Medium-density fibreboard
engineered wood product
Medium-density fibreboard (MDF) is an engineered wood product made by breaking down hardwood or softwood residuals into wood fibre, often in a defibrator, combining it with wax and a resin binder, and forming it into panels by applying high temperature and pressure. MDF is generally denser than plywood. It is made up of separated fibre but can be used as a building material similar in application to plywood. It is stronger and denser than particle board.
The name derives from the distinction in densities of fibreboard. Large-scale production of MDF began in the 1980s, in both North America and Europe.
Over time, the term "MDF" has become a generic name for any dry-process fibreboard.
Physical properties
MDF is typically made up of 82% wood fibre, 9% urea-formaldehyde resin glue, 8% water, and 1% paraffin wax. The density is typically between 500 and 1,000 kg/m3 (31 and 62 lb/cu ft). The range of density and classification as light-, standard-, or high-density board is a misnomer and confusing.
“Medium-density fibreboard” enters the record as engineered wood product. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Medium-density, fibreboard and engineered can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 24, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q642231. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
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This entry incorporates text from “Medium-density fibreboard” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.