Purpleheart price per board foot
Plan on about $9.75 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 $39.00.
People see their first purpleheart board and assume trickery — no dye, that's just the wood. It comes off the saw a dull brown, oxidizes to royal violet over a few days like a Polaroid developing, then spends years mellowing toward burgundy. And the color is the least of it: purpleheart is so absurdly strong that South America uses it for truck decking and bridge timbers. It's industrial steel that happens to be purple.
Startling violet that oxidizes toward brown; very hard and strong. Heats and gums cutters; UV finish helps keep the color.
Purpleheart at a glance
| Price per board foot | $9.75 (2026-08) |
| Weight, dry | 56 lb/ft³ · 4.7 lb per BF |
| Janka hardness | 2,520 lbf |
| Shrinkage, green → oven-dry | 6.4% tangential · 3.8% radial |
| Cost of 10 BF | $97.50 |
| Cost of 25 BF | $243.75 |
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 | $39.00 | 19 lb |
| 6/4 | 6.0 | $58.50 | 28 lb |
| 8/4 | 8.0 | $78.00 | 37 lb |
| 12/4 | 12.0 | $117.00 | 56 lb |
Will it stay flat?
Stiff, dense, and steady once dry — it out-muscles white oak in every mechanical measure worth quoting, then holds the line for decades.
The measured numbers: drying from green, purpleheart shrinks about 6.4% 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 purpleheart without regrets
Industrial demand keeps mills cutting it, so this exotic costs less than some domestic figured maple. On the rack the boards look disappointingly brown — one pass of a hand plane shows you the purple future underneath.
At the finishing bench
Two rules. Keep tools sharp and feed rates steady — heat from dull cutters gums the resin and browns the color. And accept that the purple is a chapter, not a promise: UV-inhibiting finish slows the fade to burgundy, sunshine accelerates it, and plenty of makers just embrace the wine-dark ending.
Sources & further reading
Prices vary with region, grade, width, and figure. Cheaper neighbor: Black Walnut ($9.50). A step up: Padauk ($10.50).