Hardwood Decking

Hardwood decking is what you build when you want the deck to outlast the reason you built it. A dense tropical hardwood resists rot, decay, fungus and insects because of what it is, not because of what was pumped into it — no pressure treatment, no copper, nothing to leach out or wear off. It holds less surface heat than dark composite, keeps its footing wet, and it can be refinished any number of times over a life measured in decades.

Ghent stocks five hardwood decking species: Red Balau, Golden Balau, Korina, Doju, Ipe. All of them are kiln-dried, all of them are S4S with eased edges, and all of them are priced by the lineal foot in even lengths from 8′ to 20′ — so you order the exact tally your deck needs instead of buying square footage you throw away.

The table below is the comparison most people actually come here to make. Everything in it is measured, and the prices are the live catalog price for the 5/4x6 board — the standard residential deck board, and the one profile every species shares.

Radial shrinkage is the column to read if you have been burned before. It governs how much each board moves across its width through a season — the movement that opens gaps and pulls fasteners. It is the reason Doju and Korina outperform Ipe on stability despite Ipe being the harder, denser board, and the reason quartersawn Golden Balau behaves better than its tangential figure suggests.

CITES Appendix II matters to your schedule rather than your deck. Ipe was listed at the end of 2022, so every shipment now needs export permits and source-country documentation — paperwork we handle, but it moves both price and lead time. Nothing else on this table carries it.

Nearly every conversation we have about hardwood decking comes down to three things: what colour you want, what you can spend, and how much the deck has to survive. Here is how we answer it.

• If you want the best value in a real tropical hardwood — Golden Balau or Red Balau, at around $3.99/LF for the 5/4x6. Golden if you want honey-gold, Red if you want mahogany. They cost within pennies of each other and either will outlast a treated-pine deck several times over.
• If the deck has to include rail, stairs, fascia and a porch ceiling — Red Balau, without much argument. It is the only species we carry in all of those profiles, so the whole structure is one wood and weathers as one wood.
• If the deck sits low to the ground, or you are somewhere the seasons swing hard — Doju. Low decks dry poorly from underneath, which is exactly where dimensional stability earns its money, and Doju is the most stable board on the table at Ipe-level hardness.
• If you want zero chemicals and maximum stability, and the deck is a surface rather than a structure — thermally modified Korina. Under 2% movement, colour through the board, nothing added but heat and steam.
• If it has to last longer than you will own the house, or it has to pass a wildland-urban-interface fire code — Ipe. 40–75 years untreated and a Class A flame-spread rating, the same class as concrete and steel. Order early; the CITES paperwork makes supply move.

Still deciding? Order sample boards — they are $5 each from any product page. A golden-brown and a red-brown look nothing alike in your own light, and no photograph settles it. Our interactive decking comparison puts every species we carry side by side on the specs.

Deck boards are sold by the lineal foot, by length — not by the square foot and not in random bundles. Build your tally on any product page and the calculator totals the feet, the coverage and the price as you go, so you can order the exact mix of lengths your framing wants instead of cutting 20% of a bundle into offcuts.

• 5/4x6 — net 1″ × 5-1/2″, about 0.46 SF of coverage per lineal foot. The standard residential deck board and the thickness most joist layouts are designed around.
• 5/4x4 — net 1″ × 3-1/2″, about 0.29 SF per LF. Tighter board lines, better behaviour on curves and small landings.
• 1x6 and 1x4 — net 3/4″. Lighter boards for tight joist spacing, porch floors and ceilings.
• Grooved profiles in Ipe, Red Balau and Korina, milled for hidden-clip systems.
• 2x4, 2x6, posts, handrail, balusters, bullnose stair treads and fascia in Red Balau, for a deck built entirely from one species.

Lengths run even, 8′ through 20′, depending on species and profile. Long boards matter more than people expect: a 20′ run with no butt joint is one fewer seam to trap water and one fewer place for the deck to look built rather than made.

None of this is difficult. It is just unforgiving of the shortcuts that work on softwood, and every callback we have ever heard about traces back to one of these.

• Pre-drill and countersink every face fastener. These boards are dense enough that a screw driven straight in will split the board or snap off. Stainless steel only — plain steel will stain the wood.
• Or skip face fastening. Grooved boards take a hidden-clip system such as the ExoDek QuickClip, which sets the gap for you and leaves nothing on the surface.
• Gap 3/16″ to 1/4″ for drainage and seasonal movement.
• Ventilate underneath. A hardwood deck that cannot dry from below will cup no matter which species it is. This matters more than the species you chose.
• Seal fresh end cuts with a wax-based end sealer — every cut opens end grain the mill had already sealed.
• Acclimate on site for several days, stacked and stickered out of direct sun, before you fasten anything.
• Carbide blades, high tooth count, and expect to sharpen more often than you would on cedar.

Working out quantities? Our calculation help turns deck dimensions into a board count, and the tally calculator on each product page turns that into a length-by-length order.

Exoshield wood stain

THE LONGEST LASTING TRANSPARENT WOOD STAIN EVER PRODUCED

Exodek Quick clip