says interior designer Cate Caruso, of Studio C, who uses them for all kinds of high-quality custom furnishings. In woodworking, a veneer is actually a paper thin cut of wood that's applied to both sides of a strong core surface, like furniture-grade MDF or substrate material, to seal and stabilize it—which is critically important when you're fashioning built-in furniture or anything with a mechanism. The reason is simple: Solid wood expands and contracts as the temperature changes, and your apartment isn't temperature controlled no matter how powerful your A.C. unit is. A dining table, for instance, can be made from solid wood (and many are), but a wood piece with moving parts cannot. With kitchen cabinetry, drawers, and anything built-in or paneled, you really have to have veneers, Caruso explains. A solid piece of wood just isn’t always structurally sound enough to fabricate a millwork.

What she is not using is fake wood. Oftentimes, when people see a veneered furnishing that’s cheap, it’s actually not wood at all—it’s a laminate material, Caruso explains, putting a name to the faux surface that gave all veneers a bad rap somewhere along the line. (Those are made from plastic, paper, or even foil that's been printed with a wood grain pattern that often wears away at the edges—a sure way to spot them.) But of course, there's also a range in quality of proper veneers depending on who makes them.