Pine Is in 105 of Cedora's 128 Pieces. Here Is Where It Hides.

Pine has a reputation problem in this country, and it is not entirely undeserved. Say the word and most people picture a flat-pack bookshelf, an unfinished student desk, or the orange-tinged bedroom suite that came with a rental in 1998. It is the timber people assume they are settling for.

So it is worth knowing that pine sits inside 105 of the 128 pieces Cedora currently sells, across six of its eight ranges, and that in not one of them is it what you look at. It is under paint, under an oak top, under veneer, or holding up a set of solid oak legs. Here is where it goes and why that is a deliberate decision rather than a corner cut.

Key Takeaways

• Pine is in 105 of 128 active pieces, across six of the eight ranges.
• Only Byron and Oxford contain no pine. Both are solid acacia.
• In every range pine is structural, never the visible finish.
• London, Manchester and Newcastle paint over it. Bristol tops it with oak. Liverpool veneers it.
• Richmond pairs a pine structure with solid oak legs.

What Pine Is Actually Doing in There

Structural timber has a different job from surface timber, and the qualities that make a good frame are not the ones that make a good tabletop. A frame needs to stay dimensionally stable through a Melbourne winter and a Brisbane summer, hold a screw without splitting, and not weigh so much that a bed cannot be carried up a staircase. Pine does all three, which is why it has held the job for a century.

What it does not do well is sit exposed on a surface that gets used. It is softer than oak or acacia, so it takes a dent where they would take a scratch, and bare pine yellows unevenly in Australian light. Both of those problems disappear the moment the timber is painted, topped or veneered, which is precisely what every Cedora range does with it.

So the honest way to read a spec sheet that says solid pine structure is not "this is a cheap timber". It is "the money in this piece went somewhere you will actually see". Whether that trade is a good one depends entirely on where the maker then spent it, which is the useful comparison between the ranges.

London and Manchester: Pine Under Paint

Twenty-two pieces between them, all listed as a solid pine structure, all finished in crisp white. This is the most straightforward use of the timber in the catalogue, and the one where the logic is clearest. Paint does not care about grain. A painted panel on pine and a painted panel on oak look identical from a metre away, and one of them costs a great deal more to make.

What that buys instead is detail. Both ranges carry panelled fronts, moulded edges and a plinth base, all of which are shaping and joinery rather than material. Put the budget into a plain hardwood carcass and you get plain furniture in nice timber. Put it into pine and profiling and you get the London Pine 6 Drawer Chest at W140 x D45 x H85cm, or the Manchester Pine 5 Drawer Tallboy at W100 x D45 x H114cm, both of which read as considerably more expensive than they are.

Pine also earns its place structurally in the bed frames. The London Pine Queen Bed Frame with 2 Drawers carries two drawers in its footboard on metal runners, and a drawer that runs on a frame needs that frame to stay square for years. A light, stable timber is not a compromise there. It is the correct engineering answer.

Manchester Pine 5 Drawer Tallboy

Bristol: Pine Under an Oak Top

Bristol's eight pieces take a different route. The material is recorded as an oak top on a solid pine structure, which splits the piece along exactly the line where it matters: hardwood on the horizontal surfaces that take wear, pine in the vertical carcass that does not.

It is the most efficient version of the idea in the catalogue. On a Bristol Pine 6 Drawer Chest the only part that meets a lamp base, a set of keys or a coffee cup is oak. The sides, the back and the drawer boxes are pine, and nothing about that is visible or, frankly, relevant to how the piece lives. You pay for hardwood on the square metre that needs it.

Bristol is also the range that shows what pine buys you in flexibility. Its queen frame is 162.4cm wide against 169cm for the painted Hamptons frames, and the tallboy is 110cm tall rather than 114cm or 120cm. Lighter structural timber makes those proportions easier to draw, and in a small bedroom the few centimetres are worth more than the material story.

Bristol Pine 6 Drawer Chest

Liverpool and Richmond: Under Veneer, Behind Oak Legs

The two largest ranges use pine in the two remaining ways. Liverpool, at forty pieces, is listed as a solid pine frame with oak veneer across thirty-four of them, and the six bed frames as pine with MDFV oak and a fabric headboard. Veneer gets a bad name it has not deserved for decades: a thin oak surface over a stable pine core is more dimensionally reliable across a wide panel than solid oak is, because it does not move with the seasons the same way.

Richmond takes the opposite approach across its twenty-seven pieces, pairing a pine structure with solid oak legs. The oak goes exactly where the load and the knocks concentrate, at the corners a chair hits every day, and the pine does the spanning work in between. The Richmond Pine Dining Table 240cm - Natural is a two and a half metre span held up by that combination.

Between the two, that is sixty-seven of the 105 pine pieces, and neither of them is sold as pine furniture. Nobody browsing the Liverpool range is thinking about the frame under the veneer, which is rather the point of a well-made frame.

Richmond Pine Dining Table 240cm - Natural

Should You Care That It Is Pine

Only in two situations, and it is worth being direct about both. The first is if you are buying an exposed timber surface and the spec sheet says pine with no top and no veneer, which in this catalogue does not happen, but does happen elsewhere. Bare pine on a dining table will show every fork and every hot mug within a year.

The second is weight and permanence. Pine-framed furniture is lighter, which is a genuine advantage in a rental or a house you rearrange, and a mild disadvantage if you want a piece that feels immovable. A solid hardwood chest announces itself when you push it. A painted pine one of the same size does not, and some people want that heft.

Everything else is noise. Care is the same as for any sealed timber furniture: wipe rather than soak, mats under hot dishes, and keep pieces out of unfiltered afternoon sun. The structure underneath will outlast your interest in the colour, which is the most anyone should ask of a frame.

Bristol Pine Queen Bed Frame

Frequently Asked Questions

How much of Cedora's range is pine?

Pine appears in 105 of the 128 pieces currently in the range, across six of the eight collections. Only Byron and Oxford contain no pine at all. In every one of those 105 pieces it is structural rather than the visible finish.

Is pine furniture strong enough for a bed frame?

Yes, and it is the standard choice for one. Pine is stable, holds a fixing well and is light enough that a queen frame can be moved by two people. Cedora's London, Manchester and Bristol bed frames all use a solid pine structure with a slat base.

Does pine dent more easily than oak?

It does. Pine is softer, so it takes a dent where a harder timber would take a scratch. It matters on a surface and barely matters on a frame, which is why Cedora paints it, tops it or veneers it rather than leaving it exposed.

Which Cedora ranges have no pine?

Byron and Oxford. Both are built from solid acacia, with an MDF back panel on the sideboards and TV units. Everything else in the catalogue has pine somewhere inside it.

Why is painted pine cheaper than solid hardwood?

Because the money goes where it does work. A painted frame does not need the grain of an expensive board, so the budget moves to the parts you see and touch. That is the trade behind most of the price gap between ranges.