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With many home furniture taking on aluminum and steel as construction materials, where indeed are those that use real wood. Are they still around? You can bet on it. You can visit antique furniture shops and their selection of furniture is sure to contain real solid wood. But how about modern ones? Yes there are plenty as well, and they will cost an arm and a leg for really big major home furniture like a bed, cupboard or dining table. But would you know real wood from fake or synthetic ones? Well, most of the time you can’t. Especially just by looking. Modern production methods of synthetic polymer materials have become quite good mimicking the surface qualities of real wood. To be sure there are also veneer laminated plywood furniture and they do look and feel like the real thing. But that’s because those veneer sheets are real wood made into sheets that cost a fraction to use. Real wood veneer is a cost-cutting marvel of the 20th century ingenuity to reduce the cost of making wood furniture while still making them look like wood. In fact, furniture made of wood veneer can look exquisite and for the same furniture type, are next in the totem pole of expensive furniture. The problem begins when you have plastic looking like wood. But you can tell. They are ridiculously lightweight for their size. Plastic wood or fake wood have made their way not only in furniture but in floor tiles as well. There are actually a good number of interior designers and architects who recommend this plastic wood as interior building materials for their near-maintenance free qualities, ease of installation and definite cost advantage. But when it comes to home furniture, nothing really beats using solid real wood. The look and feel is simply part of the satisfaction of owning one. You really have to save up to own one. Wood veneer comes close. Eventually, with wood becoming scarce on this planet, even wood-veneered furniture will be expensive. | 
