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The Design Handbook
Solid wood is not automatically the right answer, and a house furnished entirely in it is usually a house where money went to the wrong places.
Timber is expensive, heavy and slow. It earns its cost in some applications and wastes it in others. Here is where we would spend it and where we would not — which is, in effect, advice to buy less from us and buy it better.
Solid hardwood earns its price in three situations: where the piece takes structural load over decades, where it will be seen and touched every day, and where it must survive moisture.
It is poor value where the piece is hidden, where it is fixed to a wall and never moves, where it will be outgrown, or where the load is trivial. In those places, good engineered board does the same job for less, and the saving is better spent on the pieces that matter.
The bed frame. A bed carries load every night for decades and gets moved, knocked and leaned on. Joints in a bed work harder than in almost any other domestic piece. This is the single best place to spend on solid teak, and a good frame outlasts several mattresses and often several houses.
The dining table. Daily use, hot dishes, spills, elbows, children, and a surface everyone looks at. A solid top can be sanded back and refinished when it eventually looks tired; a veneered top cannot be sanded at all without going through.
Dining and occasional chairs. A chair is the most structurally demanding object in a house for its weight. It takes dynamic, angled load from people who lean back on two legs. Cut joinery in solid timber is the difference between a chair that tightens up with a repair and one that is firewood.
Anything near water or open air. Verandah seating, pieces beside a balcony door, furniture in a coastal or backwater-facing room. Engineered board and humidity are a slow-motion failure.
The one heirloom piece. The cabinet, the four poster, the plantation chair — whatever the object is that you expect to hand on. That is the piece that justifies hand-cut joinery and a hand-rubbed finish.
Fitted wardrobe carcasses. This surprises people. A fitted wardrobe is screwed to a wall, carries only its own contents, and is largely invisible. Good marine-grade plywood is dimensionally stable, does not move seasonally the way a wide solid panel does, and is the sensible choice for the box. Spend the saving on solid shutters and good hardware, which are what you see and touch.
Kitchen cabinetry. Same logic, more strongly. Kitchens face steam, water and grease, and a stable engineered core with a durable surface outperforms solid timber here. Solid wood in a kitchen is mostly for show.
Children's furniture. An eight-year-old becomes an eleven-year-old faster than anyone plans for. Study desks, beds and storage bought for a specific age are outgrown long before any material question arises. Buy well-made and replaceable, and save the timber budget for the room the child will eventually have.
Utility and storage in service areas. Nobody will ever look at it.
Large flat surfaces on a budget. A very wide solid panel — a big tabletop, a tall door — needs good timber and good construction to stay flat. Done cheaply, it cups and splits. A quality veneer over a stable core is genuinely better than poorly made solid wood at the same price.
Sofas. The frame should be solid hardwood with cut joinery — that is what fails when a cheap sofa sags after three years. Nothing else about a sofa needs to be timber.
Bedside tables and consoles. Light load, but seen and touched daily, and usually next to the bed you just spent properly on. Solid is worth it here mostly for coherence.
Bookcases. Load is real and shelves sag over time. Solid timber or properly thick ply with good support; thin board will bow within a year or two.
Take a three-bedroom Kochi flat with a defined furnishing budget.
Spend on: the main bed frame, the dining table, six dining chairs, the principal seating frames, and one piece with real presence — all solid teak, made to order where the room demands it.
Don't spend on: the fitted wardrobes' carcasses, the kitchen, the children's bedrooms, the study desk, the utility storage.
The result is a house with five or six genuinely fine things in it and sensible, honest furniture everywhere else. That reads far better than a flat furnished uniformly in mid-grade timber, and it costs less.
No. Solid hardwood earns its cost where a piece takes structural load, is seen and touched daily, or must resist moisture — beds, dining tables, chairs, seating frames and anything near open air. For fitted wardrobe carcasses, kitchens, children's furniture and service storage, good engineered board is the better choice.
For the carcass, usually yes. A fitted wardrobe is wall-mounted and carries little load, and good marine-grade plywood is more dimensionally stable than wide solid panels, which move seasonally. Spend on solid shutters and quality hardware instead.
Solid hardwood with cut joinery. A sagging sofa is almost always a frame failure rather than an upholstery failure, and the frame is the part you cannot replace.
Yes — on very large flat surfaces and on a limited budget. A wide solid panel needs good timber and good construction to stay flat; made cheaply it cups and splits. Quality veneer over a stable core outperforms poorly made solid wood at the same price.
On the bed frame, the dining table and chairs, and one piece with real presence. These take the most load, get the most daily use, and are the pieces most worth keeping.
Buying well is largely a matter of putting the money where it does something. A few outstanding pieces and honest furniture elsewhere will outlast and outperform a house furnished evenly in compromise.
Temple Town makes solid teak furniture to order in its own workshop in Thrissur. Our Kochi showroom is inside the Museum of Kerala History at Edappally.
Related reading: Teak, rosewood or mahogany? · What makes furniture an heirloom?
The Design Handbook
Written by the Temple Town studio in Thrissur, where we have designed and made furniture by hand since 1999.