Color Sorted Cedar

Our hands-on approach to customizing orders ensures your finished project will be a “cut” above the rest, and choosing the right color 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 color sorting our stock. This allows us to match every single piece we ship out to our customers’ exact specifications.

Here, then, is a breakdown of cedar’s basic colors to help get your creative juices flowing:

 Note: When selecting wood color, it’s important to know the difference between “Streaks” and “Sapwood”.

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 color of heartwood.

Sapwood, on the other hand, is not resistant to rot, decay and insect attacks. Therefore, this light colored ring of wood found under bark is often cut away from products that will be exposed to the great outdoors. However, sapwood’s light “color” should not be confused for heartwood’s light “streaks”. Here’s why:

In addition to the dark colored heartwood and the light colored 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.

More information can be found at The University of Tennessee, College of Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources website.