5 Furniture Care Tips From The Experts

If you’ve ever brought a new car home, only to be overly protective of the interior, to the point where you won’t let anyone near it who’s even the least bit dirty, then you’ll understand the feeling. We like to take care of our investments. When you order a quality piece of solid wood furniture from Woodcraft you want to make sure that it’s treated with the care it deserves, and that it lasts a long time. After all, with proper care, a piece of solid wood furniture can be passed down through generations.

But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t use it. Furniture is, above all, supposed to be functional, and just like that example of a car interior, it’s supposed to be used by friends and family. With that in mind, here’s how you can use your new furniture while still ensuring that it’s well taken care of – these are five tips from the experts on maintaining solid wood furniture.

Dry After Wiping

Don’t be afraid of wiping your surfaces down with a damp towel; that can often be the most effective way to remove all the dust, dirt and stuck on stuff that custom wood furniture can accumulate. Just be sure to use a soft cloth and follow the grain pattern to avoid streaks. Also, right after you’re finished wiping with a damp cloth, go in and dry it off with another soft cloth. If it’s just dust that’s collected in the surface, you won’t even need the damp cloth – just the soft, dry cloth should suffice.

Avoid Sunlight

If you’ve positioned your furniture to be near a window, keep the blinds or curtains drawn shut when not at home, in an attempt to limit the furniture’s exposure to direct sunlight. Sunlight has the tendency to make wood look faded over time. While there are UV resistant coatings that can help protect your furniture, they merely slow down the sun’s fading effect on the wood. And they don’t tackle the other issue the sun poses, namely that its heat can have a drying effect on wood, which might cause cracking.

Break Out The Coasters

Having people over? Break out those coasters, doilies, mitts, mats and whatever else you need to use to create a buffer between hot or cold surfaces and your solid wood dining table – your guests will understand. It’s not only that the different temperatures can be hard on the wood, but sliding a glass around or emphatically setting a teapot down on a bare wood surface can cause minor damage.

Avoid Those Aerosol Polishers

Avoid silicone-based furniture polishers like Pledge, since they can wreak havoc on the varnish and build up on the furniture’s surface. Instead, consult this article for what polish to use, and use the polish sparingly.

Manage The Humidity

We recommend trying to keep the humidity between 40 and 45 degrees in your home, which can be reliably achieved with the help of a humidifier/dehumidifier. With our notoriously dry winters and our notoriously humid summers, these appliances can be a godsend. Just make sure to store your table leaves somewhere that’s similar in humidity. If you store your leaves in a damp basement, with your table in a humidity-controlled environment, after a while they might look wonky together.

Other than those five tips, common sense should get you the rest of the way. Don’t bang your furniture around too much, and if you spill something, clean it up. The solid wood furniture we craft has the potential to be around for a number of lifetimes, as a family heirloom, with only a little bit of care and attention.