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TV Lift Cabinet Construction Materials
One of the most common questions at Wildwood TV Lift Furniture is, “What are your TV lift cabinets actually made of?” It’s a fair question! With so many wood imposters available these days, sometimes it’s difficult to determine the real stuff from the cheap alternatives.

What Wood Do You Use to Build TV Lift Cabinets?
Our philosophy is to use the material that best performs the “job” it needs to perform. This means that every TV Lift Cabinet we build is made from all wood. Not particle board, mdf-core, pressboard, OSB, thermofoil, or any other cheap wood alternative. We primarily use a combination of solid wood and real wood plywood. However, there are certain components of our cabinets where HDF is the material that best performs the “job” we need it to do. Now let’s explore what that means and why it is so important to us.
Solid Wood
Solid wood is simply natural wood that has been cut and milled for use in furniture, homebuilding, or other myriad purposes. Typically, solid wood is used in medium- to high-quality furniture and cabinetry and is loved due to its strength, durability, and warmth. However, even in high-end furniture, solid wood is usually not used exclusively, as it is not always the best material for the job at hand. While solid wood is very strong and durable, it is also susceptible to changes in moisture levels, resulting in warping and cracking.
At Wildwood TV Lift Furniture, we use solid wood for moldings, trims, doors*, and drawer fronts*. The wood we use depends on the customer’s preference, but our most popular choice is alder wood.
Common questions about our solid wood:
Is your wood sustainable?
Yes. All of the wood we use is grown on lumber farms, meaning it was planted with the intent to be used for furniture. After it is cut down, another tree will be planted in its place to ensure the grove can be harvested again after the trees have grown.
Is one type of wood better than another for my TV Lift Cabinet?
It depends. While all of the types of wood we use have varying densities, most of the time the differences in the strength of the final product is not even noticeable. For example, if you have ever written on a piece of paper on a table made from very soft wood (like pine) you may have noticed that the pressure of your pen or pencil tip dented the wood. Our woods are not nearly as soft as pine, so the various hardnesses or densities probably won’t be noticed.
Because there’s not one wood that is really better than another in terms of strength, we simply recommend the wood grain you like better. Wood is beautiful and unique, so if you like a heavy grain, go with oak. If you like a straight, modern-looking grain, mahogany is a great choice. And if you like a lighter, more traditional grain, take a look at alder.
Are your TV lift cabinets built from 100% solid wood?
Like all high-quality cabinetry, our TV lift cabinets are built from a combination of solid wood and a furniture-grade plywood. Unless you have experience building cabinets, you might not know that a real wood plywood is actually a stronger, more stable building material than solid wood. Read more about our plywood below.

Oak Wood

Alder Wood

Mahogany Wood
Furniture-Grade Plywood
The invention of modern-day plywood dates all the way back to 1865, but there are also some indications that a version of plywood was used in ancient Egypt and China. The purpose of plywood has remained unchanged: to create a more stable building material. Solid wood has many strengths, but as we previously mentioned, it is very susceptible to changes in moisture levels over time. This leads to warping and cracking, all of which will cause a gradual breakdown of the piece.
Every species of wood has different strengths and weaknesses. For example, while oak wood is very hard, it is also extremely susceptible to cracking. Alder, on the other hand, doesn’t crack as readily, but it does tend to warp. So, how do we create a real wood product that combines all of the strengths of these different woods? We layer them on top of each other to form a “super wood” of sorts. This is plywood! In fact, a “ply” is just a layer of wood. Each ply is carefully chosen based on what strengths it brings to the final product.
Good plywood is built by layering high-quality wood in strategic ways to create a final product that is stronger, more resilient, and more stable than one piece of solid wood could ever be on its own. It may be a cliché, but plywood is a perfect example of the whole being greater than the sum of its parts. Each layer of wood brings unique characteristics and strengths to add benefit or offset another layer’s weakness.
Common questions about our furniture-grade plywood:
Is plywood cheap?
No. High-quality, American-milled plywood is not a cheap alternative to real wood. In fact the plywood we use is up to double the cost of its solid wood counterpart.
Is using plywood a way to cut corners?
No. We use the highest quality plywood to create the highest quality final product. The most important thing for us is to build the best TV lift cabinets available. This means using the best materials. We use plywood when it is the better material and we use solid wood when it is the better material. We use particle board never, because it is never the better material :).
Is plywood better than particle board?
Yes! Plywood is a stack of of solid strips of wood, strategically working in partnership to create a strong and stable building material, particle board is a conglomeration of small chunks of wood mixed with glue and forced into a mold. Particle board also has a much lower tensile strength, resulting in furniture that is cheap and falls apart easily.
HDF
We believe in using the best material to perform the job. Some jobs are best suited to solid wood, some jobs are best suited to our plywood. However, one area where both plywood and solid wood have a weakness is their propensity to bow. We have found that this is particularly problematic with our cabinet tops. Our cabinet tops are built in two pieces, a stationary piece and a hinging piece. The stationary piece is securely mounted, removing any possibility of bowing. However, the hinging portion can’t be secured, therefore, it can lift up on one side or the other, creating a top that isn’t perfectly level.
For this reason, we have determined that on some of our painted products a product called HDF, or high density fiberboard, is best suited to the job of the hinging top. HDF is extremely strong, very durable, and is extremely bow-resistant. This will keep the top of the cabinet from lifting, warping, or bowing.