What is conti board, and what is it actually good for?

Conti is a brand name that became the generic word, and the product is the reason a shelf in a wardrobe or an airing cupboard costs almost nothing. It is genuinely good value for what it is, and the failures come entirely from asking it to do things it was never built for.

Step by step

1. Recognise what it is made of.A chipboard core — wood particles bonded with resin under pressure — with a melamine-impregnated paper or foil pressed onto both faces. The long edges usually come pre-banded with matching tape; the ends are raw core.
2. Use it for light, dry shelving.Airing cupboards, wardrobe shelves, garage shelving for light items, cupboard interiors, shelf inserts. It arrives finished, it wipes clean and there is nothing to paint.
3. Use it for hidden cabinet interiors.Carcass sides and shelves inside built-in furniture, where a white wipeable surface is exactly what you want and nobody sees the edges.
4. Keep the spans short.Chipboard is the least stiff of the common boards and it creeps — it sags progressively under a sustained load rather than just deflecting once. Keep supports close together, and treat anything approaching half a metre between supports as needing checking for a real load.
5. Band or seal every cut end.The cut end exposes raw chipboard: ugly, fragile and the point where water gets in. Iron-on melamine edging tape matches and costs very little, and a bead of PVA into the raw edge is better than nothing.
6. Pilot every screw and stay away from the edges.Chipboard splits easily and holds a screw poorly, especially near an edge or in the end grain of the board. Pilot everything, use coarse-thread chipboard screws, and use knock-down fittings or dowels rather than screwing into an edge where you can.
7. Keep it dry, permanently.Water swells the particles irreversibly. A leaking pipe in a cupboard, a wet coat hung on a shelf, a garage floor that floods — all of these end the board. If there is any real chance of wetting, use something else.
8. Buy it in the width you need.It is sold in a range of standard widths — commonly 150 to 600mm — with the long edges banded. Buying the right width means you never cut a long edge, which means you never have to band one.

Tips

• It is available in white, several woodgrain finishes and sometimes a beech or oak effect. The woodgrain versions are foil rather than melamine on cheaper boards and scratch more easily.
• For a shelf that has to look better and hold more, an 18mm MDF or plywood shelf with a solid lipping costs a little more and is a different class of product. Conti board is not competing with it.
• The melamine face is hard and blunts blades. Use a fine-toothed blade, score the cut line, and cut with the face up or down according to which way the teeth exit, or the melamine chips along the cut.

Common mistakes

• Using it for a long unsupported shelf carrying books — It is the weakest and least stiff option on the shelf aisle and it creeps under sustained load, so it will sag progressively and permanently. Books need plywood, solid timber or a shorter span.
• Using it in a garage, shed or utility room floor cupboard — Those are exactly the places with condensation, floods and damp floors, and the board swells irreversibly at the first wetting. It is an indoor, dry-room material.
• Screwing a bracket into a cut edge — The core has almost no holding power in the edge and it splits. Fix through the face into a batten, or use a purpose-made fitting.

Alternatives

• Melamine-faced MDF: The same finished face on a much better core: denser, smoother, stiffer and it holds a screw. More expensive and heavier, and still not for wet locations.
• 18mm plywood, painted or oiled: Far stiffer, holds fixings well, tolerates damp, and looks better with a lipped edge. It costs more and needs finishing.
• Solid glued-up pine panel: Comes in shelf-friendly widths, looks like timber, takes a finish, and is much better over a span. Needs oiling or painting and moves with humidity.

Questions people ask