What is the Best Burning Fire Wood?

Whether you are using wood to heat your home, a campfire or to cook people often want to know what the best burning fire wood is.

There really is no best all around wood for burning. Different types of wood have their advantages and disadvantages depending on what your wood burning needs are. If you want your wood stove to put out a lot of heat over a long period of time the idea wood will be different than if you want a nice crackling fire in your fireplace with big flames.

There are many different burning characteristics of wood to consider but wood can be classified in two different categories, hardwood or softwood. Hardwoods are usually more dense and harder than softwoods but there are exceptions. Hardwoods and softwoods are not distinguished by their hardness or softness but what type of tree they come from.

Softwoods come from cone bearing trees called conifers. These trees usually have needles or scales for leaves like fir, spruce, pine and cedar. Softwoods are less dense, burn faster than dense hardwoods but sometimes with a more intense flame. Softwoods have less energy but are easier to ignite. This makes them good for starting fires and getting intense heat quickly.

Hardwoods come from trees with broad leaves like maple, oak, hickory and walnut. Hardwoods are usually more dense than softwoods, burn slower and release more total heat energy over a longer period of time. This makes them good for wood stoves when you want them to put out heat over a long period of time.

Hardwoods are good when you want to maintain heat to heat your home or to make coals for cooking or campfires. Softwood is good for kindling, starting fires, getting intense heat from a fire quickly or for when you want nice big flames in your fireplace or campfire.

All wood burns if it's dry and whatever wood you have will probably work for what you need but might not be ideal. The exception would be for cooking, some woods you just don't want to use. For both home heating I like to have a mixture of both hardwood and softwood.

Learn more about firewood and the differences between common species and their