How To Tell If Good Looking Furniture Is Cheap
Well Built Furniture | Quality or ?
Nobody likes being duped. Yet in today’s world it often seems like the main goal of marketers is to try to pull the wool over our eyes. Caveat emptor! Let the buyer beware!
Here we’ll discuss how to evaluate a piece of furniture. In a future post we’ll discuss what qualities to look for, like solid wood vs engineered wood. But here we’ll stick to some of the details of a piece to help you understand what you’re looking at.
Solid wood vs Not solid wood:
Most furniture you find in stores is a thin layer of wood veneer over some sort of manufactured board like plywood or MDF or particle board. This is not necessarily bad, it just is. So how can you tell?
The easiest way is to look at the edge of the piece that is perpendicular to the direction that the grain runs on top. If the grain is running the long way on a rectangular table then look at the end. If it’s solid wood then you’ll see end grain. Imagine the wood grain being a bundle of drinking straws. End grain is when you look down on the ends of the straws. If the top is veneered, then the edges will also be covered with veneer, so the grain will be long grain, or looking at the length of the straw.
Often you can tell by the weight of the piece, but not always. If it seems much lighter than you would expect then it’s probably veneered. But sometimes the substrates can be quite dense and heavy, so if it’s pretty heavy you can’t necessarily tell.
Which is better? It depends on the situation. A kitchen full of cabinets made entirely of solid wood would be wastefully expensive, unnecessary, and probably lesser quality than high quality sheet goods. But cabinet doors and drawer fronts from solid wood will stand up to abuse better than veneered plywood.
On the other hand, a tabletop from solid wood will look better, feel better and last longer than plywood. Remember, the surface veneer on plywood is around 1mm thick (or thin, as the case may be). Not great for holding up to years of kids and cutlery.
But if your maker can do thick shop made veneers then the equation changes for the better. You can get the benefits of veneer with the strength of solid wood. Make sure you know what you’re getting.
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Joinery | What makes a good joint (we’re not in college here)
How the individual parts are joined together help give an understanding of the piece.
Do things look like they’re held together with plain old screws?
Are there dedicated connectors and hardware?
What about traditional wood to wood connections like mortise and tenons? Or is the joinery completely hidden?
If there are metal components, what do the welds look like? Are the solid and stout appearing, or are there puny little tack welds?
Screws directly into wood is not a good long term solution for joints under stress. The slightest movements repeated over time will cause the screws to loosen and the screw holes to enlarge.
More traditional joinery or modern methods of traditional joinery ensure a lifetime of solid construction. Purpose-made hardware is a professional aspect necessary to complement the traditional joinery. Did the maker take an easy path or a correct path? Details matter.
Accessory hardware
Drawer slides:
Note the type of slides - undermount or side mount.
Are they ball-bearing slides or the single roller type?
Soft close?
How do they feel when you operate them? Are they smooth and stout or a bit wobbly? While things may feel right in the store, have you ever had them become rickety after only a few weeks or months?
Slides can reflect design. A high-end cabinet or piece of furniture should not have cheap, side mounted roller slides. Sometimes handcrafted wooden slides are design appropriate. A piston-fit, slideless drawer can be a mark of supreme craftsmanship. But it needs to be used in the appropriate situation, not to feed the maker’s ego.
Door hinges:
Are they visible when the door is closed?
Soft close?
How wide does the door open?
How does the action feel when you open and close the door?
Sometimes traditional, visible butt hinges are design appropriate. Or perhaps the precise, modern knife hinge should be the choice. Or concealed Euro hinges with soft close or push to open features is what the piece calls for.
Handles and pulls:
Although there’s not much functional difference between the $1 door pull and $30 door pull, check to see how they feel in the hand and whether the mounting screw holds tightly. The machining on particularly cheap pulls can be so poor that screws don’t hold them on well. Or the finish wears off easily.
Since custom furniture is an investment in long term value, don’t cut corners with the hardware that will make or break the durability, ease of use and satisfaction of your investment.
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Finish
If the surface is real wood, solid or veneer, how does it feel? A top quality finish will have a certain organic softness to it. This is a result of the surface preparation as well as the actual product applied. Or does the finish feel plastic-y or fake? Laminates, of course, will feel like plastic, but sometimes you can get a sense of their thickness and quality or how well they’re applied simply by running your hands across the surfaces.
Fit
How well do the individual pieces mate together? Are there gaps where you think there should be none? Are things solid? What does it sound like when you tap on the piece? Hollow? Solid? Particularly insightful is how things look, feel and fit in parts that are not going to be seen - the back of a cabinet, inside of a drawer, underside of a table. If you’re looking at furniture in a store it’s completely appropriate to look at all parts of the piece in detail, even if it means lying on the ground or pulling the piece out from the display wall to look at the back.
Bespoke furniture designed and built to enhance your life is made up of many small details. All those details matter. Mass produced products are focused on different details. What matters to you?