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What is the best firewood to burn? An in-depth guide
- Josh Bagnall
- Jan 5
- 7 min read
Quick summary of the best firewood:
Dense, with a high calorific value and a lovely smell, Oak, in our opinion, is the best firewood. It is more expensive and is more difficult to light than other options. | Birch offers a nice smell, and good burning at a lower price than Oak. It’s also easy to light. | These logs contain a mix of non-native hardwoods. Made from waste wood, they are low-cost and offer a great burn. However, they’re not the best to look at and can be difficult to fit into smaller log burners. |
Most people that buy firewood, have no idea the benefits of different wood. They’re just looking for logs on their fire for a good price. When there are so many potential options, a little guidance would be nice. Every wood supplier claims their wood is great for burning, because who would sell firewood that wasn’t? But, which wood is the best firewood for you? We’ve put together this handy guide, to help make your next purchase a lot easier.
Quick Tips when buying firewood:
Look for dry firewood. Dry, low moisture logs will burn hotter, with less smoke and for longer. Look for kiln-dried or seasoned logs.
Buy hardwoods. Hardwoods like Oak, Birch and Ash are denser than softwoods, offering more heat and longer burn times. Hardwoods also contain less resin than softwoods such as pine, making them cleaner to burn.
Store your logs well. Once you’ve bought your wood, store it in a cool, dry, well-ventilated place. This will keep your firewood dry, and help it burn effectively.
Contents
What factors are we considering?
We want to work out the best firewood for a few different uses. There are a couple of key areas that we think are important:
Heat output. The whole point of a fire is to bring the heat. We need to know how hot each type of wood can burn, to understand if the wood is first for the purpose
Burn time. No one wants to keep getting up to put a new log on the fire every 5 minutes, so we want to understand how long each wood can burn for
Smell. Part of the allure of a great fire is the atmosphere they create. The sound, the heat and importantly the smell. We’ve sniffed a lot of wood, so you don’t have to
Ease to light. When you light a fire, you want to relax. Spending 20 minutes having to place the logs in the right place, with the perfect amount of draft and position to Mars is pointless.
Price. It’s all well and good having the perfect firewood, but if it costs the earth, there’s no point buying it. We’ve ranked the woods by average price, to help you understand the best value.
How we’ve created the information.
We have 35 years of experience in the fuel sources industry and have sourced firewood and logs from all over the world in that time. We’ve tested most of these woods ourselves to give you real-world results. As well as using our knowledge, we’ve collated data from research articles, blogs and industry experts to help provide a well-rounded view.
The Hottest Firewood
Our Pick: Ash
Calorific value is key to understanding how much energy a firewood contains. We’ve collated a list of common UK firewood and listed the amount of energy stored within the wood according to the Forestry Commission in the UK.
The good news for you is that there is very little difference in calorific value between log species! Whilst at t 20% moisture, European larch has the most energy, at 4355 kWh per tonne. Sitka spruce has the least, at 3498 kWh per tonne. The key factor affecting the energy density of wood is its dryness. The energy difference between species of completely dry logs is almost negligible.
Which firewood burns the longest?
Our Pick: Oak
In our research, we’ve tried to take a more general approach to this. We could test the burn time of various woods by burning them. But, many factors at home could affect your burn time. These include climate, airflow, and your fire setup. Instead, we’ve looked at wood density, which will show us how much material there is to burn per log and give a better baseline to compare.
As a result, denser woods that contain more fibres will burn for longer. In general, hardwoods such as oak, ash and birch tend to be much denser than softwoods. They weigh 700kg to 900kg per cubic meter when dry. Softwoods weigh 400kg to 600kg per cubic meter. This essentially means that each log will contain more energy, meaning you can use fewer logs to create the same energy.
Oak, ash and birch are the most commonly used logs in the UK for this reason. They all provide a long burn time, with good heat potential too.
If you’re looking for a more relaxing time in front of the fire, we would generally avoid softwoods that will burn more quickly and need much more maintenance.
Which wood has the best smell?
Our pick: Oak
Different woods have different scents when burned. The smell is a key aspect of creating a nice environment around an open wood fire. It can also be key when using firewood to cook with, as you don’t want your food tainted with a bad smell. This will always be a subjective category, so we’ve given a breakdown of popular scents below:
What affects the smell of wood?
As firewood burns, it releases organic compounds such as terpenes. These are largely responsible for the scents we associate with different types of wood. Species aren’t the only factor that affects scent. You’ll find drier logs have a different scent than logs with a higher moisture content. Similar to other organic products like wine, age and origin have a big impact on smell..
Pine: A crisp, evergreen scent that gives a real Christmas feeling. Note that Pine burns quickly and produces a lot of smoke and creosote, so it's best to burn it outdoors.
Oak: A rich, smoky smell that's perfect for cosy evenings by the fireplace.
Hickory: Hickory has a sweet, bacon-like aroma, making it a favourite for cooking and smoking meats.
Birch: A sweet, fresh scent that makes for a relaxing fire.
Ash: Ash doesn't have a particularly strong or distinctive aroma, making it a great option if you don’t enjoy the traditional firewood smell
Cherry: A sweet and fruity scent that comes from a slow-burning wood that produces good heat
Fir: Fir wood has a mild, slightly sweet, resinous scent. This can vary depending on the type of fir.
Cedar: A sweet and slightly spicy aroma that comes from the natural oils cedar trees produce to repel pests and insects.
Spruce: Spruce firewood has a faint, pleasant scent that some say is reminiscent of a fresh forest. Like pine, we don’t recommend spruce for indoor fires due to the resin in its bark
Which firewood is the easiest to light?
Our Pick: Birch
Making sure a log is easy to light and catch, really takes the stress out of getting a fire started. We’ve all been there, playing around praying that your log will finally catch so you can sit down. Whilst the type of log will matter, dry logs, good ventilation and well-structured fire will always be the key to getting a fire going, no matter the wood.
With that being said, lightweight, dry woods are the best here. Think pine, cedar, fir, spruce, or birch. Birch is our pick as it's a great all-rounder, easy to get lit, but dense enough to keep burning for a while.
Which is the best value firewood?
Best Value: Mixed Tropical Hardwood
Price is a key factor in assessing which firewood is right for you. The biggest factors that affect the price of logs will be the species of wood and the quantity you buy them in. Bulk buying logs will provide the best value, but be careful. Make sure you have somewhere dry to store them.
As mentioned earlier, moisture content is the biggest factor that affects your wood’s ability to burn. Buying a lot of logs to let them get wet will be a complete false economy.
The 3 most common firewoods available in the UK are Ash, Birch and Oak. Of these 3, Oak and Ash are the most expensive at around £0.90 per kilo for a bulk bag, with birch logs costing less at around £0.76 per kilo.
We offer an alternative option which is great value. Collected from the Volta Dam region in Ghana, these are dense woods that are native to the region. Divers retrieve naturally felled deadwood submerged in the lake. This is then cut and brought to the surface for thorough kiln-drying, taking over 18 months.
Due to these logs being from a waste product, they are much cheaper at £0.36 per kg. The only catch is they can be a little large for smaller wood burners.
General Tips for Purchasing Firewood
The drier the better:
Make sure your wood is as dry as possible. You could use a moisture meter. But, a good tip is to look for firewood stored indoors, in a cool, dry place, from a trusted supplier.
Store your wood correctly:
Once you’ve got your wood home, make sure you store it well. We recommend somewhere that is cool, dry and well-ventilated. Somewhere like a well-covered outdoor area or garage is ideal. We also recommend storing it on something raised like a palette to avoid any impact of groundwater.
Avoid high resin woods:
High-resin woods such as spruce and fir are packed with resin. Whilst this lends a lovely smell to fires, it can cause smoke and resin to build up in chimneys creating a risk of chimney fires.
Buy the right quantity:
If you use a lot of firewood, buying bulk bags will offer the best price. However, if you only light your fire a few times a year, this means you need to have good storage to avoid damp logs that will smoke and burn poorly. For less frequent users, we’d opt for smaller, more easy-to-manage quantities.
Best alternatives to firewood
New alternatives such as heat logs and briquettes are made from waste sawdust. They’re cheaper, drier and easier to fit into most burners than traditional logs. They do lack some of the magic of traditional logs but offer a great alternative.
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