Lumber Prices per Board Foot

About these prices

The ranges below are rough national estimates for planning a project, not quotes. Real prices swing with grade, thickness, region, supplier, and the month you buy. Exotic and figured boards run well above these numbers. Use them to sanity check a quote or budget a build, then confirm with your dealer.

Pick any species for its density, hardness, common uses, and board foot notes. To price a specific order, put the species price into the calculator on the home page.

How to read a price per board foot

A board foot is a volume, not a surface: 144 cubic inches, which is a piece 12 inches square and one inch thick. So a price per board foot is a price per unit of wood, and it already accounts for thickness. That is the whole reason lumber is sold this way. A 5/4 board costs more per square foot of surface than a 4/4 board of the same species, but close to the same per board foot, because you are buying more wood.

This catches people out when they compare a hardwood dealer to a home centre. The dealer quotes $6 a board foot for red oak. The home centre has a 1x6x8 oak board priced as a single item. Those are not comparable until you work out the board footage, which the board foot calculator will do from the dimensions.

One more thing worth knowing before you budget. Rough hardwood is usually sold by the board foot measured before it is surfaced, so a board sold as 4/4 arrives closer to 13/16 inch thick once it is planed. You pay for the sawdust. Surfaced-four-sides stock costs more per board foot but the thickness you see is the thickness you get.

What you should expect to pay

Three bands cover most of what people actually buy.

Construction softwoods, roughly $2 to $6. Southern yellow pine at $2 to $4 is the cheapest wood in the table, and it is what most framing lumber is. Douglas fir at $3 to $6 and eastern white pine at $3 to $6 sit alongside it. This is the band where prices move fastest, because it tracks housing demand rather than furniture demand.

Common domestic hardwoods, roughly $3 to $10. Yellow poplar at $3 to $5 is the cheapest hardwood in the table and the reason so much painted trim and so many drawer sides are made of it. Red oak runs $4 to $7, white ash $4 to $7, hard maple $5 to $9, hickory $5 to $8, white oak $6 to $10, black cherry $6 to $10. This band is where most furniture and cabinet work lives.

Premium and imported, $8 and up with no real ceiling. Black walnut at $8 to $14 is the domestic species that behaves like an import. Ipe runs $9 to $16, genuine mahogany $12 to $20, zebrawood $14 to $25, teak $30 to $60, and cocobolo $40 to $90 in the small blocks it is usually sold in. Several of these carry CITES paperwork, which is part of why they cost what they do.

The spread across the whole table is wide: the cheapest softwood and the most expensive rosewood are more than twenty times apart per board foot.

Why two dealers quote different numbers for the same species

Six things move the price, and grade moves it most.

Grade. FAS (firsts and seconds) is the top hardwood grade and gives long, clear cuttings. Common grades give shorter clear sections between knots and defects. The same species can differ by half again between grades, and for small parts the lower grade is often the better buy, because you were going to cut around the defects anyway.

Thickness. Hardwood thickness is quoted in quarters of an inch: 4/4 is one inch rough, 8/4 is two. Thicker stock costs more per board foot as well as containing more board feet, because fewer logs yield it and it takes longer to dry.

Width and length. Wide, long, clear boards come from big logs and are priced accordingly. If your project can use narrower stock glued up, you will pay noticeably less.

Drying. Kiln-dried costs more than air-dried, which costs more than green. For anything going indoors you want kiln-dried, and paying for it is cheaper than replacing a tabletop that cupped.

Region. Species are cheapest near where they grow. Western red cedar is a bargain in the Pacific Northwest and a specialty item in Georgia. Southern yellow pine is the reverse.

Quantity. Most yards price in tiers, and the break is often around 20 to 50 board feet. Buying a whole project's worth in one trip usually beats three visits, and it also gets you boards from the same lot, which will match better.

Turning a price into a project cost

The arithmetic is short. Work out the board feet, multiply by the price, then add for waste.

A simple bookcase with four shelves and two sides, all 3/4 inch finished from 4/4 stock, 10 inches wide and 36 inches long, is six boards. Each is roughly 2.5 board feet, so about 15 board feet before waste. In red oak at $6 that is $90. In walnut at $11 it is $165. In poplar at $4, painted, it is $60.

Then add waste. Twenty percent is the usual allowance for straightforward work, and thirty is more honest if you are matching grain, working around knots in a common grade, or cutting a lot of short parts. So call the oak bookcase $110 rather than $90, and be pleasantly surprised rather than short a board.

The board foot chart has the footage for standard sizes already worked out, and the blog post on estimating lumber cost walks a larger project through end to end.

Where these numbers come from

The ranges are compiled from retail hardwood dealer pricing for surfaced, kiln-dried stock in common grades, checked against several regional suppliers, and rounded to sensible planning figures. They describe what a hobbyist or small shop pays buying modest quantities, which is deliberately the higher end of the market. A cabinet shop buying by the unit pays less, sometimes considerably.

They are not live prices and they are not quotes. Lumber moved a long way in both directions over the last few years, and softwood in particular can move month to month. Treat a number here as a starting point for a conversation with your supplier, not the end of one.