Engineered wood is now readily available from timber merchants across the UK, but what is this rather new type of wood and how is it useful?

When people speak of engineered wood products (EWPs), they don’t usually know that these products have been around for generations. The first kind of engineered wood was plywood and glulaminated timber, however, today the combination vary depending on the end product. In many cases, these products are made from solid wood, veneers, chips or individual fibres. They are then reconstituted using different resins and manufacturing processes to perform better, or cost less, than the same dimension of solid wood.

Let’s say you would like solid wood flooring for your dining room, but you do not want to risk the wood warping or bending, then engineered wood flooring is a quality options and it will usually cost less too. One of the great things is that it looks just like real wood, because the top layer is exactly that, real solid wood! When engineered wood was first introduced, it was considered by many to be the pitiable relation to solid wood, but that’s not the case today.  A good quality engineered wood floor will trick even the biggest doubter into believing that the floor is or could be solid wood. It simply does not expand and contract to the same extent as solid wood and that’s one of the big advantages, other than cost of course. It’s also very durable and in some cases it’s proven to have the same lifespan as solid woo, whilst it can be sanded and treated many times before it needs to be replaced, so it really will last a lifetime.