Here’s a thought experiment: you’re moving into a new home that is completely unfurnished, and you have to buy all new furniture and appliances to deck it out appropriately, and make it habitable.
Let’s say money was no issue – what kinds of items of furniture, design features, and ornaments, would you choose to furnish your home with?
One answer is that you might just order the latest trendy items from a catalogue, and have your home glistening with metal and glass within 24 hours – and that’s fair enough.
But, how about trying something different, and investing in some traditional wood features, instead?
Here are a few of the benefits of traditional wood features.
They exude an aura of personality and craftsmanship
Mass production is certainly efficient, but it just doesn’t have the same “personality” as things that have been worked and created from raw materials, by skilled craftsmen.
Craftsmanship is something that we all tend to admire, on some level. It’s a demonstration of skill, often has a lot of the “personal touch” to it, and leads to goods that are unique and interesting, to a degree that other more widely available products might not be.
If you wanted to make the windows of your home look nuanced, interesting, and stylised, you’d probably get in touch with expert joiners such as Joinery Yard, in order to get the job done.
Likewise, if you wanted to decorate your living room in a way that would grab people’s attention when they entered, going for hand-crafted wooden furniture – especially if antique – would be a pretty good strategy.
They are likely to last for a good while
It’s unlikely that many people enjoy it when their belongings break prematurely, and need to be replaced every couple of years, for all eternity.
With flatpack furniture, for example, this is just an innate risk. Things just aren’t exactly built to withstand centuries, of use when they’re made from plywood and can be put together with an Allen key in half an hour.
On the other hand, traditional wooden features frequently do last for centuries, and are often sturdy enough to take a few knocks without coming apart, being destroyed by the damp, or otherwise being degraded beyond repair.
If a hardwood dining room table gets a bit scuffed up, you can always sand and stain it, and it’ll likely look just about as good as new.
Wood tends to be “warmer” than metal, glass, and stone
Wood tends to be “warmer” than metal, glass, and stone, as a building material.
That is, not necessarily “warmer” in the temperature sense, but “warmer” in the sense that it seems more “alive” and less industrial.
Although this isn’t an objectively provable observation, it is something that many people feel and believe, for reasons that are difficult to properly sum up. Maybe there’s just something about the fact that a tree was once a living organism that makes wood seem like a more life-infused substance.
In any case, if you want your home to feel “homely” or “rustic,” traditional wood features are likely the way to go. If you want a more “modern” look, glass and polished steel might be your materials of choice.