Knowledge to know when choosing flooring, cabinets and other decoration materials

Color is the key to our identification of wood. From light white to different shades of yellow, gray, red, and even deep chestnut, the colors of different tree species vary greatly.
Grain is another important feature of wood, reflecting the direction of the wood fibers. A tree that grows straight will also have a straight grain. Some tree species have wavy grains, while others have slightly or significantly staggered grains. When the growth conditions of adjacent annual rings are different, the grain of the tree is irregular. The more irregular the grain, the more difficult the wood is to process and the more unique the pattern. This is why wood with intricate grains is often used for veneer. Processing wood with the grain 🔺 refers to pushing it flat along the direction of the wood fibers, processing wood against the grain 🔺 refers to processing wood in the opposite direction of the wood fibers, and processing wood with the cross grain 🔺 refers to cutting the wood fibers vertically when processing wood.
Wood (texture) refers to the fineness of the wood, that is, the thickness of the wood fibers. Wood is generally divided into three grades: fine, medium and rough.
Pattern (not to be confused with grain) is the pattern on the surface of wood due to differences in annual rings, early and late wood grains, and wood color and cutting methods.
In addition, wood has different physical, chemical and mechanical properties, such as density, hardness, mechanical properties, corrosion resistance and durability (Table 1). Among them, density refers to the density of wood at 12% moisture, and the unit is kg/m³.

All trees grow in the same way, but the wood they "grow" is not the same. There are countless types of trees, but we usually divide wood into two categories: softwood and hardwood.
Softwood (Table 1) is also called resin wood because its cells can secrete and transport resin.
Softwood refers to evergreen coniferous wood, which usually has a clear texture and is easy to process. Coniferous trees have become the darling of commercial development because of their fast growth rate and straight trunks, especially in North America, a major export region. In addition to being used as a building material and for making paper, softwood is also a woodworking material, such as particleboard.
Hardwoods (Table 2) are generally denser than softwoods, but there are exceptions - balsa (also called light wood) is the least dense of all hardwoods (balsa has a density of only 160 kg/m³, while the average density of hardwoods is 500-700 kg/m³).