Versatility keeps soft maple moving

Light in color and firm in texture, soft maple remains a steady seller for cabinetry and furniture projects, according to lumber suppliers interviewed by Woodshop News. While not a top pick among domestic hardwoods, soft maple draws buyers with its versatility and lower price pointcompared to leading species.

Clint Dillon of Steve Wall Lumber in Mayodan, North Carolina, says soft maple sales are steady. The species works well for paneling, cabinet backs and drawer slides, and is especially popular for paint-grade projects.

"We sell a bunch of soft maple to our cabinetmakers, as well as our hobbyists that are doing projects and jobs that require the lumber either to be painted or have a heavy dark stain on it. It's a little cheaper than the hard white maple that we sell, but it's a little more dense than poplar, and a lot of guys prefer it," Dillon says.

"It's pretty steady on our end. It's a popular wood, maybe one of the top five or six. It machines well, sands well. We also run a lot of custom moldings out of soft maple — we run crown, casing and base molding, and that seems to be really popular because again, it just paints up really well."

Luke Zale of Rare Woods USA in Mexico, Maine, says much of his soft maple goes to furniture makers and specialty item producers like custom pool cue manufacturers.

"The sawn lumber moves fairly well for us, although I think a lot of the demand is more on the hard maple. With the soft maple, customers are more interested in the figured varieties, the curly or the bird’s-eye. But we're in Maine, and everyone has access to maple. It's something everyone has, so they might not be coming to me in particular for it," Zale says.

"The only real change I've seen is that five years ago we were selling a lot of our maple into Canada, and that's slowed down especially with the tariffs."

Doug White of Doug White Hardwoods in Marissa, Illinois, says soft maple sales are sluggish compared to last year, but he still sees movement and praises the species' attributes.

"I just ordered a unit of it. We're still selling it, not quite as fast as we did a year ago, but we're still selling it. We sell it to cabinetmakers. They buy about 500 board feet at a time. They use it for paint-grade projects. The price is a little higher than it was, but I don't think that has too much to do with fewer people asking about it," White says.

"The soft maple machines well, and it's a nice wood to work with. It's a closed-grain wood and the color's good, generally speaking. We get it all up from the north, and it comes in usually pretty wide widths, 6-inch and wider and I have some 10-inch stock in there, and that's what people are always wanting is something wide."

Originally published in the March 2026 issue of Woodshop News.