If you've been shopping for wood furniture, you may have been told that solid wood is better than veneers...or vice versa. In fact, solid wood and veneers are both good things. Knowing how they differ helps you evaluate what's best for your home and your lifestyle, instead of guessing and hoping for the best.
The popularity of solid wood furniture arises from comfort level. What you see is what you get...although stains can give one wood the look of another, especially if the grains are similar. Solid wood construction indicates stability and integrity, the real McCoy. And so it is, especially with such woods as mahogany, cherry, birch, maple and oak. Solid woods also have the advantage of being easily refinished, should the need arise.
 However, much of today's quality furniture is a combination of solid woods (providing strength to frames, legs and other supporting components) and veneers, applied to solid wood or wood composition material. This prevents the warping and splitting that sometimes occurs when solid wood expands and contracts from humidity changes.
A veneer is simply a thin layer of wood, chosen for beauty and character, then glued or bonded to another wood surface. It's not a poor substitute for solid wood or a synthetic material printed with a wood grain effect. In fact, bonding a veneer to another surface creates extra strength and allows for surface patterns or designs that would otherwise be impossible.
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New technology has brought radical improvements to veneering. Laser techniques provide outstanding quality control and precision in cutting veneers, allowing craftsmen to make ever more beautiful grain matches. Improved glues have eliminated problems that once made veneers separate from their surfaces, making them even less likely to crack or warp than solid woods.
Despite such advances, veneering still requires great craftsmanship. Sophisticated inlays or parquetry involve several painstaking steps including matching and joining, gluing, sanding, polishing and finishing.
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Sheets of veneer can be combined on larger surfaces to form interesting patterns by using the following matching techniques:
- Book matching: sheets of veneer are placed side-by-side, like the pages of a book, creating a symmetrical pattern
- End matching: sheets are placed end-to-end to produce a continuous pattern
- Four-way match: a combination of book and end matching
- Slip matching: sheets are placed into side-by-side patterns to produce herringbone, diamond and checkered patterns.
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