Identifying wood: colour, grain, pores, weight and smell
Which wood is this? How to identify a species by its end grain, grain, colour, weight and smell — and how to tell whether wood has been treated. The Wood Guide · Understanding wood
The Wood Guide · Understanding wood
Practical · identificationIdentifying wood species
An old board, a flea-market find, a beam in the barn: which wood is it? With a sharp knife, a magnifying glass and your nose, you'll get further than you think.
- Start with the end grain
- Five features together
- Also: treated or not
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A knife, a lens and your nose
The most reliable place to look is the end grain. Pare a small patch smooth with a sharp knife and look at it through a ten-times hand lens.
Click a chapter or use the arrows · magnifications drawn schematically, colours approximate.
One feature proves nothing, five together almost everything
Colour alone is deceptive: wood changes colour with light, air and oil. To identify a species, combine the structure of the wood with its colour, weight, hardness and smell.
The most reliable place to look is the end grain: the cross-cut face at the end of a board. Cut a small smooth patch with a sharp knife or craft knife and look at it through a magnifying glass. There you can see at a glance whether you are dealing with softwood or hardwood, and how the pores are distributed.
Then move to the long face: the grain, the colour of heartwood and sapwood, and any rays. Weigh the piece in your hand, press a fingernail into it, and smell a freshly sawn surface.
A sharp knife or craft knife, a 10× magnifying glass, a little water (a wet surface shows colour and grain better) and good daylight. A piece of a known species to compare with helps enormously.
- 1 · End grain
- pores or not · ring-porous or diffuse
- 2 · Grain
- calm, wild, rays, knots
- 3 · Colour
- heartwood versus sapwood
- 4 · Weight and hardness
- hand and fingernail
- 5 · Smell
- resin, tannin, cedar, leather
To be fair: some species cannot be told apart with the naked eye — think of the many trade names of meranti or the various tropical "red" woods. There, a laboratory with a microscope is the only sure answer.
What the end grain reveals
No pores: softwood
Softwood has no vessels, only fine fibres. The end grain looks even, with clear growth rings: a light, soft earlywood zone and a darker, harder latewood zone. You can often smell resin. Spruce, pine, Douglas fir, larch and cedar belong here. Softwood.
Pores in a ring: ring-porous hardwood
Large vessels lie in a clear ring at the start of each growth ring. Oak, ash, sweet chestnut and robinia are ring-porous. Oak · ash.
Pores everywhere: diffuse-porous hardwood
Small vessels, evenly spread across the growth ring. The rings are less pronounced. Beech, maple, birch and poplar belong here. Beech.
Tropical hardwood
Usually diffuse-porous, often with barely visible growth rings because there is no winter. Pores may be filled with white or dark deposits. Tropical wood.
Grain, colour, weight and smell
Grain and rays
On a quarter-sawn board, oak shows broad, shiny flecks: the rays or medullary rays. Beech has small, dark streaks of them. Ash looks like oak but lacks those rays. Knots in whorls at regular intervals point to softwood.
Colour of heartwood and sapwood
In pine, larch and Douglas fir a reddish-brown heartwood stands out against the light sapwood. In spruce and beech there is hardly any colour difference. Wet the wood: then you see the real colour, without greying. Heartwood and sapwood.
Weight and hardness
Balsa is lighter than cork, spruce is around 450 kg/m³, oak around 700 and azobé above 1,000 — the last of these sinks in water. Press a fingernail into the wood: in spruce it leaves a small dent, in oak or bangkirai hardly any. Guide values by species: what does a cubic metre of wood weigh.
Smell
Smell a freshly sawn surface. Pine smells of resin, oak slightly sour from the tannin, cedar distinctly aromatic, teak somewhat of leather. Teak also feels slightly greasy because of its natural oil.
Tricky pairs
| Pair | Where you see the difference | More |
|---|---|---|
| Spruce or pine | Pine: reddish-brown heartwood, smell of resin. Spruce: light yellowish white throughout, small knots in whorls. | Pine or spruce |
| Oak or ash | Oak shows rays on a quarter-sawn face; ash doesn't. Ash is lighter in colour. | Ash wood |
| Larch or Douglas fir | Both reddish brown with clear growth rings. Larch has a sharper transition between earlywood and latewood and is slightly heavier. | Larch or Douglas fir |
| Teak or other hardwood | Teak feels greasy and smells of leather; many substitutes don't. | Teak or hardwood |
| Oak or beech | Oak is ring-porous with large rays; beech is diffuse-porous with fine, dark streaks. | Beech wood |
Recognising treated wood
Pressure-treated
Freshly pressure-treated spruce has a greenish or brownish tint, strongest in the light sapwood. After a few months outdoors it fades to honey and grey. Pressure-treated wood.
Thermally modified
Dark brown right through — inside too, if you cut off a splinter — and noticeably lighter than untreated wood of the same species. When fresh, it smells faintly of smoke. Thermally modified wood.
Oiled, stained or lacquered
Then the colour sits on the surface. Scrape away a small inconspicuous patch: underneath you see the actual wood. Lacquer also forms a glossy film you can feel with a fingernail.
Quality when buying
Straight grain, few knots, no blue staining or soft spots. More in recognising quality wood.
Photos, features and properties of more than seventy wood species are in the wood register.
Frequently asked questions about identifying wood
How do you identify a wood species?
First look at the end grain: if you see pores, it is hardwood; if you don't, it is softwood. After that, colour, grain, weight, hardness and smell together usually give the answer.
How do you tell spruce from pine?
Pine has a clearly reddish-brown heartwood that stands out against the light sapwood, and smells of resin. Spruce is light yellowish white throughout, without a pronounced heartwood, with small knots.
How do you recognise oak?
By the large pores in a ring in the end grain and, on quarter-sawn boards, by the striking shiny rays. Oak is heavy and smells slightly sour.
How do you recognise pressure-treated wood?
Freshly pressure-treated spruce has a greenish or brownish tint that sits mainly in the sapwood. After a few months outdoors that tint fades, and then it is hard to see by eye.
From identifying to choosing
Know which wood it is? Then you also know what it needs.
Unsure about a piece of wood? Send us a photo of the end grain.
Photos via Wikimedia Commons: Ring-porous hardwood under a lens: large vessels in the earlywood — Stex-1999, CC0 · Picea abies — Rasbak, CC BY-SA 3.0 · Numbered wood samples: each species with its own colour and grain — Daderot, CC0