How to work wonders with plywood
From substrate to style symbol? Time to appreciate this affordable, sustainable material. Everything you need to know plus the architects using it well.
Perhaps it’s a confluence of the two. After all, for plywood to look beautiful, it needs to be expertly handled. You can’t just slap down a few sheets and roller on cheap varnish. Like minimalism in architecture: to do it properly takes time and extreme attention to detail. But the results can look seriously classy.
Why do I feel as if I'm seeing playwood everywhere at the moment? Certainly all materials and finishes have their fashionable moments, but plywood seems to be resonating very strongly as a material that feels super right for now.
I think it ties back to a search for tactility, ergo connection. Whether that's connecting us with nature, with ourselves as sentient beings, or physically to the spaces which surrounds us. After all, today, for many of us, life is increasingly experienced through screens; whether at work or home via computers, tablets, smartphones and TVs, all smooth, glassy and resolutely regular. As a counter to this, I think we literally crave something different to touch, something wobbly, irregular and deeply textural. In other words, surfaces that are as far removed from a de-personalised computer screen as is possible.
If we step back a moment to consider the context, then wood has always had an inherent honesty to it. We know where it comes from, we trust it, it weathers well and has a cosy familiarity to it. I'm not sure I've seen a house yet that hasn't included wood in some form or other. It's also tremendously versatile, in that it can speak many different languages: rough and rustic; deep and dark; pale and interesting. And plywood, to my mind, both is, and isn't wood.
To explain: from one perspective it's like super-pimped wood, being composed of layers of wood veneer so it’s exceptionally strong. And did you clock there, it’s made of real wood, which I don’t think people realise. Additionally, plywood can be made from any type of wood, the most popular being a pale birch.
Plywood also looks like a sort of exaggeration of wood, one in which the grain is particularly prominent both across the sheets, and along the edge profile which shows off all the layers. And when architects and interior designers do plywood, it tends to be wholesale, rather than just a little touch, precisely because it's so fantastically adaptable. Whereas wood, generally, within modern urban homes, is usually confined to floors and furniture, plywood can be used everywhere and on practically everything (see FAQ below), and because it's comparatively cheap, creative folk have been able to experiment accordingly.
In conclusion, plywood is 21st Century wood, both authentic and modified; affordable and adaptable; capable of being both luxe and everyday; and therein lies its appeal.
FAQ about plywood
Which plywood is best for interior use?
Premium grade 12mm thick birch plywood is best for most interior applications, and will ensure a high-quality surface to finish. However. commercial grade birch (what