Aromatic Red Cedar price per board foot
Plan on about $4.85 a board foot for 4/4 stock at U.S. retail (our 2026-08 estimate — your yard gets the final word). A typical board, 6″ wide and 8′ long, will run you around $19.40.
Open any mid-century cedar chest and that smell — sweet, sharp, unmistakable — is the whole product. Aromatic cedar's oils really do repel moths, which made a chest of it the standard wedding gift for generations of American brides. It isn't cedar at all — it's a juniper. And for a hundred years it was the wood of nearly every pencil in America, until the pencil industry literally ran out of big trees and moved west.
Closet linings and chests — the scent repels moths. Knotty, brittle, and narrow; plan extra waste. Technically a juniper.
Aromatic Red Cedar at a glance
| Price per board foot | $4.85 (2026-08) |
| Weight, dry | 33 lb/ft³ · 2.8 lb per BF |
| Janka hardness | 900 lbf |
| Shrinkage, green → oven-dry | 4.7% tangential · 3.1% radial |
| Cost of 10 BF | $48.50 |
| Cost of 25 BF | $121.25 |
What common thicknesses cost
Same 6″ × 8′ board, priced by rough thickness (thicker stock often carries a small premium on top of this — figured on volume alone):
| Thickness | Board feet | Cost | Weight |
|---|---|---|---|
| 4/4 | 4.0 | $19.40 | 11 lb |
| 6/4 | 6.0 | $29.10 | 17 lb |
| 8/4 | 8.0 | $38.80 | 22 lb |
| 12/4 | 12.0 | $58.20 | 33 lb |
Will it stay flat?
Stable, rot-proof, and pleasantly light — but brittle, and the knots aren't decoration, they're structural weak points scattered like raisins.
The measured numbers: drying from green, aromatic red cedar shrinks about 4.7% across a flatsawn board's width (tangential) and 3.1% across quartersawn (radial) — that ratio is why the two cuts behave so differently in your house.
Buying aromatic red cedar without regrets
It comes in narrow, knotty boards and closet-liner bundles, priced accordingly. If you're cutting furniture parts around the loose knots, plan 30% waste and consider it the cost of the perfume.
At the finishing bench
Leave chest and closet linings raw — finish would seal in the very scent you paid for. Years later, when the smell fades, a quick sanding brings it right back. It's the only wood on this site that improves with sandpaper alone.
Sources & further reading
Plan a aromatic red cedar project
Prices vary with region, grade, width, and figure. Cheaper neighbor: Elm ($4.75). A step up: Hickory ($4.95).