Timber Grades Explained

Timber flooring grades describe the visual character of a floor. A grade tells you how much natural feature to expect, from clean and consistent through to knots, grain movement, and colour variation across the floor.

Market Timbers supplies timber in a range of species, colours, grades, and finishes, and can help you match a grade and colour profile to the space. This guide explains what the main grades mean, how they change the look of a finished floor, and how to choose between them. It also clears up one common point of confusion: flooring appearance grades are not the same as the structural timber grades (like F7 or MGP10) that turn up in search results.

Understanding timber grading

A timber flooring grade describes appearance, not quality. It is a measure of how much natural character shows in the boards, rather than a ranking from worst to best. Every grade uses sound, durable timber. What changes is the look.

The features that grading accounts for are the natural markings in the wood. Knots are where branches once grew, showing as darker rounded spots. Gum veins are fine lines or pockets of gum running through the grain. Grain markings and colour variation come from how the tree grew and how the board was cut, so some boards read lighter or darker than their neighbours. A cleaner grade keeps these to a minimum, resulting in a more even floor. A more feature-rich grade lets them show, giving the floor more movement and texture.

Timber grade	Visual consistency	Colour variation
Select grade	Highest level of visual consistency with fewer natural features.	Lower variation between boards.
Standard grade	Moderate visual consistency, allowing more natural features.	Medium variation between boards.
Feature grade	More natural variation.	Greater variation between boards.

Explain that a higher visual grade does not automatically mean the timber is stronger, harder wearing or better suited to heavy-use spaces. Durability is influenced by factors such as timber species, hardness, construction, finish, installation and maintenance. Grade helps define the floor’s appearance, while product specification helps determine performance.

Select grade timber flooring

Select grade is the cleanest and most uniform option. Natural features are still present, since this is real timber, but they stay subtle and don’t dominate the floor. The result is an even, refined surface with a calm, consistent tone from board to board.

This suits contemporary homes, refined commercial interiors, offices, galleries, and any project where the design calls for a quiet, consistent timber look that doesn’t compete with the rest of the space.

Standard grade timber flooring

Standard grade sits in the middle, with more natural character than select while still reading as refined. Depending on the species, it can show stronger grain, some gum veins, occasional knots, natural discolouration, and more colour variation between boards.

It is the most versatile of the three, at home in both residential and commercial interiors where you want the floor to feel considered but still show the timber for what it is. For many projects, standard grade is the practical middle ground between a clean look and a character-rich one.

Feature grade timber flooring

Feature grade is the most character-rich option, in which the natural markings become part of the design rather than something to be kept in check. Expect stronger gum veins, more knots, borer marks, pronounced grain, and wider colour variation across the floor.

This is a deliberate choice for interiors built around warmth, texture, and natural variation. It gives a floor real depth and personality, and works well where the timber is meant to be a feature of the room rather than a neutral backdrop.

ABCD grade flooring

Some imported and engineered timber flooring products use letter-based grading such as AB, ABC, or ABCD instead of the terms above. These letters generally describe the extent of natural features, knots, colour variation, and board selection allowed in the product, with earlier letters usually cleaner and later letters more varied.

The catch is that definitions vary between suppliers and manufacturers, so one company’s ABC may not match another’s. Rather than assume a letter grade means the same thing everywhere, compare samples and ask the supplier exactly what features each grade allows.

Appearance grades vs structural grades

Search for timber grades, and you’ll also run into codes like F7, F17, and MGP10. These are structural grades, and they measure something entirely different.

F-grades (such as F7 and F17) and MGP grades (such as MGP10) rate the strength and stiffness of structural timber used in framing, bearers, and other load-bearing work. A higher number generally means greater structural capacity. They say nothing about how a floor looks. Appearance grades like select, standard, and feature, which in Australia are defined under AS 2796 for hardwood flooring, do the opposite: they describe the visual character of a finished floor and nothing about its load-bearing strength.

So when you are choosing a floor for its look, appearance grade is the one that matters. Structural grades belong to the framing beneath it, not the boards on top.

How to choose the right timber flooring grade

The right grade comes down to the look you’re after and the space it’s going into. A few things to weigh up:

Decide on the overall feel first: clean and uniform, balanced, or character-rich. That single decision points you toward select, standard, or feature before anything else.

Compare grades within the same species, since a knot or gum vein reads very differently in oak than in a darker Australian hardwood. Comparing across species muddies the picture.

View larger samples where you can. A small offcut won’t show the full range of variation, and grade is really about how the boards look together across a whole floor, not one piece.

Consider the light and the surrounding materials. Natural light, wall colours, joinery, and stone all change how a grade reads once installed, so look at samples in the actual space if possible.

Ask what features each grade includes, especially with letter-based grades, so there are no surprises on delivery.

Keep hardness, durability, and finish as separate questions from the visual grade. Match the look through grade, then confirm the product suits the traffic and use of the room. For help pairing a grade with the right tone, Market Timbers’ colour profiles show how species and colour work together.

Talk to Market Timbers about grades and samples

Choosing a grade is easier with the timber in front of you. Market Timbers can walk you through species, colours, grades, finishes, and sizing, help you compare samples side by side, and match a floor to your look, budget, and application across both residential and commercial projects.

Get in touch with the team to talk through options or request samples for your next project.