Interior Designs – All you need to know about wood! Wood is an expensive commodity, here is how you can mix and match and fix a price! Doing the interior of your space is fun but can be expensive, it is so much better to make the choice knowing about wood. Here are some pointers on wood. These short notes on wood intended to help you know how to economize, without compromising on the quality and the eventual outcome of interior designs you want to incorporate. Wood makes up for a large portion of the interior designs. Especially for the flooring and cabinets, its best to know a little something about wood and then make a calculated decision.
Natural Solid Woods
There are natural solid wood and manmade wood. Natural wood would be teak, rosewood, cedar, elm and rubber-wood to name a few. Teakwood is weathered or water treated, because of which it is not given to too much expansion and contraction during weather changes. Teakwood is most preferred for doors and windows. It has beautiful natural patterns and grains, also can be used just polished or painted. Here you can see the grains and natural marks of the teak wood. It has a very neutral hue and matches with most central theme. It can be used for period as well as contemporary furniture.
Rosewood
Rosewood is more ornamental and is valued for its deep richness in color. Rosewood too is used in construction, but by very few only for its exclusiveness, since it is not treated wood, it may not be the most ideal. Also the pricing of rosewood is prohibitive. Rosewood is naturally a
dark timber and when polished it can be duo toned to increase the esthetics and hence a lot of carving is executed on this wood. Cedar is used for its light color and sturdiness. Elm is largely used in the US for construction of the buildings. Rubber is softer and can be used to make furniture. All the woods mentioned here can be used to make furniture.
Manmade Wood
Let’s not allow the word manmade wood mislead you to believe they are not quite there, on the contrary they require less lumbering, so that does something for the ecology and are very versatile materials to work with. Manmade wood are quite a few, here are some, listed here to begin with. The picture of course contains images of woodwork made with painted MDF wood, the open wall cabinets with the lower portion concealed with shutters. Block-boards, which are constructed with softwood strips bound together with a strong adhesive and covered with a sheet of plywood on both sides. Block-boards are used as building material. They can also be used to make customized furniture in kitchens and bedrooms. Chipboard as the name suggests is made from small chips of wood bonded together with a strong adhesive and compressed into sheets. The chipboard is not as strong as plywood and block-board, also not as expensive either. It can be used with wood veneer
or plastic veneer and used as pretty segmenting partitions along with block-board or plywood. ď ś So what exactly is plywood? Plywood is made from thin sheets of timber the grains kept at right angle to each other and bonded by resin and compressed under pressure. There are many grades of plywood available, weather proof, termite proof, moisture proof, boil resistant and interior plywood. Plywood also comes in different thickness and is used as per the requisite. ď ś There is also the medium density fiber board called MDF in short. This board is relatively cheap. It is made from fine wood dust, which is bound by a strong adhesive, like resin and pressed into a board. This is used for construction as well as furniture. This board can be shaped and machined easily. To this wood, paint can be applied without applying the first primer coat. It takes paint beautifully as well as stains. There are a lot of people who do not like stain of MDF and yet others find it artistically beautiful. While in India most people will go for teakwood for windows and the frames. The door frames too teakwood is preferred. In cities with extreme climatic changes the treated teakwood will be the best option. Teakwood also is expensive, but not prohibitive in cost. The manmade woods can take away the burden of expenditure to an extent. The plywood with veneer and laminate are very good to customize to your requirement. They are modular and can increase space and facilitate optimum storage. Within plywood customization of cabinets you could use chipboard sheets to partition. For the ultimate piece de resistance you could always go for the rosewood. It is just all about knowing your wood and you make any choice you want to.