Cypress price per board foot
Plan on about $4.50 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 $18.00.
Bald cypress breaks conifer rules for a living: it drops its needles every fall, grows knobby 'knees' out of standing water, and shrugs at rot. The best boards in the world are 'sinker cypress' — logs that sank during the logging boom a century ago, pulled from river bottoms today, tighter and richer than anything a modern tree can grow. And 'pecky' cypress, honeycombed by a fungus, turned literal decay into a paneling style people now pay extra for.
Naturally rot-resistant softwood for outdoor furniture and porch work. Machines easily; old-growth 'sinker' stock is prized and pricier.
Cypress at a glance
| Price per board foot | $4.50 (2026-08) |
| Weight, dry | 32 lb/ft³ · 2.7 lb per BF |
| Janka hardness | 510 lbf |
| Shrinkage, green → oven-dry | 6.2% tangential · 3.8% radial |
| Cost of 10 BF | $45.00 |
| Cost of 25 BF | $112.50 |
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 | $18.00 | 11 lb |
| 6/4 | 6.0 | $27.00 | 16 lb |
| 8/4 | 8.0 | $36.00 | 21 lb |
| 12/4 | 12.0 | $54.00 | 32 lb |
Will it stay flat?
Calm and decay-resistant — the wood of southern porches, shutters, greenhouse benches, and anything that lives where the humidity does. Old-growth earns that reputation more than new.
The measured numbers: drying from green, cypress shrinks about 6.2% across a flatsawn board's width (tangential) and 3.8% across quartersawn (radial) — that ratio is why the two cuts behave so differently in your house.
Buying cypress without regrets
Cheap and everywhere near the Gulf; a special order with freight anywhere else. Be honest with yourself about new-growth cypress: it's only moderately rot-resistant, so for ground contact either pay up for sinker stock or change the design.
At the finishing bench
Machines sweetly, occasionally a bit woolly. It takes paint and oil well — but its best finish might be none at all: left bare outdoors, cypress weathers to a soft pewter gray that looks intentional.
Sources & further reading
Prices vary with region, grade, width, and figure. Cheaper neighbor: Ash ($4.40). A step up: Alder ($4.60).