Before buying a piece of furniture, it’s a good idea to know the various types of basic materials for making furniture. In the following, we will discuss about the materials for making furniture and their advantages and disadvantages. Broadly speaking, furniture materials are divided into 2 types, namely Solid Wood and Processed Wood. Processed wood includes plywood, blockboard, melamine, multi density fireboard (MDF) and particle board.

Solid Wood
Solid wood is a furniture raw material which is the strongest compared to processed wood, but due to the volume of planting and the long time and unbalanced tree felling, solid wood is limited and the price is quite expensive compared to processed wood.

The type of wood that is widely used for this furniture is teak, sungkai or nyatoh. Teak wood was chosen because it has beautiful wood veins so it is good to be exposed or highlighted and is more resistant to weather or termites. However, the price is very expensive, so it is often used for classy furniture or export furniture.

Sungkai wood is often used as a substitute for teak wood because it is cheaper. The color also tends to be lighter than teak. In addition to sungkai wood, nyatoh wood is now also popularly used as a substitute for teak wood. For the price of solid wood, it is calculated based on cubication/volume(m3).

Most people assume that solid wood can last a long time and the material is solid so it is easy to add additional details for decoration. However, throughout its use, solid wood will experience expansion and shrinkage which can affect the size. Without proper precautions, certain types of solid wood are more susceptible to termites, which can release wood powder that causes wood to become porous.

For types of processed wood, see the next article!

–sh