When it comes to selecting lumber there are a few key criteria, such as color and grain, cost, purpose, and environment, that your customers should bear in mind. Here’s our quick stop guide to get you thinking about what lumber to advise customersabout on their next big home project.

Color and Grain

If you select a dark timber for flooring in an already dark room, you may not get the full benefit from this luxurious type of style. Likewise, selecting an exotic hardwood for a Regency period property may take away from the overall period style. With so many timbers on offer, what might you want to consider before making your selection?

From the lightest of yellow cedar, through to the deep browns of oak and merbau and the dark red woods and rose woods, there is an incredible range of natural colors available.  A good place to start looking is the wood database project. If you desire a shade not found in nature then painted wood can look equally pleasing to the eye. Grains can be enhanced, faded or distressed using a variety of techniques to further get the visual look you are aiming at.

Cost

Having selected a color, you will hopefully be able to reconcile this with the cost you have in mind for your project. Whether wood is a viable choice as a material is largely dependent on what you are doing and how much wood you will need (creating a fifty meter decking project out of Western Red Cedar is likely raise an eyebrow when you see the price per square meter).

Indoors options are plentiful as indoor applications don’t need to factor in rainwater as a concern and as a consequence your options widen. Kitchens are renowned for their wide use of timbers from pine to iroko. This extra choice allows for a wider ranges of budgets to be catered for.

Purpose

All timbers have physical properties which make them more or less suitable for a particular purpose. Teak, cedar, iroko, mahogany, jatoba, and sapele are all good choices for outdoor furniture but their water tolerating nature comes at a cost; some of these timbers can be hard to work with and their low stocks make them a threatened timber and more expensive.

Many more common woods can be treated and/or stained to make them a practical choice. On the inside of a home your requirements may be influenced more by the weight and hardness of a timber. Pine worktops and furniture may be lower cost but are more likely to suffer dents, knocks and scratches due to its soft nature. Meanwhile heavier timbers like maple, oak and walnut may cost more but provide better longevity.

Environment

Wet and dry areas aside, the versatility of wood means that in can be used on floor, the ceiling and anywhere in between. The strength of wood even means that building your own timber frame home can become a real possibility. For each environment particular woods may come to the fore. Aesthetics and physical properties may not always align so it may need you to combine the wood with other materials to meet your needs. This versatility is one of the main draws of timber when planning a project.