Available in a variety of colors, grains, and hardnesses, solid wood has always been a preferred material for fine furniture. Shock-resistant and durable, it's also a sound investment, increasing in value over generations. Different parts of the world produce different types of woods, each with its own set of characteristics. And because each tree yields lumber with its own grain patterns and markings, each piece of genuine wood has its own unique personality.
Hardwood vs. Softwood
Solid woods can be classified as hard or soft. A hardwood is derived from a broad-leefed tree (without needles), such as maple, cherry, oak, ash, walnut, or mahogany. Hardwoods usually offer greater strength and stability. Softwoods come from needle-bearing evergreen trees, such as pine, spruce, redwood, or cedar, and are preferred for intricately carved pieces. Softwoods are more susceptible to marks and dings, but this can often result in an appealing weathered quality.
Below are some distinguishing traits of 10 types of wood most commonly used to construct fine furniture. Also included are some less popular types of wood, such as cherry and walnut, both of which are regarded as material for luxury furniture.
1. Mahogany
Mahogany is a tropical medium-to-hard wood indigenous to S. America, Central America, and Africa. Mahogany's strength makes it an excellent carving wood. It has a uniform pore structure, a medium grain, and less
defined annual rings. Mahogany ranges from tan to reddish-brown in color. It is a durable species, and maintains its shape against swelling and shrinkage. Its stability and resistance to decay makes the wood ideal for high-quality cabinetry and furniture.
As the girth of the tree is broad furniture makers were able to use a single cut of wood for a table top. Furniture made from mahogany became very popular in Britain from mid 18 th Century, followed by the rest of Europe.
2. Oak
Oak is the wood most commonly used for finer, more durable furniture. It is a very hard, heavy, open-grained wood that grows from deciduous and
evergreen trees in the States, Canada, and Europe. It's found in both red and white varieties. Red oak (a.k.a. black oak) has a pinkish cast and is the more popular of the two. White oak has a slightly greenish cast. Prominent rings and large pores give oak a coarse texture and prominent grain. It stains well in any color.
3. Maple
Maple is a very light-colored medium-to-hard wood, abundant in the E. 
America. Known for its shock resistance, maple has diffused, evenly-sized pores that give the wood a fine texture and an even grain. Maple is highly durable and take any stain well. It can be finished to resemble walnut, cherry, or other more expensive hardwoods.
4. Beech
Beech found primarily in northeast America and Canada, beech is a heavy, pale-colored, medium-to-hard wood used widely for chairs and stools. It 
has a fine, tight grain and large medullar rays, similar in appearance to maple or birch woods. Beech wood has a high shock resistance and takes stains well. It is a hard, strong material, but it does not endure like some hardwoods do. Beech polishes well. It is used in general purpose fabrications as well as in furniture, toys, and floors.
5. Pine
Pine is a softwood that grows in many varieties in various parts of the world. In the States, Eastern White Pine, Ponderosa Pine, and Sugar Pine 
are some of the types used to make furniture. Pine's "knotty" characteristics provide warmth and individuality to each crafted piece. Usually light-yellow in color, the wood has a broadly spaced striation pattern. It is ideal for children's rooms, family rooms, beach cottages and anywhere you'd like an airier, lighter feel. Its natural grain and shades ensure that no piece is exactly alike. Excellent for staining.
6. Cherry
Also known as fruitwood, cherry is a strong, fine-grained hardwood with a pink undertone, often played up with a medium or dark finish to enhance its mahogany-red tones. Its rich coloring darkens with age and 
exposure to light. Cherry resists warping and is easy to carve and polish. Often used for 18th-century and formal, traditional-style furniture, cherry is often considered a luxury wood. Fine-grained hardwoods, such as maple and alder, are common substitutes for cherry. Black Cherry grows in Canada, the United States, and Central America; European Cherry is distributed throughout Europe and southeast Asia
7 Teak
Indigenous to Indonesia, India, and Central America, teak is a high-quality yellow to dark-brown hardwood. It’s generally straight-grained with a 
coarse, uneven texture and an oily feel. Teak ranges from yellow-brown to dark golden-brown in color. Noted for its heaviness and durability, it was originally used for shipbuilding and is now often used for high-caliber outdoor furniture and decking.
8. Walnut
Prized in North America for high-end cabinetry and furniture, walnut 
provides strength, hardness, and durability without excessive weight. It has excellent woodworking qualities and takes finishes well. Walnut is light to dark chocolate-brown in color, with a straight grain in the trunk. It can be found in the United States and Canada
9. Birch 
Birch is a stiff, close-grained hardwood that grows primarily in northeast U.S. and Canada. A heavy wood, it has a high shock resistance. Birch is very light in color (predominantly a light yellow) and takes any stain well.
10. Rosewood
This is a dark-red or brown hardwood, derived from tropical trees. Heavy, hard, and dense, rosewood is noted for its stability and excellent decay 
resistance. Though commonly used for Oriental furniture, rosewood is now used for traditional European designs, as well as cabinetry. Quality rosewood furniture can be distinguished by silver lines, achieved by polishing with Chinese Tang Oil. This firm luster surface is different from the glossy imitation paint used on more inferior rosewood furniture.
Solid Wood Versus Veneers
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. So let's start with basics....
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.
New Technology
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 marquetry involve several painstaking steps including matching and joining, gluing, sanding, polishing and finishing.
Got a Match?
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.
Still a little suspicious of veneered furniture? Check out the 18th century master cabinetmakers like Chippendale and Hepplewhite. Their veneered furniture still graces museums and private collections, still sets standards for fine design as we move into the 21st century.
Then enjoy the wide range of modern day furniture that draws its inspiration from those old masters - whether reproductions of 18th century design or contemporary design where elegant simplicity is the perfect setting for beautiful veneers.
Some makers use both types of construction in building custom furniture and custom cabinets. Now lets look at these two options and their strong and weak points.
Solid wood furniture, this means all exposed parts are made of the same species of all natural wood, with no other materials included, such as plywood or particle board.
Advantages of Solid Wood:
Practical. The durability of solid wood furniture is high on the list. Scratches, dings, dents, water marks, stains can all be repaired. Obviously, the worse the damage the more expensive, but it is certainly easier and less expensive than veneer furniture.
Disadvantages of Solid Wood:
Split. When exposed to extreme atmospheric conditions, solid wood furniture will expand or contract, and may split along the grain of the wood. Some makers use a "floating case system" in which table and case-piece surfaces are attached using a bracket method or elongated holes for screws to slide. This enables furniture to respond to environmental changes without damage. As a rule, though, avoid exposing pieces to strong sunlight or direct heat sources.
Good quality veneer furniture will have a solid core and the legs, posts, doors or drawer fronts will be straight-grain solid wood.
Advantages of Veneer:
Beautiful. The best, most interesting logs are cut into veneer. This is largely an economic decision--sellers and veneer makers can make more money from a high quality log sliced into veneer than they can from sawing it into boards. And certain cuts, such as burls, are structurally unsound in 'the solid'. These beautiful woods can rarely be utilized unless they're sliced into veneer
Environmentally kind. Saw timber is typically sawn into 1" thick boards. The saw cuts a kerf between boards 1/4" thick that winds up as sawdust. Veneer is not cut from the log but sliced with a knife (like lunch meat) into 1/32" leaves or sheets. That produces 32 veneer surfaces for every 1 that is gotten from a board and with no wood wasted as sawdust another 8 sheets where the saw blade would have gone. That's 40 surfaces of wood veneer for every 1 of solid wood. Creates new design possibilities. Since veneer is so thin and is glued to a stable
Since veneer is glued to a stable substrate it produces surfaces not prone to warp or splitting or seasonal movement.
Substrates. Plywood and medium density fiberboard, the substrates used for some furniture, are made from low quality trees. This means a market is provided the landowner for these trees. This leads to better forests over time since the trees remaining grow better and faster with less competition for resources. Its like weeding your garden only a lot bigger.
Disadvantages Veneer:
Thin. This is more of a problem for the builder than the buyer. Sand-through in preparation for finishing is 'touching the third rail' of woodworking. Such pieces are almost impossible to repair and frequently involve 're-design' (as in cutting off the sanded through area) or making a speculative, difficult repair which can be difficult to hide. Once the piece is completed thickness of the veneer is of no concern.
It all depends on who is the manufacturer and how it is built. When buying your piece of furniture, always ask if it is real wood veneers or laminated imitation of wood. If the surface of table top or any wood case top looks Perfect and unreal, then it is most probably not a wood veneer. Pores, scuffs and wood knots can be easily found even on wood veneers if the veneer comes from wood. These pores, nicks and scuffs are the signature of nature and proves to the buyer that yes, this is a slice of real wood that is veneered over this top.
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