Helping coating and furniture manufacturers address emerging trends
At Covestro, we offer a wide range of UV-curable resin technologies for furniture applications from kitchen fronts to wall paneling.
Multiple applications, multiple solutions
From flat-pack DIY furniture and kitchen fronts, to solid-wood doors and even picture frames – the furniture segment covers a wide range of applications and substrates. Each of these applications has its own coating requirements. But one thing they have in common is that, as flat surfaces, they’re all well suited to UV-cured coatings.
We offer a wide range of monomer- and oligomer-based UV-curable resins to meet these varied requirements. Above all, we aim for our solutions to address emerging trends and meet the needs set by leading furniture brands.
Finishing foils and functional coating layers
Painters and furniture manufacturers typically look to minimize the number of coating layers they use to save time and costs. And luckily, most furniture coatings don’t require as many layers as those for applications like flooring!
This makes finishing foils and laminates – made of plastics like PVC on paper substrates – very popular in furniture applications. We offer several resins for this, all of which are formulated without formaldehyde.
Our portfolio also includes resins with various layer functions to have optimal performance for specific resistance standards.
Addressing ultra-matte and haptic demand
Just as in flooring, there’s a significant trend in furniture for ultra-matte, natural look finishes. Achieving this while still delivering resistance has traditionally been a key challenge for coatings manufacturers.
We’re continually working on technologies to address this challenge – including our Excimer-curable resin NeoRad™ U-65. And we are also working on further Excimer-curable resins that can provide dead-matte finishes without matting agents.
Beyond ultra-matte, we’re also exploring the trend for haptic finishes – such as sandy- and velvet-feel textures. In particular, we are investigating how to create resins that enhance resistance while still retaining haptic effects.
Toward even more sustainable solutions
In the coming years, sustainability will be a key driver for new trends in UV-curable furniture coatings. This will be particularly influenced by leading furniture brands that have set specific targets.
We’re here to help our customers keep up with this accelerated need, whether it’s through low-to-no-TMPTA (Trimethylolpropane Triacrylate) solutions or LED-curable resins. In particular, we already offer 16 C14-certified partly bio-based products for furniture applications, and are continuing to develop more. Together, we’ll continue to enable even more sustainable furniture coatings.
“By definition, the furniture segment encompasses a very broad group of applications across different markets – all of which have different requirements that are met with different coating technologies.”
Key benefits
- Faster-curing: UV light has an almost instant curing mechanism.
- Efficient: UV curing allows you to deliver various functionalities in one layer.
- More sustainable: UV curing requires minimal energy and produces hardly any waste.
- Low-VOC: Our energy-curable resins emit low-to-zero VOC content.
- Low-formaldehyde: Our resins for laminates emit low-to-zero formaldehyde content.
