While purchasing new furniture, it can be easy to choose flashy, colorful options, even though they can clash with other colors and don’t have long life spans. Solid wood furniture is versatile and subtle, and owning a piece has multiple benefits.
Benefits of Solid Wood Furniture
There are various different benefits to purchasing and owning solid wood furniture.
Green Option
Purchasing solid wood furniture is one way to reduce your carbon footprint. Out of all of the material options for furniture, wood is the most environmentally friendly. It’s both replenishable and renewable, and solid wood furniture options are also biodegradable and will break back down into the earth.
Durable
Most solid wood furniture options are crafted from hardwoods, like maple, oak, and walnuts. Not only are these woods natural and sustainable, but they are also strong and durable. The trees these types of woods come from can live to be hundreds of years old and withstand various weather conditions, and the same goes for the furniture crafted from them.
Appealing to the Eyes
When we choose furniture pieces for a home, we opt for beautiful options that are going to improve the look and feel of our home. One of the many benefits of solid wood furniture is that each has its own unique characteristics and beauty. Each solid wood piece has its own variations and Imperfections.
- Knots: Commonly known as burls, tree knots naturally form on trees during their growth.
- Grain: Wood grain is the pattern created by the orientation of the fibers in a piece of wood; every year that trees grow, lines of grain are added to the wood. These lines are also called growth rings, and the appearance of the grain in solid wood furniture depends on how the tree was cut.
- Color: In a tree, the wood closer to the center is darker, while the wood that is closer to the bark is lighter, and these colors reflect in solid wood furniture.
Solid wood furniture is also available in different finishes and stains, so you’re guaranteed to find an option to complete your look.
Versatile
Regardless of the decor of your room, wood furniture will fit in; it’s versatile and fits any style you are trying to emulate.
Maintenance
Furniture made with synthetic materials can fade in color and wear down. The same can happen to solid wood furniture without care, but fortunately, this kind of furniture is easy to maintain. Wood cleaners like Murphy’s Oil Soap can keep the wood shiny, and other forms of maintenance, like regular dusting, are simple to do. Coasters are important for solid wood tables because the wood will absorb the moisture from the condensation.
Can be Refinished
A great benefit of solid wood furniture is that it can be refinished. With time, everything fades, even high-quality wood furniture, but unlike furniture manufactured from other materials, refinishing can make old wood furniture look like new.
The best part is refinishing is easy to do and can be accomplished in only a few steps:
- Clean the furniture: Before beginning any work on the furniture, you’ll want to clean it with a gentle grease remover to remove dirt, grime, and other contaminants. Rinse off the furniture and wait for it to dry.
- Examine: Older wood furniture tends to have gouges or scratches that can be filled with epoxy putty and sand it down to be flush with the rest of the wood.
- Remove old finish: If your solid wood furniture has a finish, use coarse sandpaper to remove the finish and paint. If you wish to retain the stain from the furniture, you can go straight to applying a new finish. If you want to apply a new stain, you have to sand down the existing stain.
- Stain: Wearing gloves, choose your staying and apply a coat with a paintbrush or rag and allow it to dry overnight.
- Apply new finish: Simply apply the finishing coat with a paintbrush and allow it to dry.
Old furniture made from plastic and other materials can’t be given new life in the same way solid wood furniture can.
Value
When choosing between solid wood furniture and pieces made with cheaper materials like plastic and other synthetic materials, most consumers tend to go with the cheaper option, which is understandable. However, in the long term, solid wood furniture has a better value than furniture manufactured with synthetic materials.
Solid wood furniture tends to be on the pricier side because of material and labor costs. Many solid wood furniture pieces are handmade and have a lot of work put into them. However, because solid wood furniture requires less maintenance and replacing, it is the cheaper option.
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