Difference Between Hardwood and Softwood

Nowadays, woods are preferred over iron/steel for any kind of interior works, design, and construction purposes. They are known for their aesthetic appeal, durability, cost, ease of maintenance, and resistivity in any climatic conditions. Not all woods can go with any type of construction and weather changes. According, to the humidity, need, resistivity, and longevity, the woods are used. Woods are categorized as Hardwoods and Softwoods. These woods vary with their utility, structure, forbearance, and span. Moreover, they are eco-friendly.

What is Hardwood and What is Softwood?

Hardwood:

Hardwoods generally are from deciduous trees. These trees shed their leaves annually in autumn and winter and they grow at a slow rate. They tend to form annual rings at every stage but grow indistinct as the wood becomes denser with time. Though hardwoods are hard, not all hardwoods are hard, some are softer than softwoods. For example, Balsa, a hardwood that is softer than softwoods.   

Softwood:

Softwoods are woods that are generally soft comes from coniferous trees. These coniferous trees remain evergreen as they keep their needles throughout the year. The softwood trees tend to grow faster in a short time when compared to hardwood trees and have distinct annual rings. Approximately 80% of the world’s production of timber sources from softwood. Not all softwoods necessarily are soft, some softwoods are harder than the hardwoods like yew trees.    

Difference between Hardwood and Softwood with suitable examples and applications:

Hardwood	Softwood
Grows slow and takes a longer period of time to dry.	Grows fast and takes short time to dry.
Hardwoods are angiosperms or flowering plants.	Softwoods are gymnosperm
Presence of pores or vessels	Absence of pores or vessels
Condensed and the complex structure and has superior strength	Simple and easy structure and is comparatively weak
More resilient as they are denser	Less resilient as they are less dense
High fire resistance and burns slowly	Poor fire resistance and burns at a high rate
More durable	Less durable
Sturdier, denser and heavy on weight	Flexible, less dense and lighter on weight
Dark coloured woods	Softwoods are light in colour
Naturally remain unaffected by weather changes and has a less environmental impact	If treated appropriately, they become resistant to climatic changes and has an environmental impact
Fewer branches or shoots	Has more branches
More expensive and not easily available	Affordable and is easily available
Good shear and tensile strength	Comparatively less shear strength and well tensile
Hard to curve and carve	Easy for curved surfaces and for intricate designs
Mostly used for flooring and furniture. Also used for papermaking	Used to make paper, paper pulp, and solid wood products
Used for decorative purposes as it can be customized with various pigments, paints, seals, and stains	Utilized for construction purposes like subfloors, home walls, and roofs
Teakwood, Meranti Wood, Merbau Wood, Sal Wood, Eucalyptus, Beech, Maple, Walnut, Wenge Wood, Oak Wood, Mahogany, and more… are examples of Hardwood trees	Pinewood, Redwood, Larch, Cedar, Spruce, Sycamore Wood, Deal Wood are some examples of Softwood trees

Softwood structural lumbers are light and flexible that they easily accept nails without splitting or making crevasses. Thus, they can be easily manipulated, designed, and bent to fit any intricate and complex structures in general construction. But hardwoods will split or break when a nail drives in. So, a bolt or screw is fastened to hold the hardwood together.

Benefits of using hardwood and Softwood:

Both Hardwood and Softwood are used for common purposes. Softwood is cheap and easy to work and maintain. Softwoods maketh the 80% usage of timber in the whole world as they are readily available due to their fast growth. They are used in building interior components like windows, doors, furniture, paper, charcoal, barrels, and medium-density fibreboard (MDF). Whereas the complexity and hardness of hardwood make it difficult to work and maintain. As they have a long lifetime and endurance to changes, hardwoods are used for high-quality furniture, decks, flooring, and constructions that last long.  

In building a campfire, cooking fire, and smoking for meat, hardwoods of cherry, oak, and apple are generally used as they are thick and burn at a slower rate producing high desirable heat for a long time but softwoods with low-density and highly flammable sap, they burn fast producing less heat. 

However, the combination of Hardwood and Softwood increases a product’s lifetime. For example, the seat of a chair is made with the interlocked grain of elmwood but if other components pound into it, the wood may split or crack. It is because of differences in grain, pore size, density, fiber pattern, growth, pliability, and the ability to steam bent. 

Conclusion:

Hardwood is considered a material of real beauty as it is available in numerous combinations of colours, species, woodgrain, and specifications. It is the ultimate versatile material with a wide range of applications from exquisite veneers and furniture to the making of musical instruments, boat building, construction, and flooring. Over-exploitation, especially certain species of hardwood trees like Burma teak and mahogany makes it scarce and overpriced. Softwoods are renowned for their versatility with a large breadth of application. Its aesthetic appeal is remarkable to its users as it is used from furniture to flooring, decking, external joinery, and landscaping. They are most of the structural utilization reserved for bespoke for its finery in the finish.