Furniture Buying Tips: A Guide to the Hidden Secrets of Furniture Shops

2025-08-18

A house is a harbor for our soul in our busy lives. Much of our time and energy is spent on buying a house, doing renovations, and buying furniture for the interior. Buying furniture can be a bothersome task, as it needs to be reasonably priced, of good quality, and especially environmentally friendly.

If you accidentally buy furniture with excessive formaldehyde content, it's like installing a time bomb in your home. Of course, style is also essential, as buying furniture means setting up the interior décor, which is the soul of a home. No one wants to live in a space with mismatched and outdated design.

Choosing Furniture Types:

Furniture is generally divided into two types: panel and solid wood. Panel furniture is made from a single piece of material, which is crushed particle board or medium-density fiberboard, formed under high-temperature pressing, and finished by spraying various colors of paint on the surface.

Solid Wood Furniture refers to furniture made entirely of pure solid wood, meaning all materials are natural wood that has not been reprocessed and does not use man-made boards. It is usually more expensive.

Details to Note:

Custom solid wood furniture is not very popular. The quality of raw solid wood materials is highly unstable, and the processing is complex and difficult to shape, with many pitfalls! However, it has a certain market because consumers in the 1960s liked the natural wood grain.

Panel furniture uses artificial boards as the main base material and board as the basic structure, which is assembled and disassembled. Compared to furniture made of solid wood, since the artificial board breaks the original physical structure of the wood, it deforms much less than solid wood when humidity changes significantly, offering better cost-effectiveness.

Artificial boards mainly use leftover wood scraps, which, invisibly, helps protect limited natural resources. Panel furniture has become a new category in the furniture industry, characterized by novel styles, vibrant colors, lightweight wood grains, no deformation, no cracking, moth-proofing, and moderate pricing.

Environmental Considerations:

Many consumers may have a misconception that solid wood furniture is more environmentally friendly than artificial board furniture. In fact, both types of furniture contain adhesives, paints, formaldehyde, and other harmful substances; the key is to look at the formaldehyde content. However, comparing the formaldehyde content between solid wood and panel furniture is not feasible.

The key is to look at the brand and how many grams of formaldehyde per square meter. You can check the certificate at the store (to see if it meets the E1 standard). From a "global environmental protection" perspective, using panel boards helps alleviate resource shortages and promotes sustainable development. Choosing panel furniture might be more environmentally friendly.

Price:

In terms of price, the cost of finished furniture made of pure solid wood is extremely high, which is unaffordable for the average consumer. Custom-made panel furniture is mainly made of medium-density fiberboard and veneer panels, offering comfort and convenience.

In terms of load-bearing capacity and durability, both panel and solid wood furniture perform admirably, but solid wood has a relatively longer service life. Currently, some panel furniture on the market features veneers that are increasingly realistic, with good gloss, feel, craftsmanship, and a variety of shapes. The difference in appearance between panel and solid wood furniture is not significant.

Important Considerations:

First, choose furniture stores with a good reputation or good after-sales service. When purchasing a sofa, try to choose a well-known brand and consider the interior decoration. Try to avoid buying furniture from unknown large stores or small brands.

The highest environmental standard in China's furniture industry is "1.5 mg/L" of formaldehyde emission. Furniture that meets or is below this standard is considered superior in terms of formaldehyde release. Be cautious of many illegal companies claiming their formaldehyde content meets the E0 standard. Currently, there is no E0 standard in the national standard, so don’t be fooled by the so-called E0 standard.

Distinguish whether it is pure solid wood furniture. In fact, the price of furniture made of pure solid wood is ten or even dozens of times that of ordinary furniture. When choosing furniture, you can use your fingers to scratch a sample to see if there are any scratches on the surface. Usually, furniture made of logs from several years ago will have scratches when scratched with a finger on the surface.