Is hardwood actually harder than softwood?
The two words describe the tree, not the timber — and there are soft hardwoods and hard softwoods. What the labels really tell you, and the property you should be asking about instead.
- Difficulty
- beginner
- Time
- 8 min
- Read
- 3 min
Short answer
No. Hardwood and softwood are botanical categories, not hardness ratings: hardwood means a broadleaved tree, softwood means a conifer. Balsa is a hardwood and yew is a softwood, and balsa is far softer. In practice most hardwoods are denser and harder than most softwoods, but if hardness is what you care about, ask about density or the species, not the category.
This trips people up constantly, because the words sound like a description of the material and are actually a description of the tree's reproductive biology. It matters practically, because "I want a hardwood" is not a specification — it covers everything from balsa to iroko, materials with nothing in common except that the tree had leaves.
Step by step
- Learn what the two words actually divide.Softwoods are conifers — pine, spruce, fir, larch, cedar, yew — which have needles and cones. Hardwoods are broadleaved trees — oak, ash, beech, birch, poplar, iroko, balsa — which have leaves and enclosed seeds. That is the whole of the definition.
- Note the two famous exceptions.Balsa is a hardwood and is one of the softest usable timbers in the world. Yew and Douglas fir are softwoods and are harder and denser than several commercial hardwoods. The rule is a strong tendency, not a law.
- Understand why the tendency holds anyway.Broadleaved trees generally grow more slowly and build a denser cell structure, so as a group hardwoods are heavier, denser, harder-wearing and more expensive. It is a useful rule of thumb for buying, just not a definition.
- Ask about density instead when hardness is what you want.Density predicts almost everything you actually care about: dent resistance, wear, weight, screw holding, how it machines. A denser timber takes an edge better and marks less. Suppliers of hardwood will quote it.
- Separate hardness from durability entirely.Durability is resistance to fungal decay outdoors, and it is a different property with a different ranking. Western red cedar is soft and durable. Beech is hard and rots quickly. Choosing a hardwood for a fence gains you nothing unless it is a durable one.
- Use the categories the way a merchant does.In a UK merchant, "softwood" means the pine and spruce carcassing and joinery stock that makes up most of the yard, and "hardwood" means a separate, dearer rack of oak, ash, beech, sapele and iroko, usually sold by the cubic metre or by the piece rather than by the length.
Tips
- If a merchant offers you "hardwood plywood", that describes the veneers and core species, not the strength or the glue. Check the bond class separately.
- Weight in the hand is a decent free density test. Pick up two offcuts of the same size and the denser one will be obvious.
- Hardness is measured formally by the Janka test, which presses a steel ball into the timber. Flooring suppliers quote Janka figures because dent resistance is the whole question for a floor.
Common mistakes
- Specifying "hardwood" and expecting durability outdoors — Most common hardwoods — beech, ash, birch, poplar — have poor natural durability and will rot outdoors faster than treated softwood. Durability comes from specific species, not from the category.
- Assuming hardwood is always stronger structurally — Structural strength is graded and certified separately. C16 and C24 graded softwood carries almost every domestic floor and roof in the country, and an ungraded hardwood has no strength class at all.
Questions people ask
Which is better for furniture?
For anything that takes wear — a table top, a worktop, a stair tread, a chair — a dense hardwood such as oak, ash or beech is genuinely better, because it dents less and finishes more crisply. For painted work, carcasses and anything hidden, softwood or a sheet material is cheaper and perfectly adequate.
Is pine a softwood?
Yes. So is spruce, which UK merchants usually call whitewood, and so is the redwood that most joinery-grade softwood is made from. Nearly all the timber in a mainstream merchant is softwood.
Why is hardwood so much dearer?
Slower growth, smaller and less regular logs, more waste in conversion, longer drying and a much smaller supply chain. A hardwood board is often four or five times the price of an equivalent piece of softwood, which is why hardwood tends to be used as a facing, a lipping or a wearing surface rather than for the whole thing.