HON Office Furniture: Laminate Surfaces

HON office furniture includes a line of laminate tables that is highly useful for offices. The laminate finish on the conference tables in HON’s line of office furniture is composed of multiple layers of paper saturated with resin, and finished with a printed surface.

In recent years, the quality of printing on laminate products has become so good that it can be difficult to distinguish what is laminate from what is real wood. HON presses the layers that comprise laminates together under high heat and pressure. This produces an abrasion-resistant material that covers the particleboard core of HON office furniture.

HON uses quality particleboard approved by ANSI to make their office furniture, and the undersides of HON’s laminate work surfaces on their office furniture are protected by a moisture-resistant "backer sheet" to resist warping.

These are the advantages of a laminate surface on HON office furniture:

• Laminate is the most durable material available for work surfaces and requires little maintenance.
• (Laminate) is highly resistant to dents and scratches.
• Laminate has a more consistent color and grain than veneer, making it suitable for settings where multiple desks are side by side.
• Laminate is easy to clean and is excellent for high activity areas.
• Laminate has a look that approaches veneer, at a fraction of the price.

Any office furniture by HON that is not laminate is Veneer. Conference tables and other office furniture that are Veneer are usually more unique than their laminate counterparts because the same durable particleboard, instead of being laminated, is veneered with a 1/32” slice of wood taken from a half or quarter log.

To apply Veneer to office furniture, manufacturers usually place it in a pattern that is face to face for a symmetrical design. Sometimes manufacturers apply Veneer onto office furniture in a side-by-side pattern that takes on a linear appearance.