Types of Plywood & Their Uses

Plywood sheets offer professional and consistent results. As a commonly used material popular within construction industries, plywood serves as a stable framework for the possibilities high-quality wood can bring.

Further to this, plywood is not only cost-effective but is also a versatile wood that is reliable and delivers excellent levels of strength. From floors to walls, roofing to partitions, plywood sheets have a multitude of uses.

Our plywood sheets are made from veneers that are glued in layers to create a consistent and incredibly tough material that is also light and easy to machine. This creates a bonded sheet with stronger properties and all the benefits of using pure wood.

While we offer a multitude of plywood varieties, often it can be overwhelming to choose the right one for your task. Please note that while we have created this guide to assist you in choosing your plywood, ultimately it is your responsibility to research what material best suits your project.

This guide will take you through the different practical uses of our plywood sheets, giving you the best material for your project.

As one of the most common commercially available plywood boards, birch plywood is associated with being used in countless applications both in the home and construction space. With smooth real birch wood veneers, our birch plywood is a pale hardwood with a cream colour. As an engineered wood sheet constructed by glueing birch veneers together, all of our birch plywood boards are durable and versatile giving them longevity for all projects. Specifically, Birch plywood boasts a universality of adapting to multiple situations.

The properties associated with marine plywood make it ideal for applications in environments where it will be involved with large amounts of water such as outside or on boats, where humidity and moisture levels are higher. Unlike other types of plywood, marine can resist the bending, warping or delaminating that can often occur as a result of too much moisture affecting the board.

The negligible vacuum between the marine plywood veneers prevents water from affecting the adhesive between the layers, reinforcing the board’s durability and longevity in wet environments.

Some marine plywood thicknesses have a green tint in appearance, whilst others are the more familiar brown.

Our hardwood plywood sheets are ideal for general-purpose construction projects. Typically, it's used for roofing, flooring, wall heating and renovation work, due to its excellent load-bearing capacity. Hardwood plywood can also be used in kitchens, cabinets or doors. 

Softwood, also known as shuttering plywood, is a rough-grade sheet used as an inexpensive carpentry material. The type of wood we offer as default is a Brazilian softwood sheet with a C+/C grade. This is well-suited to roofing, wall construction, or general joinery applications.

Softwood plywood sheets are typically made from wood such as cedar, spruce, pine and fir, collectively known as spruce-pine-fir or SPF.

Traditionally softwoods are most commonly used for general building, roofing and concrete frameworks, or any application where the technical specification of the product is more important than the appearance of the wood.