What to know before you order furniture — and a straight answer to any question, free
Almost everything sold in Pakistan is called “solid wood”. Very little of it is. A family spends two or three hundred thousand rupees on a bedroom set, is told “pure sheesham, sir”, and discovers three summers later that the doors have swollen and the veneer is lifting at the edges.
Often nobody set out to cheat them. They simply had no way of knowing what they were looking at, and nobody to ask who was not also trying to sell them something.
That is what this page is for. It is free, it asks nothing of you, and you are welcome to use every word of it to buy furniture from somebody else.
They can look almost identical in a showroom. They behave completely differently in your home, and they should not cost the same.
Cut from the tree, nothing else. Heavy. Can be sanded and refinished again and again, and repaired after damage. Moves slightly with the seasons — which is normal, and which good joinery allows for. It is the most expensive, and for a bed, a dining table or a door it is usually worth it.
Layers of real wood glued in alternating directions, faced with a thin sheet of the wood you want to see. Strong, stable, and far less likely to warp than a wide solid panel. For a wardrobe back, a kitchen carcass or a large flat door, good plywood is often better than solid wood, not worse.
Compressed wood fibre and resin. Perfectly flat, takes paint and laminate beautifully, and is inexpensive. But it holds screws poorly, it cannot really be repaired once chipped, and it swells permanently if it gets wet — which is why MDF belongs nowhere near a bathroom or under a kitchen sink.
Wood chips and glue, usually wrapped in a printed foil that imitates grain. The cheapest material in the trade. It sags under weight over time and the fixings work loose. There is nothing wrong with it in a low-cost piece honestly sold as such — the problem is when it is sold as something else.
Every one of these four has a proper use. A good maker chooses the right one for each part of the piece — solid wood for the frame that carries the load, plywood for the wide panel that must stay flat, MDF for the painted surface that must be perfectly smooth.
So the question to ask is not “is it solid wood?” It is “which parts are solid wood, and why did you choose that for this part?” A maker who knows their trade will enjoy answering. One who does not will change the subject.
You need no tools and no expertise. Do these before you pay a deposit, not after.
A general guide, honestly stated. Timber prices move constantly, so we give relative cost rather than figures — ask us for today’s rate on anything here.
| Wood | Character | Best for | Relative cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sheesham (Indian rosewood) |
Dense, hard, deep brown with darker streaks. The traditional Pakistani furniture hardwood. Very durable and takes a fine polish. | Beds, dining tables, chairs, carved work — anything meant to last a generation. | High |
| Teak | Naturally oily, which makes it unusually stable and resistant to moisture and insect attack. Golden brown; weathers to silver-grey if left outside. | Doors, window frames, bathroom and outdoor furniture — anywhere damp. | Highest |
| Ash | Pale, straight-grained, strong and springy. Takes stain well, so it can be finished light or dark. | Modern and Scandinavian styles, chair frames, painted or light-finish work. | Medium–high |
| Mango | A by-product of the fruit industry, so comparatively inexpensive and plentiful. Attractive grain, but softer than sheesham and marks more easily. | Occasional furniture, side tables, decorative pieces, budget-conscious work. | Low–medium |
| Acacia / Kikar | Hard and heavy, with strong colour variation between boards. Tough, but it moves more than sheesham if it has not been dried properly. | Robust everyday furniture where character in the grain is wanted. | Low–medium |
| Marine / BWP plywood | Plywood bonded with water-resistant glue. Flat, stable and strong across its width. | Kitchen carcasses, wardrobe interiors, vanity units — the right choice, not a compromise. | Medium |
A note on “imported”. Imported timber is not automatically better. What matters is the species, how long it was seasoned and how it was stored — a badly dried imported board will fail faster than a well-dried local one.
Timber takes in and gives up moisture from the air for its whole life. As it does, it swells and shrinks slightly across the grain. This never stops. It is not a defect — it is what wood is.
Freshly cut timber holds a great deal of water. If it is built into furniture before that water has left, the piece dries in your house — and shrinks after it has been joined and polished. That is when panels split, joints open and doors stop closing.
Timber should be dried — in air over months, or in a kiln under control — until its moisture content is close to that of the air it will live in. For interior furniture in our climate that is broadly in the region of 8–12%. Then it is cut, and then it stays where you put it.
Coastal humidity and a dry northern winter are different conditions, and a piece built for one can move in the other. If you are ordering for a different city — or shipping abroad — say so when you order. It changes how the piece should be made.
The question to ask any maker: “Was this timber seasoned, and for how long?” You will not be able to verify the answer — but you will learn a great deal from how readily it comes.
Once the delivery team has left and the paper is signed, your position is much weaker. Ten minutes now is worth a month of telephone calls later.
We make our living selling furniture, so take this for what it is worth: there are jobs where solid timber is the wrong material, and we would rather tell you so than take the larger order.
A very wide flat panel — a tall wardrobe door, a long kitchen shutter — is more likely to cup or twist in solid wood than in good plywood. A perfectly smooth painted surface is easier to achieve on MDF than on timber, where the grain will eventually show through. And anywhere that will get wet, ordinary engineered board is a mistake regardless of price.
If someone offers you solid wood for every part of every piece, they are either charging you for material you do not need, or they have not thought about it.
Send us anything: a photograph of a piece you have been offered, a quotation you do not understand, a crack that has appeared, or simply “is this price reasonable?” We will tell you what we think. There is no charge, and no obligation to buy anything from us.
Send a photograph and a question. Same answer, no form.