Types of Wood | Best Wood Types & Species For Doors

Your home should be your sanctuary. Every little detail should go into making sure your space brings you energy and comfort. While often overlooked, the door in your space plays a major role in the overall feel of your home. It’s not enough to just pick any wooden door, you have to pick the right wooden door to match you and your home’s design style. That’s where picking the right type of wood for your doors becomes important.

11 Types of Wood for Doors

Alder
Poplar
Cedar
Rustica Red Oak
Cherry
White Pine
Hickory
Mahogany
Birch
Walnut
Rift White Oak

Each of these different types of wood species can help you achieve a different look or vibe in your space. In fact, it’s the little details, like the wood species you choose for your door and how you decide to finish it, that can make your home’s decor look complete.

All the types of wood that Rustica uses are sourced from the United States. Our doors are created from engineered lumber derived from hardwood trees. This makes the door stronger, more durable, and resistant to warping and shrinking. This ensures our doors meet your quality standards, so the only thing left to decide is which type of wood would look best for your door.

Best Wood Species for Doors

Understanding the different kinds of wood is the first step in choosing the perfect wood for your door. The various types of trees each offer their own qualities that make them stand apart.

Some wood types are better suited for interior doors, while others make excellent choices for exterior doors. You also have to take into account that some woods are better for particular finishes, such as painting or staining.

These 11 hardwoods are good for all types of doors, whether you are looking at traditional barn doors, Dutch doors, pocket doors, or shutters.

1. Knotty Alder Doors

Alder is by far the most popular wood used for interior doors. Nearly 70% of doors Rustica makes use knotty alder wood and for good reason: it’s affordable, beautiful, and stains well.

One of the key characteristics that makes alder stand apart from other hardwoods is the knots in the grain pattern. These knots lend a rustic charm to the door, making it an excellent choice for barn doors.

The well-defined wood grain makes it an ideal option if you are wanting a stain finish. Naturally, alder is a light brown color, which sometimes features a peachy or yellow undertone. This color can be altered with stain to give it any look you want. Stain also highlights the wood grain, adding to the rustic, log-cabin look.

While it is possible to paint alder, it is much more time consuming if you don’t want the knots and wood grain to show. This requires filling in the cracks of the knots and sanding the wood down before painting. For these reasons, we don’t recommend choosing a paint finish for an alder door.

Another reason alder is popular is because it is a strong wood, similar to hard maple, but with the charm and characteristic commonly associated with pine. It is also, generally, one of the least expensive wood options for doors.

Knotty Alder Wood

2. Poplar Doors

The second most popular choice for Rustica doors is poplar wood, accounting for nearly 20% of doors.

While it is similar to alder in its light brown color with yellow and greenish hues, it does not have the same intense wood grain. The uniform nature of poplar’s fine to medium wood grain is what makes it a popular choice for doors in spaces where the design is more modern and less rustic.

We recommend choosing a poplar wood door if you are looking for a painted finish look at an affordable price. Poplar is great for painting because it does not have wood knots or an intense grain pattern. This means you can skip the filling and sanding and go straight to painting it whatever color you’re envisioning.

Because poplar is a very smooth wood with minimal knots and a fine grain, it’s not recommended for staining. If your room’s design needs the natural feel and texture of wood, then alder may be a better option. But if you are looking for a painted door, poplar is a durable wood that makes an excellent door, regardless of style.

Poplar Wood

3. Cedar Door

If you are looking for an exterior barn door, you’re going to want to choose cedar.

Rustica’s exterior barn doors are only available in cedar due to the many benefits it offers. For starters, cedar is known for its aromatic qualities. While humans enjoy the rich scent of cedar wood, most insects find it off-putting. This means that cedar has natural insect-repelling qualities. Cedar is also moisture resistant. These two factors combined mean that cedar wood is very durable when it comes to rot and decay.

One of the main reasons we only offer our exterior barn doors in cedar is because it requires less maintenance than other treated woods. Cedar is a hardwood, and its natural characteristics make it less prone to warping and shrinking. This keeps your home insulated and safe—two important factors people want with any exterior door.

As far as looks go, you can stain cedar clear to keep the natural reddish-cinnamon color, opt for a tinted stain, or paint it. The possibilities are endless.

Cedar Wood

4. Red Oak Doors

Rustica Red Oak is a hardwood that is excellent for woodworking. It is commonly associated with furniture, such as a dining table, office desk, or wood cabinets.

The reason oak wood is so popular is its open grain. Whether you opt for a clear stain or a tinted stain, Rustica red oak is going to give you a beautiful wood grain that helps bring a touch of tradition and rustic beauty into your space. This is why it is stained more than it is painted, although you could easily do either.

Like other oak woods, red oak has a high-shock resistance and is an ideal wood for interior doors. What sets Rustica Red Oak apart is that it is lightweight (compared to other oak woods) and is a medium-brown color with a reddish hue, perfect for a clear coat finish.

Red Oak Wood

5. Cherry Doors

Cherry wood is a popular wood used with fine furniture and high-end pieces. Its key characteristic is its reddish-brown color.

While other hard woods have a knotty or well-defined wood grain, cherry wood has a fine, straight grain that gives the wood a smooth texture. Its beauty comes from its color, making a clear or light stain the perfect finish for this wood.

Like other wood species, cherry's color will change with time, though how it changes depends on a variety of factors. In some cases, cherry wood may fade, while other times it's reddish tint may grow darker.

Cherry is a beautiful choice for interior doors of any style. Whether you are looking for a door for your office, your study, or are simply looking for a high-fashion look, cherry wood is an ideal choice.

Cherry Wood

6. White Pine Doors

White pine comes from coniferous trees and is ideal for creating interior doors.

Pine wood is known for its close knots, light brown coloring, and tight wood grain. This makes it an ideal selection if you are looking for something between alder's knotty wood grain and poplar's uniform grain.

White pine's coloring and wood grain work well in spaces with a country style. This is especially true if you opt for a clear or light-colored stain to bring out the natural beauty of the wood.

Because white pine does have some knotting, it can be a bit difficult to paint but not impossible. The grain will show through the paint unless you choose to fill the knots and sand down the texture of the wood grain. For these reasons (and because it’s the more affordable option), we recommend going with poplar wood if you’re wanting a painted door.

Besides its beauty, another benefit to opting for white pine is that it doesn't warp as easily as other pine woods. Additionally, its durability makes it a great option for interior doors that are going to see high foot traffic and significant use.

White Pine Wood

7. Hickory Doors

If you're looking for a door with strength, then consider whether hickory wood will go with your overall style and decor.

Hickory wood is one of the hardest commercially available hard woods, next to teak. What this essentially means is that a door made of hickory will have high shock resistance due to the wood's natural density and strength.

Hickory is not only strong, but it also has beautiful deep reddish-brown tones that give your space a prestigious feel. Many people that choose hickory for their interior doors opt for a clear or light-colored stain to show off the true beauty of the wood's color and its medium wood grain.

Like other woods, there is some knotting that adds character to each door made from hickory. Again, with woods that have a medium grain and knotting, if you choose to paint it, the grain will be slightly visible unless you choose to fill the knots and sand it smooth, which kind of defeats the purpose of choosing hickory. This is why many choose to simply stain hickory wood.

Hickory Wood

8. Mahogany Door

Rustica also offers interior doors in mahogany. This type of wood is a dark type of wood and has a reddish-brown color, similar to cherry and cedar, that darkens with age.

One of the main differences between mahogany and other woods is that mahogany has a tighter wood grain. Additionally, mahogany wood’s coloring also creates a distinctive pattern that makes it easily recognizable. Many homeowners want to preserve the beautiful, unique color pattern, opting to use clear or lightly tinted stain rather than paint on their mahogany doors.

Beyond its beauty, mahogany is relatively resistant to rot and is stable, even in humid climates (meaning less shrinkage and swelling compared to other hardwoods). Rustica’s mahogany doors easily fit into any style. Whether your home is more traditional or has a modern flair, we’re confident this type of wood will be a stunner in any space.

Mahogany Wood

9. Birch Doors

If you love the look of maple wood, then birch is a great alternative.

Both kinds of wood have a similar appearance and characteristics, making it difficult for homeowners to differentiate between the two. This makes birch is a popular choice for many woodworking projects.

While there are slight variations in grain depending on the specific tree, most of the time birch has a fine, straight grain that gives it an even texture.

When it comes to coloring, birchwood offers a pale brown or golden color. This type of wood does best with a lightly tinted or clear stain. Darker stains may appear blotchy because birch doesn’t absorb stain evenly. It is possible to paint birch, but you will still see the grain and the knots if you don’t fill and sand them, which is why we recommend poplar wood for all our painted doors.

Birch sits somewhere between alder and poplar when it comes to knots and grains. What this means is your birch wood will show less character than medium or heavy grained woods, like alder or white pine, but will still show more knots and grain than a fine grain wood, like poplar.

If you opt for a birch door, keep in mind that birch is a hardwood that is susceptible to rot. This makes it a better option for interior doors that are away from humidity.

Birch Wood

10. Walnut Doors

Walnut is often considered the American timber. It is one of the few types of dark wood that has a rich, chocolate-brown coloring (many times with undertones of purple) that is easily integrated into many design styles, both as doors and wood flooring.

Whether you’ve got a col