What Makes Resin Furniture So Unique?

Have you heard about resin furniture? You might know it better from those satisfying Instagram videos, where the furniture maker pours out a colourful liquid that settles into the grooves of live edge slabs of wood. These videos can be a lot of fun to watch, but the tables are even more fun to make.

They’re also great to take home! Resin furniture is more than a trend now – it has become a defining contemporary style, letting people combine eye-popping colour with old-school rustic wood. It’s these two styles that make resin furniture so unique.

What Is Resin? 

“Resin” is a word that encompasses many different kinds of highly viscous substances, both in nature and in furniture creation. In nature, resin is used by plants as a way of protecting and healing themselves; think of the insect trapped in amber from Jurassic Park, and you’ve got a good example of natural resin. This very thick fluid is beautiful, and many resins were prized by ancient societies as valuable substances. Two more examples you might be familiar with are frankincense and myrrh. 

The modern world has tried to chase this beauty by incorporating tree resins into jewelry, but there is only so much of the natural stuff to go around. Humans have done their best by recreating it as a liquid that sets into a hard lacquer or enamel finish, and these are known as synthetic resins. There are many different material types, including acrylics, epoxies, polyamides, polyurethanes, and silicones. If you’ve painted your nails, you’ve used a form of synthetic resin!

Nail polish isn’t suitable for furniture purposes, though. For larger projects, the synthetic resin has to properly cure in a way that doesn’t shrink or create surface imperfections. The kind of resin that gets poured into tables has to slowly cure so that the surface is free of air pockets. This is why we use a liquid plastic that takes its time when curing, so that the surface of your table turns out as smooth as possible.

Resin Furniture, The Rustix Way

Resin furniture has become a hot trend, and we see it as a way of expanding the possibilities of Rustix live edge furniture. The way resin fits so perfectly into the nooks and crannies of wood helps highlight the perfect imperfections, bringing out the natural beauty of the wood in a fun, stylish way. It makes the furniture one-of-a-kind and impossible to recreate!

Our favourite way of using resin is in the river table. Starting with two pieces of your choice of live edge wood, we pour a liquid plastic resin through the gap to create the satisfying effect of a river flowing between banks. We can make the resin in a wide variety of colours, meaning you can choose how the “river” in your river table will look.

It doesn’t have to just be living room tables, though. We can work with you to create countertops, shelving, or anything where you’d like to add a splash of colour. You can even take a sample of the coloured plastic resin home with you to see if your vision lines up with your home decor before we make the pour!