Timber Veneer Wall Panels: Your Complete Guide to Feature Walls
- Cabinet Timbers
Timber Veneer Wall Panels
There are so many things you can do with timber veneers when it comes to interior and architectural design. From vertical joint panelling to add texture to interior walls, to ceiling lining for fun, geometric designs for atriums, lobbies, and other presentable spaces, timber veneers can effortlessly add depth or dimension where it’s needed most in your designs.
Alongside looking great, timber veneer wall panels can also hold functional advantages, including sound insulation, thermal regulation, and generally supporting the durability and sustainability of your building or renovation project.
There’s only one discernible downside to making the decision to incorporate timber veneer wall panels into your next project: the sheer number of options that are available to you. Between traditional tongue and groove VJ panelling and sleek decorative melamine for a fun take on feature walls and cabinetry in functional interior spaces, there are a wide number of different aesthetic options to select from – and all of them can have their own pros and cons in your particular project and space.
The key is to find the right timber veneer wall panels to complement and enhance both the presentability and (more importantly) the comfort of your newly designed space. So let our experts here at Cabinet Timbers point you in the right direction in today’s guide on all things timber veneer wall panels and feature walls.
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Types of Timber Wall Panels
The best case scenario when installing timber wall panels is that they’re both aesthetic and functional. Whilst it’s easy enough to gauge aesthetics based on timber shades and melamine colourways, it’s still important to know the difference between all the many types of timber wall panels you can expect to see when browsing through catalogues of wood panel products like ours.
Here are the main types of timber wall panels that you’re likely to consider across your next building or renovation project.
Veneer panels
Timber veneers are thin layers of sliced wood, designed to boast attractive and presentable timber faces. These veneers are then adhered to a less aesthetic but durable substrate (like MDF, for instance). Using a core like MDF allows veneer panels to maintain a lower cost per unit, making it suitable for projects requiring bulk order materials supplies (i.e. commercial developments, high-density residential developments, hospitals, schools, etc.).
Pro tip: check out this guide for more information on timber veneers.
Plywood panels
Unlike veneers that are mounted on an alternate substrate, plywood panels are instead composed of many timber plies (hence their name!), delivering a strong timber plank that’s a fraction of the size of solid wood, and thus, a lot easier to work with.
Plywood is available in a variety of different grades, depending on two variable factors, these being:
- The quality of the timber faces (i.e. A-grade being strong panels with no visible defects like knots and holes, to D-grade being panels that possess more visible defects and textual disparities, but are still suitable for structural over non-structural applications),
- The quality of the glue resin bonds (i.e. A-grade being waterproof resin bonds, to D-grade being less watertight bonds and non structural).
With A- to D-grade ratings, prices per unit for plywood panels is largely determined on the overall graded quality of those products, which offers great cost-flexibility for construction and design projects.
On top of being used in construction, plywood is also suitable for a variety of other projects and applications, including furnituremaking, boatbuilding, and even exterior cladding as well as interior wall panelling.
If you’re using plywood for a particular purpose (i.e. marine-grade plywood for shipwrighting, for instance), you should be able to purchase your materials with the utmost confidence that the panels you’re buying are expressly suited to the project you’re working on.
Decorative panels
Whilst veneer and plywood panels seek to retain a natural timber look, decorative melamine panels like our Colourpyne range can also achieve this at a lower cost. This makes decorative panels a great choice for durable and low maintenance feature walls.
Alongside being used for wall panelling, melamine also boasts a variety of other use cases, including the construction of kitchen, bathroom, and laundry cabinetry and shelving. This means you can potentially coordinate a melamine feature wall with functional melamine cabinetry and other built-in storage amenities.
How to Select Timber Veneer Panels: Key Considerations
To quickly recap, here are the key considerations you’ll need to make when finding the right timber veneer panels for your next wall panelling project:
- Wood panel sizes and grades
- Cost per unit for timber panels
- Preferred aesthetics (i.e. particular timber species, plywood cuts, etc.)
- Ideal applications and qualities (i.e. moisture/scratch resistance)
Secure Quality Timber Veneer Panels with Cabinet Timbers
Whether you’re looking to install timber wall panels in your living room, your office space, or in a larger civil project, our range at Cabinet Timbers offers great variety and guaranteed quality at all the most competitive price points.
Our team is also equipped with all the right industry knowledge to point you in the right direction when sifting through the many options available to you. So if you’re still not sure what timber veneers or plywood panels you need to perfect your wall panelling, then don’t hesitate to get in touch at (03) 8353 2222.
Timber Veneer Wall Panels – FAQs
How much do timber wall panels cost?
VJ wall panelling typically starts at $30 per square metre, with decorative wall panels ranging in value from anywhere between $30-$150 per square metre, depending on the panel designs, materials, and material qualities (i.e. moisture resistance, MDF vs. other substrates/cores, etc.).
What alternatives are there to timber wall panels?
Alongside plywood and timber veneer panels, designers can also select from vinyl, PVC, acrylic, solid wood, and other composite wood panels.
