Overview
Decking is the board you actually walk on, and picking it is a tradeoff between five things: cost, maintenance, lifespan, looks, and how it feels underfoot, including how hot it gets in the sun. There is no single right answer, just a right answer for how you live and how much upkeep you will tolerate. I tell people to be honest about that last part before they fall in love with a sample. One thing to keep straight: the deck board is separate from the structure that holds it up. The joists, ledger, beams, and footings are their own decision, and they have to suit the decking you choose, both its weight and the span it can handle between joists. A heavy hardwood or a flexible composite changes your framing plan. The main families you will compare are pressure-treated softwood, naturally durable cedar and redwood, wood-plastic composite, fully synthetic PVC, dense tropical hardwood, and aluminum. Each one trades a different mix of those five factors. The rest of this guide walks through what you are actually getting with each, and how to match it to your situation. The framing under it lives in our framing and engineered-wood guides.
Pressure-Treated Wood
Pressure-treated lumber is the cheapest and most common deck board in the country, and it is the budget default for a reason. It is softwood, usually southern yellow pine, that has been forced full of chemicals so it resists rot and insects. That treatment is the whole point: untreated pine outdoors would be gone in a few years. Watch the rating. Boards rated for ground contact handle moisture and soil; above-ground treatment is for the walking surface where water drains off. Use the wrong one in the wrong spot and you have shortened its life. The catch with treated wood is that it ships wet. You generally let it dry out before you seal or stain it, and then you are on a recurring schedule, sealing or staining every couple of years to keep water out and slow the graying. Skip that and the boards will cup, crack, check, and throw splinters. So cheap is only cheap if you actually do the maintenance. Treated wood is the honest budget pick: low upfront cost, decent lifespan if you stay on it, and a real upkeep commitment that a lot of homeowners underestimate when they sign off on it.
Cedar, Redwood, and Tropical Hardwood
These are the natural-wood options, split into two very different camps. Cedar and redwood are softwoods that resist rot and insects on their own, without the chemical treatment, and they are genuinely beautiful with a warm grain people love. They are also softer, so they dent and wear, and they still need sealing or staining to hold color and shed water. Left bare, they weather to gray and slowly break down. So you are paying more than treated pine for the look, and you still own the upkeep. The other camp is tropical hardwood, ipe and cumaru being the names you will hear. These are extremely dense, so dense that ipe can sink in water, and that density buys you a very long life and serious resistance to rot and wear. The tradeoffs are real: it is a premium cost, it is hard to work because it dulls blades and is heavy, and it demands pre-drilling for every fastener plus stainless or specialized hardware because the wood will eat ordinary screws and stain from cheap ones. Hardwood also still wants periodic oiling if you want to keep its color rather than letting it silver out. It is the natural-wood look with the longest runway, at the highest effort and price.
Composite and PVC
This is the low-maintenance premium, and it is where a lot of the market has moved. Composite decking, Trex being the brand most people name, is wood fiber mixed with plastic. Older uncapped composite could fade and stain, so most of what sells now is capped composite, a tough plastic shell over the core, or fully synthetic PVC with no wood in it at all. The pitch is simple and mostly true: no sealing, no staining, no splinters. You wash it. The boards come in consistent colors and grain patterns, so you are not sorting a lumber pile for the good ones, and the better lines carry 25-to-50-year warranties. The costs are real too. Upfront price is higher than wood, sometimes a lot higher for PVC. Dark colors get genuinely hot in direct sun, hot enough to notice barefoot. The surface can scratch, and once it does you cannot sand it out the way you can with wood. And it expands and contracts with temperature more than wood, so the install has to leave proper gaps and use the right hidden-fastener system or you will get buckling and movement. Done right, you trade a higher check upfront for years of just hosing it off.
Aluminum and the Underfoot Factors
Aluminum decking is the outlier, and it is better than its reputation. It is very durable, will not rot, warp, splinter, or feed insects, it is fire-resistant, and it is light, which can matter on a structure. A useful quirk: aluminum sheds heat fast, so it tends to stay cooler underfoot than a dark composite baking in the sun. You will see it on docks, rooftop decks, marine settings, and commercial work more than on a typical backyard, partly because it is premium-priced and reads more industrial than warm. That brings up the factors that actually decide whether you are happy with a deck day to day, which buyers skip while staring at color swatches. Heat is the big one: dark boards, especially dark composite, get hot enough to hurt bare feet in full sun, so in a sunny yard the color and material matter as much as the look. Slip is the next: some surfaces get slick wet, others have texture or hidden grit, and that is a safety question on stairs and around pools. And there is plain feel, whether the board is warm or cool, hard or with some give, hollow-sounding or solid. Test these before you commit, because a deck you avoid barefoot is a deck you stop using.
How to Choose
Work it in this order. First, your maintenance tolerance, because it is the deciding factor for most people. Wood, all of it, is recurring work: sealing, staining, oiling, on a schedule, forever. Composite and PVC are wash-it-and-walk-away. If you know yourself and you will not keep up with a wood deck, buying one anyway is how you end up with a gray, splintering mess in five years. Second, budget, but think lifecycle, not just the receipt. Treated wood is cheap upfront and costs you in labor and materials over time; composite and PVC cost more upfront and almost nothing after. Third, climate: brutal sun argues against dark boards and for heat-shedding choices, heavy moisture and freeze-thaw punish anything you have not sealed or detailed properly. Fourth, the structure, which decides as much as the board. Board thickness and joist spacing have to match, the standard being joists at 12 or 16 inches on center depending on the board and whether you are running it straight or diagonal, and most modern boards want a hidden-fastener system that the framing has to be built for. Last, how long you will keep the place. A forever home justifies hardwood or premium composite; a house you will sell in a few years rarely does.
FAQ
Is composite really maintenance-free? No, it is low maintenance, not zero. You do not seal or stain it, but you still wash off dirt, mold, and grease, and you cannot sand out a scratch the way you can with wood.
Why does my dark composite deck get so hot? Dark colors absorb sun and hold heat, and composite holds it more than you would expect. In a sunny yard, choose a lighter color, or look at aluminum, which sheds heat faster and stays cooler underfoot.
Do I need special fasteners for ipe? Yes. Tropical hardwood is dense enough that you pre-drill every hole and use stainless or specialized hardware, since the wood will resist and potentially stain from cheaper fasteners.
What joist spacing does decking need? It depends on the board and direction, but joists at 12 or 16 inches on center is the common rule, tighter for diagonal runs and many composites. Match the board's spec to your framing before you build, not after.