Anita Trengrove, Corey Salmon & Dan Wood | July, 2025
Lunawood - lightweight, stable and it looks good.
We were asked by a customer to look at whether there were more cost effective timber alternatives to Cedar for light weight applications – specifically garage doors. Enter Lunawood.
Lunawood ThermoWood is a thermally modified Nordic Red Baltic. The thermal modification process involves treating the wood in high temperatures between 180°C to 230°C in a controlled environment with just heat and steam. The result is a Class 2 thermally modified, chemical free timber that can be used for interior and exterior applications. It’s above-ground only life expectancy is 15-40 years, depending on application.
The thermal modification process makes Lunawood incredibly light weight and stable. The weight of Lunawood is 420kg per cubic metre. It is slightly heavier than Western Red Cedar’s 380kg per cubic metre weight, but a lot less than dry Blackbutt at 900kg per cubic metre. We estimate a standard 19-20mm thick cladding profile would yield a square meter weight of 8-8.3kg.
Our Lunawood display is located at the entrance to our Showroom and is characterised by its golden caramel colour and knots. It also has that distinct thermally modified timber smell (go on, sniff the display). In general, it doesn’t require surface treatments, and we’ve left our display uncoated to see how it performs. However you can always coat all faces of your timber products (including ends) to improve performance and extend its service life. We anticipate our display will eventually grey off over time as it’s exposed to the elements.
We’re able to procure Lunawood in sawn material meaning we can machine it in a range of profiles. Our display features our Euclad (concealed fix) alongside the UTS (face fix) and UTV profiles run by Lunawood. We’ve also displayed a selection of Lunawood battens. Lunawood is available locally in lengths commonly between 3.6-5.1m. (with all lengths subject to availability). When selecting fixings keep in mind the thermal processing makes timber more susceptible to splitting. Speak to our Hardware team who can help you find the right fasteners.
Interested in using Lunawood for your next build? Visit our Showroom and Timber teams to discuss where you can use Lunawood or have a look at the link below for more ideas.
https://lunawood.com/for-architects-and-designers/
