After every fitting, we leave the client a few notes on care, because natural veneer and solid wood behave differently from laminated board. Neither needs complicated upkeep, but a handful of habits make them last longer, and a few others, harmless as they look, wear the surface down over time. The same rules apply equally to kitchen fronts and to wooden furniture anywhere else in the house. Here’s what to watch for day to day, and when a fix stops being a job for you to do yourself.
Everyday cleaning
A soft, dry or slightly damp cloth is enough for routine cleaning. Wipe along the grain, not across it, which cuts the risk of fine scratches that catch the light. For grease or food marks, add a little mild soap to the water, and dry the surface straight away once you’ve wiped it down. Water left sitting, even a small amount, does more harm to wood than the mark it was meant to clean. Dust is best wiped away daily or every few days with a dry cloth, before it settles and mixes with grease in the air of a kitchen, since that combination is harder to shift later without water.
Lacquered fronts cope with a damp cloth better than oiled ones, since the lacquer adds a further layer of protection over the wood underneath. An oiled worktop is worth drying with a cloth straight after washing, rather than left to dry on its own.
What to avoid
Too much water is the biggest risk, especially at edges and joints, where it works its way into the wood under the veneer, or into the seam of a worktop, more easily than elsewhere. Strong cleaning products, particularly anything with alcohol or an abrasive in it, dull lacquer and dry out an oiled surface faster than the label suggests.
A microfibre cloth doesn’t cause harm on its own, but if it’s already picked up grit or crumbs, it acts like fine sandpaper as you wipe. Shake it out or rinse it before use, especially if you’ve used the same cloth on the floor that day.
Direct sunlight changes the shade of wood unevenly: a section shielded by a curtain or a plant pot stays lighter or darker than the rest of the front, depending on the species. If your fronts face a large window, it’s worth changing how you draw the curtains occasionally, or moving what’s sitting on the worktop, so the light reaches the whole surface roughly evenly over time.
A hot pan or an oven tray straight from the oven, set down directly on a wood worktop, leaves a pale mark where it touched, since the heat dries out the oil in the wood on the spot. A trivet or board under anything hot protects the worktop far better than wiping the mark away afterwards.
Humidity and heating
Wood moves with the humidity in the air, so a home that’s too dry or too damp shows up in the furniture faster than you’d expect. For wood and veneer furniture, a comfortable range is usually around 40–60 per cent humidity. During the heating season, the air in most homes dries out well below that, which makes wood give up moisture, shrink, and sometimes crack along the grain, most often at the edges of fronts or on a worktop near the hob. Above that range, wood starts absorbing moisture instead and swells, which is just as hard on fronts and worktops. A humidifier through the heating season helps keep humidity at a level where the wood doesn’t move.
Avoid standing wooden furniture directly against a radiator, or right above one. A constant heat source on one side dries that part of a front faster than the rest, which shows up over time as a slight warp or a difference in shade.
Oiling a wood worktop
A kitchen worktop works harder than any other wood surface in the house, so the oil needs renewing regularly, usually a few times a year around the areas most exposed to water, near the sink for instance. The simplest way to check whether a worktop needs oil is to splash it with water: if the drops soak in straight away instead of sitting on the surface, it’s time for another coat.
Reoiling itself is straightforward. Clean and dry the surface thoroughly, sand it lightly with a fine paper if needed to lift any grime worked into it, apply wood oil in a thin coat along the grain, and wipe off the excess with a dry cloth after 10 or 15 minutes. None of this needs specialist kit or a particular brand, just an oil sold for kitchen worktops, available in most shops that stock wood-care products. Don’t put weight straight back on a freshly oiled surface: leave pans and chopping boards off it for a few hours, until the oil has soaked in and stopped feeling tacky.
Small repairs: scratches and dents
Shallow scratches in an oiled worktop usually disappear after a light sand at the mark and a fresh coat of oil over that spot. On veneered fronts, repair is trickier, since the veneer layer is thin and sanding too hard can cut straight through to the glue beneath, so a deeper scratch is best left to someone who knows what they’re doing rather than a guess.
A dent in solid wood, after something heavy was set down on it for instance, can sometimes be eased out with a damp cloth and a warm iron held just above the mark, without touching the surface directly: the wood fibres partly swell back under the steam. The trick doesn’t work on veneered fronts, since the thin veneer layer has nothing left to swell back into, so a dent there usually stays visible for good.
A chip at the edge of a worktop, from a knock with something hard for example, can be filled with a wax stick in a close colour match, sold for furniture repairs. It’s a temporary fix, good enough to keep moisture out until you can book a proper repair.
When to book a service visit
A deep scratch that goes through the veneer to the board underneath, veneer lifting at an edge or a joint, hinges or drawer runners that have started sticking, or discolouration after prolonged contact with water: these are all jobs better left to us than tackled on your own. A clumsy attempt at a repair often leaves a bigger mark than the original fault, and it’s harder to put right afterwards than a problem reported straight away. It’s also worth getting in touch if you’ve bought a home with furniture left by the previous owners and you’re not sure what it’s made of: it’s easier to work out the right care once someone with experience has seen it in person or in a photo.
If you spot anything from the list above, or you’re simply not sure about tackling it yourself, book a consultation. You’ll find more on how each material holds up to daily use in our materials library.
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