MDF, melamine, blockboard and marine ply compared

Almost every fitted item in a Nairobi house is built from one of four boards, and the quotations rarely say which. Knowing the difference is the most useful thing a buyer can learn about joinery, because it is the single biggest driver of both price and lifespan, and it is invisible once the doors are on.

Sheet prices below are Kenyan market ranges reviewed September 2026. They are indicative and not a quotation.

Marine plywood, around KES 1,800 per sheet

Plywood is thin veneers glued in alternating grain directions, which is what makes it strong in both axes and resistant to splitting. Marine grade uses a water-resistant adhesive and better veneers with fewer internal voids.

It is the right choice for anything structural or anything that will meet water: kitchen carcasses, the cabinet under a sink, bathroom vanity boxes, and shelving that has to carry weight over a span. Its face is not perfectly smooth, so it is a carcass material rather than a finish material.

Blockboard, around KES 2,200 per sheet

Blockboard is a core of softwood strips laid edge to edge, faced with veneer. It is light for its stiffness and holds a screw well along the strips, which makes it a reasonable carcass board and a good one for long shelves that would sag in MDF.

Its weakness is the edges, which need lipping to look finished, and its behaviour in damp, which is poorer than marine ply. It is the budget carcass standard in Nairobi and it is a perfectly honest choice in a dry room.

MDF, around KES 2,800 to 3,500 per sheet

Medium-density fibreboard is wood fibre compressed with resin. It has no grain, no voids and a dead-flat face, and it machines cleanly enough to take a routed profile. That makes it the best available material for a door or drawer front that will be sprayed, wrapped or painted, because it stays flat and shows no grain through the finish.

Its weakness is water. Standard MDF exposed to repeated damp swells irreversibly and the swelling starts at the edges and the screw holes. It belongs on fronts and in dry rooms, not in a sink base. Moisture-resistant MDF exists and is better, but it is not marine ply.

Melamine-faced board, around KES 4,000 to 5,000 per sheet

Melamine board is a chipboard or MDF core with a factory-bonded melamine surface. The attraction is that it arrives finished, in a consistent colour, and needs no spraying, which takes both cost and time out of the workshop.

It is durable in use and easy to clean. The compromises are that the surface cannot be repaired if it chips, the colour range is whatever is stocked, and the core is usually chipboard, which has the worst moisture behaviour of anything on this page.

How they combine in one job

A well-built fitted kitchen in Nairobi is typically a marine ply or blockboard carcass with MDF fronts, sometimes with melamine used for internal shelving where it will never be seen and never be wet. A quotation that specifies one board for the whole unit is either over-engineering the fronts or under-engineering the box.

If a quotation does not name the board at all, that is the question to ask before comparing it with another.