Bottom line: the honest split is not "wood versus plastic". It is a surface you re-coat on a schedule against a surface you wash and cannot coat at all. Everything else — the frame, the footings, the stairs, the guards — is the same purchase either way, and it is wood on both.
This guide sits above the material guides rather than beside them. If you have already narrowed to one family, the Ipe, cumaru, clear larch and thermally modified wood guides go deeper on each, and PVC against composite splits the synthetic side. Start here if the question is still whether the deck should be wood at all.
Watch it first, if you would rather hear it
Our sister company, Composite Deck Shop, put this exact question to a builder with more than twenty years of decks behind him. Watch it for the field experience — how each surface ages, what the maintenance year really involves, and where a wood deck starts costing weekends. It is also, plainly, a supplier's case for composite, so read it alongside the sourced figures below rather than instead of them.
The part you are not choosing
A deck is two things stacked: a structure, and a surface. The comparison everybody argues about only covers the second one.
Canada's product evaluations are unusually blunt about this. Each of the three current code-compliance evaluations covering the boards sold across Ontario — the AZEK PVC, Trex and Fiberon reports published by the National Research Council — states that the board "is not to be considered as an equivalent to dimensional lumber." A composite deck is a wood deck with a synthetic wearing surface.
The structure under it is sized from the Canadian Wood Council's deck span guide, which works in sawn lumber and grades of No. 2 or better. That guide is also honest about its own limits: footings, railings and guards, attachment of the deck to the house, and lateral bracing "are not addressed and are beyond the scope of this document." Those belong to your drawings, your municipality and the manufacturer's instructions — our framing guide and Toronto permits guide cover where each one lands.
A framing cost nobody quotes you. Spruce-pine-fir is the ordinary Ontario framing group, and it does not absorb preservative easily, so treated stock is commonly incised — scored with small slits to let the chemical in. The span guide publishes two full sets of tables for exactly that reason, applying a treatment factor of 0.85 to bending and shear for incised lumber. The effect is concrete: an S-P-F 2×10 at 16 in. joist spacing spans 15 ft 2 in. not incised and 14 ft 0 in. incised. The same board, treated, reaches a foot less. That is a beam or a row of footings, and it is priced into every deck in this comparison equally.
The five families, briefly
"Wood versus composite" is really five things against each other, and two of the five are not sold as decking at the same shops as the others.
| Family | What it actually is | The one thing to know |
|---|---|---|
| Pressure-treated softwood | Spruce-pine-fir or similar, treated with ACQ or copper azole | The lowest board cost and the most rules attached to it — see the handling and cleaning guidance below |
| Cedar and larch | Naturally durable softwood, untreated | Stable and pleasant, and soft: western red cedar's Janka hardness is 350 lbf |
| Tropical hardwood | Dense species — ipe, cumaru, garapa | The most durable wood available and the most demanding to install; every hole is pre-drilled |
| Capped composite | Wood flour and recycled polymer under a polymer cap | The widest price range on the shelf, and the entry tier gives up cap coverage and warranty |
| Cellular PVC | Foamed PVC with fillers, no wood content | No wood core; surface dirt can still support mould. Movement gaps are product-specific; entry prices are higher. |
Thermally modified boards — Lunawood, thermal red oak — sit slightly outside this grid: real wood, heat-treated to change how it takes on moisture, with its own guide and its own load-bearing exclusion.
Where the money lands
Live Composite Deck Shop board prices for each family it sells, from the entry board to the premium one. The upfront gap is only half of a ten-year comparison; the list under the prices covers the other half.
Cedar and pressure-treated lumber are lumberyard goods, so Composite Deck Shop does not stock them and they are not priced here.
Composite Deck Shop prices as of Sep 29, 2026 · CAD, before tax and delivery
Board prices only, per board as sold. Ipe is priced by board size, so pick a size to see its lengths.
- The upfront bands overlap more than the argument suggests. The prices above show it: the entry composite board costs a fraction of the premium one, and tropical hardwood sits with the premium synthetics. TimberTech's own banding agrees — Advanced PVC at $$–$$$$, Composite at $–$$$, maintenance at $ for both. Pressure-treated is below all of it.
- The recurring side is work, not a product. A wood deck's ten-year cost is the cleaning and finishing cycle in the upkeep section below, times ten years, mostly in labour if you hire it and mostly in weekends if you do not. Composite and PVC still need cleaning with products approved for that collection; painting or coating a capped board may invalidate warranty coverage.
- The material-independent lines are large. Footings, frame, stairs, guards and fasteners are substantial costs whichever board you choose, though support spacing and fasteners can change with the product. Guards in particular are frequently as big a line as the decking — our railings hub covers why — and a picture-framed or angled layout adds waste and framing to any material.
The Ontario deck cost calculator works through those lines in order with current local numbers, which is a more honest way to compare two materials than any per-square-foot figure printed in an article. If the budget is the binding constraint on a composite deck specifically, the budget composite guide follows the whole project rather than the board.
How long each one lasts, and on whose authority
This is where most comparisons quietly invent a number. There are two real bodies of evidence, and they are not the same kind of statement.
What the wood side publishes
The USDA Forest Products Laboratory groups species by average heartwood decay resistance. Ipe (listed as lapacho) is very resistant; western redcedar, the white oaks and black walnut are resistant; western larch and Douglas-fir are moderately resistant; and spruces and most pines are slightly or nonresistant. Three qualifications come attached, and all three matter more than the ranking:
- It is a heartwood classification. "Untreated sapwood of essentially all species has low resistance to decay and usually has a short service life under conditions favoring decay." A cedar board with a wide pale sapwood stripe is not a cedar board in the sense the table means.
- The grades on sale are not all heartwood. The same source notes that marketable sizes of some species "are primarily second growth and contain a high percentage of sapwood."
- Precision is not on offer. "Precise ratings of decay resistance of heartwood of different species are not possible because of differences within species and the variety of service conditions to which wood is exposed."
The nearest thing to a real service-life number comes from the same laboratory's long-running field test, published by T. L. Highley in 1995. Cross-brace units of ten softwoods and nine hardwoods stood on a test fence near Madison, Wisconsin for up to 22 years, with the crossing point deliberately built to trap water "similar to joints where decay often originates in wood structures." Woods estimated to last more than 20 years above ground included western red cedar heartwood, along with Douglas-fir, redwood and oak heartwood. Nothing tested fell into the worst class of seven years or less; the rest landed at 8 to 13 or 14 to 19 years. Read it as what it is — a fence in a moderate decay climate, at deck-board scale — not as a warranty.
What the synthetic side publishes
PVC has no wood core; capped composite combines wood fibre and polymers with a protective cap. Both are sold with product-specific limited warranties, rather than a promise of a fixed service life. Terms range from 25 years on some entry collections to lifetime product coverage on certain PVC lines. Check proration, exclusions and any separately offered labour cover in the TimberTech and Fiberon guides.
Support spacing is product-specific. CCMC’s Fiberon evaluation notes greater creep than lumber: gradual deflection under sustained load can occur in both materials. Follow the board’s support-spacing requirements. Angled boards may need closer joists, while borders and butt joints need correctly placed blocking and support.
What you buy again, and on whose schedule
The real ten-year difference is not a price. It is a recurring quantity of work, and each family's interval is set by whoever makes the product you bought.
Two of those rows deserve their own sentence, because they are where owners are most often given wrong advice.
Composite and PVC are not "low maintenance", they are no-coating materials. Trex publishes that painting or staining its decking "is not recommended and may void the limited residential fade and stain warranty." Fiberon's own maintenance page is blunter: "DON'T attempt to paint, stain or seal your Fiberon composite decking." TimberTech voids its fade and stain warranty if a coating is applied. Anyone who moves from a wood deck and reaches for a can in year three is about to spend money to lose their warranty. Our deck oils and stains guide is where that line is drawn in detail.
Pressure-treated wood has cleaning rules of its own. Health Canada advises against using bleaching or cleaning agents "such as sodium hypochlorite, sodium hydroxide, sodium percarbonate, citric acid or oxalic acid on treated wood," because they can cause the wood to release chemicals that may be inhaled or contacted. Oxalic acid is the active ingredient in an ordinary deck brightener — the second bottle in every restoration kit. That guidance is specific to treated wood; brightening an untreated hardwood or cedar deck is a different job with different products.
For the wood families, the intervals themselves are the manufacturers': DeckWise asks for cleaning and brightening at least annually and re-oiling every one to two years on hardwood; CUTEK gives 6 to 12 months for high-exposure horizontal surfaces. The Western Red Cedar Lumber Association restricts cedar decks to transparent water-repellent preservatives and semi-transparent stains — film-forming paint and varnish are not advised on a horizontal deck surface — and adds a warning worth repeating: "Never power-wash a deck because it damages the wood fibres."
The video near the top of this page is largely about this section: a builder walking through what the maintenance year actually looks like on each surface.
Underfoot: heat, dents and what the deck feels like
The specification sheets rarely capture the thing you notice barefoot in July, but two published numbers get close.
- Softness is measurable, and cedar is very soft. Western red cedar's Janka hardness is 350 lbf; its oven-dry density is 21 lb/ft³, which the WRCLA describes as "one of the lightest commercial softwoods." Ipe is about 3,490 lbf and cumaru about 3,330 lbf — roughly ten times harder. A cedar deck is kind to bare feet and unkind to patio-furniture legs, dog claws and dropped tools.
- That same low density is why it feels cooler. The WRCLA publishes a thermal conductivity of 0.74 BTU in./ft²h°F and an R value of 1.35 per inch for cedar. Dense hardwood in a dark tone sits at the opposite end. On the synthetic side, TimberTech's cooler-surface claim for Advanced PVC comes with its own footnote: all decking gets hot in the sun, and the darker the colour, the hotter it feels.
Cedar carries one more practical constraint that follows directly from what makes it durable. Its natural preservatives corrode some metals in close contact, "causing a black stain on the wood," so the WRCLA specifies corrosion-resistant fasteners only — aluminum, hot-dipped galvanized or stainless — and notes that nails and screws should be about one-third longer than those used for hardwood. Copper-based preservative in treated lumber has a comparable requirement for its own reason. Fasteners are never a place to economise on any of these decks.
What an Ontario year does to each one
Both sides move, and they move for different reasons — which is the single most useful thing to understand before an installer starts.
- Wood moves with moisture. It swells and shrinks across the grain as the seasons change, and surface checking on a treated softwood deck is normal rather than a defect. Cedar is the mildest of the group: the WRCLA calls it "the most stable softwood species," with 1.2% radial and 2.6% tangential shrinkage from green down to 12% moisture content.
- Composite and PVC move with temperature. That is why their Canadian evaluations set minimum end gaps by the temperature on the day of installation — 8 mm for a Trex board installed below 3 °C against 1 mm for an AZEK PVC board between 0 and 10 °C. A composite deck built in the cold is supposed to have visible end gaps, and CCMC 13125-R sets a −9 °C installation limit for the Trex products it covers.
- Winter care is nearly identical. TimberTech's care guide says decking "may become slippery in freezing weather", allows calcium chloride with a rinse, rules out rock salt and abrasive ice melts, and permits an all-plastic shovel only. Metal-edged shovels damage every family on this page, wood included.
Slip resistance is a product question, not a material one. The Canadian evaluations publish measured slip indices against a 0.5 criterion and they do not line up by material: the AZEK PVC boards report 0.765 dry and 0.652 wet, while most Trex products fall below 0.5 wet and Fiberon's report gives 0.37 dry and 0.36 wet, with slip-resistant strips required on stair treads. An oiled hardwood deck in the rain is its own case again. Treat stairs as a separate problem on any material.
Resale, and the number we are not going to print
Every version of this comparison quotes a percentage of cost recouped at resale, usually attributed to the American Cost vs Value report. We checked it. The report's own pages refused our requests on 10 August 2026, and the secondary sources quoting the same 2025 edition disagree with each other by a wide margin — a wood deck addition reported at both 94.9% and 83% recouped, composite at both 88.5% and 68%. A figure that cannot be read at its source and is repeated two different ways is not a figure we will attribute to anyone. It is also US national data, with no Ontario weighting and no Canadian equivalent that we could find.
What is verifiable locally is duller and more useful: an open building permit is a real problem when you sell. Toronto's own guidance is that the owner or builder must request the final inspection so the permit can close, and an open permit can delay a sale, financing or a later permit application. That is true of a cedar deck and a PVC deck in exactly the same measure. Our Toronto deck permits guide has the process.
When the deck eventually comes down
The end of a deck's life is the one part of this comparison where the materials differ in a way you cannot undo later.
- Treated wood has hard rules. Health Canada: "Never burn treated wood — indoors or outdoors." It also must not go into a compost bin or be used as mulch, and offcuts and sawdust are to be cleaned up and disposed of according to local regulation. The same page asks for gloves, long sleeves, a dust mask and eye protection when sawing or sanding it, and outdoor work only.
- Untreated wood is ordinary wood waste. Cedar, larch, hardwood and thermally modified offcuts carry none of the above.
- Composite and PVC are recycled-content products that are not municipally recyclable here. Trex states its composite is made from 95% recycled materials and TimberTech states approximately 65% to 85% recycled content across its products, but a torn-out composite deck in Toronto goes to landfill. TimberTech's PVC recycling programme is described as serving dealers and contractors in the United States.
Which one for your project
| Your situation | Leans towards | Why, and what to confirm |
|---|---|---|
| Selling within a few years | Pressure-treated, built properly | The premium buys away a maintenance cycle you will not be there for. Close the permit; that part does affect the sale. |
| Staying, and you do not want a spring job | Capped composite or PVC | Wash-only by instruction. Check the cap coverage and the warranty tier, not just the colour. |
| You actually enjoy maintaining wood | Hardwood, cedar or thermally modified | Decide up front whether you are keeping the colour or letting it silver — that choice sets the whole schedule. |
| Bare feet, kids, full sun | A light colour, in any family | Colour and shade outrank material. Cedar's low density genuinely helps; dark dense boards are the worst case. |
| Big dogs, heavy furniture, hard use | Hardwood or composite, not cedar | 350 lbf against roughly 3,400 lbf is the difference between a deck that marks and one that does not. |
| Ground-hugging deck, poor drainage, shade | Fix the detailing first | Airflow and drainage decide the outcome on every material. A durable board over a wet, closed-in frame still fails. |
| Building in late autumn or early spring | Wood, or agree the gap rule | Cold-weather composite installs need the largest end gaps, and CCMC 13125-R sets a −9 °C limit for the Trex products it covers. |
| An existing deck built before 2004 | Check before you sand it | Health Canada says pre-2004 decks are likely CCA-treated. Monitor, replace damaged wood, seal rather than paint. |
If a row above is close to a tie for you, the deciding factor is usually the honest answer to how much upkeep you will really do. That is the question the builder in the video spends most of his time on.
If you are still choosing between families, the decking materials hub puts all of them side by side, and the composite hub goes a level deeper on the synthetic side.
Once the family is settled, the next question is not which board but how much of everything else. Our material checklist walks the rest of the order — the second and third board profiles a bordered deck needs, the fastener system, joist tape, the guard, and the things that can only go in while the frame is still open.
Common questions
Which lasts longer, wood or composite?
They are measured in two different units, which is why the question rarely gets a straight answer. Wood is classified by decay resistance: the USDA Forest Products Laboratory rates ipe heartwood very resistant and western redcedar heartwood resistant, while spruces and most pines — the ordinary framing species — are slightly or nonresistant. PVC has no wood core to decay, while capped composites are engineered for decay resistance. Their limited warranties vary by collection; coverage and exclusions must be checked separately. A decay class is not a service life and neither is a warranty term. What actually decides both is drainage, airflow and detailing.
Do I still need pressure-treated lumber if I buy composite?
Yes, and it is not a detail. All three current Canadian evaluations for the composite and PVC boards sold here state that the board "is not to be considered as an equivalent to dimensional lumber." The footings, posts, beams, joists and ledger under a composite deck are the same preservative-treated sawn lumber as under a wood deck, sized from the same span tables. The material choice covers the walking surface and the guard infill.
Is composite worth the extra cost over pressure-treated?
It depends on how you value the recurring work rather than on which board is better. Composite and PVC are wash-only by instruction — Trex publishes that painting or staining "is not recommended and may void the limited residential fade and stain warranty." A wood deck buys cleaning and re-coating again on its finish maker's interval, indefinitely. If you intend to stay and do not want that cycle, the premium usually buys it away. If the budget rules today, pressure-treated still builds a sound deck; it moves the cost from the build to every second or third spring.
My deck was built in the early 2000s. Is the wood safe?
Check the date. Health Canada publishes that CCA "is no longer available for residential construction projects" and that "residential decks, fences or playground structures built before 2004 are likely to have been made from CCA-treated lumber." Its guidance for those structures is to monitor for damage, replace wood showing rot or scraped surfaces, and consider an annual sealant — an oil- or water-based stain, because "paints and other film-formers are not recommended." Two rules apply to all treated wood, old or new: never burn it, and do not compost it or use it as mulch.
Can I use a deck brightener on pressure-treated wood?
Health Canada advises against it, which surprises most owners because brighteners are the standard second step of a wood-deck refresh. Its wording is direct: do not use bleaching or cleaning agents such as sodium hypochlorite, sodium hydroxide, sodium percarbonate, citric acid or oxalic acid on treated wood, because they "can cause the wood to release chemicals that may be inhaled or come in contact with skin." Oxalic acid is the usual active ingredient in a deck brightener. That guidance is specific to preservative-treated wood — it is not the advice for untreated hardwood or cedar.
Does a wood deck stay cooler than composite in the sun?
Colour and shade matter more than the material, but there is a published physical reason a light softwood board feels cooler: the Western Red Cedar Lumber Association gives cedar a thermal conductivity of 0.74 BTU in./ft²h°F and an R value of 1.35 per inch, which is high for a building material because the wood is so low in density. Dense tropical hardwood in a dark tone is at the other end and holds heat. On the synthetic side TimberTech publishes that its Advanced PVC "stays up to 30°F cooler in direct sunlight compared to many composites" and immediately qualifies it: all decking gets hot in the sun, and darker colours feel hotter.
Useful sources
Manufacturer collections, warranty documents, code-compliance evaluations and federal guidance are each revised on their own schedule. Open the sources below and confirm against the exact product before you commit.
- USDA Forest Products Laboratory, Wood Handbook, Chapter 14: Biodeterioration of Wood (PDF): Table 14–1 and the decay-resistance text quoted above, including the sapwood statement, the second-growth caution and the recommendation of pressure-treated wood over resistant heartwood in severe decay conditions.
- T. L. Highley, Comparative Durability of Untreated Wood in Use Above Ground (PDF, USDA FPL, 1995): the 22-year Wisconsin test fence, the ">20 years" group including western red cedar heartwood, and the 8-to-13 and 14-to-19-year classes.
- Health Canada — Staying Safe around Treated Wood: ACQ and copper azole for residential use, CCA no longer available for residential construction, the pre-2004 note, the sealant and film-former guidance, the cleaning-agent warning, and the burning and composting prohibitions.
- Western Red Cedar Lumber Association — Quick Facts (PDF): density and specific gravity, the thujaplicin and thujic acid explanation, the ground-contact caveat, the corrosion-resistant fastener requirement, the stability and shrinkage figures, and the k and R values. Finishing guidance, including the power-washing warning, is on its decking finishing page.
- Canadian Wood Council — Prescriptive Residential Exterior Wood Deck Span Guide (PDF): the design assumptions, the incised-lumber treatment factor and the two sets of span tables, the species groupings, and the scope exclusions quoted above.
- The Wood Database — Western Red Cedar: the 350 lbf Janka figure and the note that the wood dents and scratches easily.
- National Research Council code-compliance evaluations 13690-R (AZEK), 13125-R (Trex) and 13500-R (Fiberon): the "not equivalent to dimensional lumber" statement, the end gaps by installation temperature, the composite creep note and the published slip results.
- Trex FAQ, Fiberon deck maintenance and care and the TimberTech Care and Cleaning Guide (PDF): the no-coating instructions, the warranty consequence, the brushes, and the winter guidance.
- DeckWise Ipe Oil and CUTEK Extreme (Canada): the hardwood cleaning, brightening and re-oiling intervals quoted in the upkeep section.
- City of Toronto — Closing Building Permits: the final inspection and permit-closure process behind the resale note.
- Composite Deck Shop — wood decking and composite decking collections: the live board prices, sizes and lengths in the price section.
This guide is practical public information, not engineering advice or a product approval. Span figures are quoted from a published guide with its own stated scope; your drawings, your municipality and the current manufacturer instructions govern your deck.