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Cross-market term

Hardwood and softwood

A botanical division, not a measure of hardness. Hardwoods come from broadleaved trees and softwoods from conifers, and the categories overlap so heavily in actual hardness that the names mislead in both directions.
  • 4Markets
  • NoSame thing everywhere
  • 3Calculators

What it is called, by market

One concept, four markets. Where a name means something else locally, the card says so rather than leaving you to find out on site.

  • United Kingdom

    Same word, different thing

    hardwood / softwood

    also broadleaf, conifer, deal, redwood, whitewood

    DEAL means sawn softwood of a particular size, not a species. REDWOOD and WHITEWOOD in British timber trade mean European pine and spruce, and redwood has nothing to do with the Californian tree.

  • Australia

    Same word, different thing

    hardwood / softwood

    also eucalypt, pine, seasoned hardwood

    Australian structural hardwood is genuinely dense eucalypt, so the everyday association between the word and the property holds far better locally than it does elsewhere — which makes the trap worse when reading imported specifications.

  • United Statesyours

    Same word, different thing

    hardwood / softwood

    also SPF, SYP, Doug fir, poplar

    SPF is spruce-pine-fir sold as an interchangeable structural group; SYP is southern yellow pine, a softwood harder than several commercial hardwoods. Poplar is a hardwood softer than most softwoods.

  • Canada

    Same word, different thing

    hardwood / softwood

    also SPF, Doug fir-larch, hem-fir

    As the United States, with SPF the dominant structural group and graded by species combination rather than by single species.

The governing standard, by market

  • United Kingdom

    BS EN 338 / BS EN 1912

    Structural timber strength classes, and the assignment of species and grade combinations to those classes.

  • United States

    AWC NDS / ASTM D1037

    Design values for wood construction by species group, and test methods including the Janka hardness test.

Calculators for this

Each works in either measurement system, and the terminology on the page follows whichever market you have selected.

Board Foot Calculator →Lumber Dimensional Size Calculator →Timber Beam Bending Stress Calculator →

Frequently asked questions

If hardwood is not harder, what does the word actually mean?
It is a botanical classification about how the tree reproduces and what its cell structure is. HARDWOODS are angiosperms — broadleaved trees whose seeds are enclosed, with a cell structure containing vessels or pores. SOFTWOODS are gymnosperms — conifers with exposed seeds and a simpler structure of tracheids and no vessels. Neither says anything about density or hardness, and the counter-examples are extreme: balsa, the lightest commercial timber in the world, is a hardwood; yew and pitch pine are softwoods harder than oak in places. The practical consequence is that a specification saying hardwood has named a botanical group containing timbers that differ from each other by a factor of ten in density, and has not specified a material.
How should hardness actually be specified?
By the property being relied on, and there are several and they are not the same. JANKA hardness measures resistance to denting and is the right figure for a floor that will take furniture and heels. DENSITY predicts weight, screw-holding and how much a section will move with moisture. STRENGTH CLASS — C grades for softwood and D grades for hardwood under the European system, or design values by species group in North America — is what a structural member is selected on and combines bending strength, stiffness and density. DURABILITY class is a separate axis again and is about resistance to decay, which matters outdoors and is unrelated to hardness. A specification naming a strength class and a durability class has said something; one naming hardwood has not.
Why is timber sold by species GROUP rather than by species?
Because the mill cannot reliably separate them and the design values are set conservatively for the whole group. SPF — spruce, pine, fir — covers several species that grow intermixed, look similar once sawn, and have similar enough properties that they are graded and marketed together, with design values set by the weakest member. The same logic gives hem-fir and Doug fir-larch in North America and the C classes in Europe, where a class is a performance bracket that many species and grades map into. It is efficient and it has one consequence worth knowing: the timber delivered may be substantially better than the class requires, and none of that margin can be relied on, because the next delivery will be at the bottom of the bracket.