It’s the first real decision every Sunbury homeowner faces before building: composite or wood? Both build a great-looking deck. The difference shows up over the years — especially in central Ohio, where freeze-thaw winters and humid summers are hard on anything left outside. Here’s the honest comparison.
The quick answer
If you want the lowest day-one price and you don’t mind staining every couple of years, wood wins on up-front cost. If you want to build it once and basically forget about it, composite (Trex, TimberTech) wins on the long run — which is why most new Sunbury homeowners choose it.
Side by side
| Factor | Composite (Trex/TimberTech) | Pressure-treated wood |
|---|---|---|
| Up-front cost | Higher (~$30–$32/sq ft installed) | Lower material cost |
| Maintenance | Wash occasionally; no staining | Clean & re-stain every 2–3 yrs |
| Lifespan | 25+ years typical | ~10–15 yrs with upkeep |
| Ohio weather | Resists rot, splinters, freeze-thaw cracking | Can warp, splinter, and rot without care |
| Look over time | Holds color; minimal fade | Beautiful new; greys without sealing |
| Barefoot in July | Warmer underfoot, esp. dark colors | Cooler, but splinters as it ages |
| Repairs | Swap a board; color may not match aged deck | Boards are cheap and easy to source |
The composite figure above is a typical general market range for the Delaware County area, not a quote for your deck. Wood is deliberately left qualitative here: pressure-treated lumber pricing has been the most volatile line item in decking for several years running, and any per-square-foot number we printed would be stale before the season turned. Your written estimate carries the real numbers for both.
“Composite” and “wood” are each three different products
Most comparisons treat this as a two-way choice. It isn’t, and the sub-choices move the outcome more than the headline decision does.
On the composite side: uncapped composite is the older generation — a wood-flour-and-plastic board with no outer shell, cheaper and noticeably more prone to fading and staining. Capped composite bonds a hard polymer shell over that core, and that shell is what actually does the work against Ohio moisture. PVC contains no wood fiber at all, which makes it the most rot-proof and the lightest, at a higher price and with more thermal movement to detail around. Nearly everything quoted new here is capped composite; if one composite bid comes in well under the others, the cap is the first thing to check. Our TimberTech vs. Trex comparison covers how the two major brands differ once you’re inside the capped category.
On the wood side: pressure-treated pine is the value option and the one most Ohio decks were built from — strong, cheap, and the most maintenance-hungry. Cedar is naturally rot-resistant, softer underfoot and better-looking, at a real price step up and with the same staining obligation if you want to keep the color. Tropical hardwoods like Ipe are dense, extremely durable, and priced accordingly — they also need oiling to hold tone and specialty fasteners to install. All three still need a finish schedule in this climate.
How Ohio weather tips the scale
Central Ohio puts decks through a brutal cycle: water soaks into the boards, freezes, expands, and thaws — over and over, all winter. Untreated or under-maintained wood cracks and splinters under that stress, and summer humidity invites rot. Composite boards don’t absorb water the same way, so they shrug off the freeze-thaw cycle that ages a wood deck fastest.
The number that matters isn’t the low temperature, it’s the count of crossings. Central Ohio winters run through dozens of freeze-thaw transitions, because our cold rarely settles in and stays — it swings across the freezing point again and again from December into March. A single hard freeze does very little damage. Fifty cycles of water entering a checked board face, expanding, and levering the fibers apart is what turns a five-year-old wood deck grey and fuzzy. That mechanism is also why the shaded north-facing corner of a deck always fails first: it stays damp longest, so it crosses the line wet more often than the sunny side.
The lifetime-cost math
Wood looks cheaper on day one, but price the next 15 years: cleaning supplies, stain, and either your weekends or a contractor’s fee every 2–3 years. Stack that on top of a shorter lifespan and the “cheaper” deck often costs about the same as composite by the time you’d be replacing it — minus the years it spent looking tired.
Run it as a schedule rather than a single price. A wood deck built this spring wants its first full clean and re-stain somewhere around year two or three, and again roughly every two to three years after that — call it five or six refinishing events before you’re into replacement territory at year twelve to fifteen. A composite deck built the same spring wants a wash. That’s the entire comparison, and it’s why the honest version of this question is not “which is cheaper” but “how many spring weekends is this worth to you.” The Ohio deck staining schedule covers the timing and the water-bead test for when a wood deck is actually due, and the Delaware County deck cost guide covers what moves the build number itself. If you already own a tired wood deck, repair vs. replace is the more useful place to start.
When wood is still the right call
Plenty of comparisons on this topic are really composite advertisements. Wood genuinely wins in four situations, and we build it without argument when one of them applies. First, when the budget is firm and real: a wood deck you can afford now beats a composite deck you defer for three summers. Second, when you expect to sell inside about five years — you won’t be there for the maintenance curve that makes composite pay off. Third, when you actually like the material: some homeowners enjoy the annual refinish, and cedar or a hardwood has a warmth capped composite does not fully imitate. Fourth, on structures where cost per square foot compounds fast — long stair runs, service platforms, a large low-use landing.
Where wood goes wrong is almost never the decision itself. It’s buying wood on the composite budget assumption — expecting a pressure-treated deck to look after itself for a decade — and then finding a grey, splintered surface at year six. Choose wood deliberately, with the staining schedule understood up front, and it is a perfectly good deck.
The one place both choices fail identically
Board material gets all the attention and is not what fails first on Ohio decks. The substructure is. A deck can be topped with the most expensive PVC on the market and still heave, rack, or pull away from the house if the footings sit above the frost line or the ledger connection was never flashed correctly. Frost heave doesn’t care what the walking surface is made of, and neither does water running behind an unflashed ledger into the rim joist.
So settle the substructure before you spend a second evening comparing board samples: footings poured below the central-Ohio frost line on undisturbed soil, a footing inspection before framing, proper joist spacing for the board line you picked, and correctly flashed ledger and hardware. Our deck footings and frost depth guide covers the depth requirement and the inspection step. It is the least visible money in the project and the only part you can never check again once it’s covered.
Two local factors that decide this more often than people expect
Your HOA may have already narrowed the field. A number of Delaware County subdivisions run architectural review committees that constrain deck materials, colors, or railing styles — and the review happens before you build, not after. Finding out that your chosen board color isn’t approved is a much better problem in March than in June. The HOA deck approval guide covers what the ARC actually asks for, and the Delaware County deck permit guide covers the county side.
Timing changes what you can get. Material selection is easiest outside the spring rush — specific composite colors and lines run short in peak season, and a color substitution made under schedule pressure is how people end up with a deck they didn’t quite choose. Booking in fall or winter for a spring build gives the material decision room to breathe; see the best time to build a deck in Ohio.
Still torn? We build both, and we’ll give you a free written estimate for composite and wood side by side for your exact deck — so you can compare real numbers, not averages. See our composite deck page, read how much a deck costs in Sunbury, or start from everything we build in Sunbury and Delaware County. Wondering how long composite really lasts here? We covered that separately.