Costa Rica offers different styles of furniture and many wood options to choose from. In this country, wood is still affordable and attainable. Among the different types of wood used for furniture are Guanacaste, Cedro, Cenizaro and Melina among others.
One of the most important things to consider when buying wooden furniture is the treatment that the wood has had before its manufacture. This, because Costa Rica has many different climates and the wood that is used for manufacturing in the Central Valley can sometimes shrink or expand when items are transported to the coast, for example. The high temperatures together with the dry climate of Guanacaste sometimes cause the wooden elements to crack or expand. In addition, there are manufacturing companies that offer beautifully styled furniture at reasonable prices with treated and dried wood under high standards. We have an interesting catalog of furniture made in Costa Rica that most of our clients love to review.
Another good option is teak wood. This piece of furniture is recently manufactured in the country because this wood has not been on the market for long. Most of the teak in Costa Rica is used for outdoor furniture. For distressed teak furniture, you should look for items imported from Indonesia which are sometimes not so cheap considering the beauty of the carvings and the quality of the woods. The balance in price is given by the low cost of labor in those countries compared to Costa Rican labor. Of course, items pay duties, but you may be surprised to find bargain-priced parts from certain vendors.
Comfort is not one of the advantages of Costa Rican furniture. We generally recommend imported items when our clients need sofas or sofa beds due to the quality and density of the foams found here. Some custom manufacturers do a good job on sofas, but we prefer to look at imported items because the price is similar and sometimes lower compared to locally produced items.
Among the wooden furniture that is mostly produced in Costa Rica are the beds. With the beds you will find something very different from what is usual in the United States. Most beds in Costa Rica do not accept box springs. Instead, they have a platform that serves as a base and makes the bed very firm. This lowers the cost of the bed because you don’t need to buy box springs and it prevents bugs from eating your box springs.
An interesting item that we sell a lot are carved wooden beds. Local manufacturers carve the figure of the animal you want. In this way, people who live in the ocean like to carve sailfish, turtles, etc. on their beds and also in the drawers of their nightstands.
Most of the timber producers are located in the Central Valley, near San José, Grecia and Alajuela. They have a woodworking culture and manufacturing experience. Some of our clients want to have personalized items from a magazine, but using the local woods and our fabricators will do what they want. To their surprise, they often get what they want at very reasonable prices.
