Caring for Your Wooden Furniture

Solid wood furniture is a timeless choice for modern homes, offering natural beauty, durability, and versatility across dining spaces, bedrooms, and living areas. Whether you choose classic oak, light ash, or rich walnut, properly caring for your wooden furniture helps preserve its appearance and ensures it remains a long-lasting investment.

Regular maintenance for solid wood furniture

For regular upkeep on all of our unique wood finishes, we recommend:  

Light Dusting and Wiping: Whilst dust and grime might seem harmless on strong wooden surfaces, over time they can build up scratches, marks and stains – damaging the overall appearance of your furniture. Light dustings, wipes and cleans with a well-rung out cloth can help keep the surface of your furniture clear and protected on a regular basis. If necessary, you can use a mild soap for tougher grease stains but normally water is sufficient.

Use Basic Household Protections: Sometimes the simplest of solutions is the best one, with basic protections like coasters on coffee tables, dining mats on dining tables and trivets for hot dishes helping to keep the surface of your wood clear from water rings or burns. Rugs are also a useful suggestion to help keep the feet of your wooden furniture from being damaged on stone or tile flooring.  

Avoid Water and Direct Heat: Whilst both can damage your dining table in different ways, the impact of water and heat on your wooden furniture can be difficult to repair. Water can weaken the protective finish of your wood, creating rings, puddles, stains and pale marks across the surface, while heat can bleach and dry out the wood itself. Avoid using things like straighteners, hot cooking devices, hairdryers, and flames near your wooden furniture to keep them safe.  

Longer Term Maintenance by Wood Type

Oiled Wood

Oiled wood finishes can offer a beautiful natural, yet defined final appearance to your furniture, bringing out those natural grains whilst still protecting and coating the surface. Without the glossy exterior of lacquer, wood oil will still develop into a smooth barrier against scuffs, spills and stains.

We recommend re-oiling your furniture with a thin coat of oil once or twice a year, as it can help it to not only appear glossy, shiny and luxurious on the surface, but also keep the wood beneath healthy and nourished.

Top Tip: If your furniture develops scuffs or scratches, these can be easily repaired yourself. Use a gentle, fine grit sandpaper (higher than 320 grit) to buff them out, before cleaning and drying the surface completely in preparation for the oil. Make sure you always sand lightly in the direction of the wood grain.

Apply the oil directly onto the wood and wipe away after 2-3 minutes, letting the coating set and dry fully – leaving up to two days for it to completely harden.

In some circumstances, you may also need to sand the full piece to avoid differences in the finish once you re-oil.

Watch our tutorial for more details:

Lacquered Wood

A lacquered wood finish is one of the strongest coatings for a piece of furniture, offering a hard, glossy or matt protective layer designed to last. The coating is naturally resistant to stains and scuffs; therefore, only gentle regular maintenance is required to keep it looking smooth and polished.

Clean, damp cloths can often remove most marks and stains; however, stubborn materials like oil, fat or ink can be removed with light amounts of product-specific cleaner, applied gently to the area and used sparingly. Metal scourers or scrubbers should be avoided to prevent damaging or scratching the finish.

Good to know: If lacquer does get scratched or chipped, it typically needs to be professionally repaired to restore the surface.

Soaped Wood

Soaped wood finishes are the most natural to the wood's organic finish, but this finish does offer less protection than oil or lacquer. A soaped finish is where the wood is cleaned and coated, without altering the natural texture of the surface.

Typically used on paler woods like oak, birch or ash, soaped finished woods do require frequent top ups from specific Wood Soap treatments, making it a slightly more high maintenance option. During the first year, your furniture should be treated every 2 months to increase protection and then you can move to a 3-4 times a year cycle.

When re-soaping, simply apply the treatment directly onto the surface with a solution-damp cloth or rag, wipe the product into the wood itself - taking care to avoid filling any cracks or end pieces with too much moisture as this can cause cracking and swelling. Surplus soap should be wiped off with a dry towel, before letting the product set fully on the wood. If wood fibres arrive then light sanding may be required with a fine grain sandpaper before applying another coat of soap.

Common Mistakes to Avoid

To preserve the quality of any type of wooden furniture, avoid:

• Harsh chemical cleaners
• Abrasive scrubbing pads that are not adapted for furniture
• Excessive water exposure
• Direct heat sources
• Prolonged sun exposure

Final Thoughts

With consistent care and maintenance, wooden furniture can remain a beautiful and functional part of your home for many years. Simple daily habits, combined with periodic treatments, help protect your investment while preserving the natural character of the wood.

Whether you’ve chosen oak, ash, or walnut, proper care ensures your furniture continues to look elegant, durable, and timeless.