Our hands-on approach to customizing orders ensures your finished project will be a “cut” above the rest, and choosing the right colour of cedar is an important part of that process.
That’s why we make it a whole lot easier right from the get-go by colour sorting our cedar stock. This allows us to match every single piece we ship out to our customers’ exact specifications.
Here is a breakdown of cedar’s basic colours to help get your creative juices flowing…
Only heartwood cedar contains the naturally occurring fungicide that protects the wood from rot, decay and insect attacks. A telltale sign these preservatives are present is the reddish purple colour of heartwood.
Sapwood, on the other hand, is not resistant to rot, decay and insect attacks. Therefore, this light coloured ring of wood found under bark is often cut away from products that will be exposed to the great outdoors. However, sapwood’s light “colour” should not be confused for heartwood’s light “streaks”.
Here’s Why: In addition to the dark coloured heartwood and the light coloured sapwood surrounding it, there are often streaks of pale wood running through the red heartwood portion. This phenomenon is called “included sapwood” or “white ring”.
Furthermore, the properties these “white ring” streaks possess are intermediate between sapwood and heartwood and DO, in fact, carry the resistance to decay that customers have come to rely on from western red cedar.
