Almost every bathroom furniture failure is a moisture failure, and almost every moisture failure starts somewhere you cannot see: a cut edge, a screw hole, the underside of a top. The visible surface is rarely the weak point. If you are writing a specification, these are the four places to spend your attention.
Standard MDF is dense, machines cleanly and takes a lacquer finish better than almost anything else, which is why it dominates the category. Its weakness is that once water reaches the fibre it swells and does not recover. Moisture-resistant MDF, usually dyed green for identification, uses a different resin system and performs materially better in a splash zone without changing how the panel is worked.
Plywood is more dimensionally stable and tolerates wetting and drying cycles better, at higher cost and with a less perfect surface for high-gloss finishes. Standard particleboard is the cheapest option and the first to fail; it belongs in dry storage furniture, not under a basin. For contract and hotel work where replacement cost dwarfs unit cost, the substrate is not the place to economise.
A panel is only as waterproof as its edge treatment. Conventional EVA hot-melt edge banding leaves a thin glue line that can open over time, especially with repeated temperature and humidity swings. Laser or PUR edge banding produces a seamless, far more durable seal. Ask which method the factory uses — it is a genuine quality differentiator and one of the few that a buyer can verify by looking closely at a sample.
Every Projebaz carcass is specified with the substrate, edge treatment and hardware named on the product page, so you can compare like with like.
Polyurethane lacquer gives the deepest, most repairable finish and the widest colour freedom, but quality depends heavily on the number of coats and the curing discipline. Melamine and PET foils are more consistent and cheaper, and modern PET in particular performs well against scratching and moisture. High-gloss acrylic looks exceptional and shows every fingerprint, which is a maintenance decision as much as an aesthetic one. Match the finish to who will clean it and how often.
Ask for the declared formaldehyde emission class of the panel — E1 is the common European baseline and lower-emission grades are available. For projects with indoor air quality requirements, or where the specification references a green building standard, this needs to be documented rather than asserted.
Hardware is the most underspecified part of a bathroom vanity. Hinges and drawer runners live in humid air for their whole service life, so corrosion resistance and tested cycle counts matter more here than in any other room. Soft-close mechanisms are now expected rather than premium; what separates good from adequate is whether the mechanism still closes softly after several years of daily use. Ask for the hardware brand and the cycle test figure, and specify it by name if the project warrants it.
All of the above is commonly discussed by email and then omitted from the purchase order, which is the document that actually governs what arrives. If the PO says bathroom vanity, white, 800mm, you have agreed almost nothing — any substrate, any edge treatment and any hardware satisfies it. Put the five lines above on the order, reference the approved sample by number, and state that goods not matching the specification are rejected at pre-shipment inspection. Suppliers who intended to meet it are unaffected; the clause only ever bites when something has gone wrong.
The same applies across borders in a way it does not domestically. When a discrepancy appears in your warehouse, the goods are already paid for and sitting a container voyage away from the factory, and your remedy is whatever the paperwork says it is. Specification detail is not pedantry in export trade — it is the only leverage that survives the shipment.
A supplier who can answer all five without hesitating is describing a product they actually control. A supplier who answers three is quoting on someone else's.
Projebaz manufactures bathroom vanities and mirror cabinets in Denizli, Türkiye — 41 collections, 250+ finishes, exporting to more than 35 countries. Browse the collections
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