How Much Does Plywood Weigh?

Plywood is an engineered or manufactured type of wood used for everything from walls to furniture.

Plywood features layers or plies glued together in an alternating grain pattern, giving the board its trademark look, dimensional stability, and high strength.

In this article, we’ll take an in-depth look at the weight of plywood, and we’ll also compare its weight to popular alternatives such as OSB and MDF.

The weight of a 4-ft x 8-ft plywood ranges from about 10 lbs (1/4″ thick softwood plywood) to almost 233 lbs (1-1/2″ thick pressure-treated plywood). A metric 2440mm by 1220mm plywood sheet weighs from around 3 kg (6mm thick softwood plywood) to 72.5 kg (38mm thick pressure-treated plywood).

Whether you’re working with imperial or metric plywood, keep reading to find helpful reference tables of the weights of standard plywood sheet sizes and thicknesses. We’ve also included a handy plywood calculator to help you figure out the weight of custom sheet sizes.

Plywood Weight Calculator:

1

Select a Plywood Profile:

Please enter all dimensions above.

How to Use the Plywood Weight Calculator

1. The calculator supports two main profile types including rectangular and square plywood sheets, and you can choose these using the ‘Select a Plywood Profile’ dropdown in box (1).

2. Regardless of the profile type chosen, you can choose from a wide range of plywood types for your calculation using the ‘Type of Plywood’ dropdown in box (2). The following types are available:

   • Softwood Plywood
   • Hardwood Plywood
   • Baltic Birch Plywood
   • Marine Plywood
   • Pressure-Treated Plywood
   • Medium Density Overlay

The ‘Density’ boxes will automatically be populated based on the plywood type you choose.

You can update the ‘Density’ figures if needed, although these are based on average industry figures for each type of plywood. If you’re using a specific type of plywood and you know the density, we’d recommend using the real-life figure in your calculation to produce more accurate results.

3. Depending on the plywood profile you are using in your calculation, you’ll need to enter various dimensions, for example, ‘Length’, ‘Width’, and ‘Thickness’ to name a few.

   The calculator is programmed to automatically reformat depending on your chosen plywood profile, so you’ll only see the relevant dimensions for your particular calculation/profile type.

   The calculator supports several unit types from metric millimeters to imperial feet, and you can choose these using the ‘Unit’ dropdown beside each dimension input field.

   !

   Note: If you choose ‘inch’ as a unit, you’ll need to use either whole or decimal numbers instead of fractions. For example, 0.25 instead of ¹/₄.

   Click the button below to view a table of common sheet dimensions as decimals that you can use in the calculator:

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     Plywood Weight Calculator – Inch to Decimal Conversion Table
     1/8	0.125	1-9/16	1.5625	3-5/8	3.625
     5/32	0.15625	1-5/8	1.625	3-11/16	3.6875
     3/16	0.1875	1-11/16	1.6875	3-3/4	3.75
     7/32	0.21875	1-3/4	1.75	3-13/16	3.8125
     1/4	0.25	1-13/16	1.8125	3-7/8	3.875
     9/32	0.28125	1-7/8	1.875	3-15/16	3.9375
     5/16	0.1325	1-15/16	1.9375	4	4.00
     11/32	0.34375	2	2.00	4-1/8	4.125
     3/8	0.375	2-1/16	2.0625	4-3/16	4.1875
     13/32	0.40625	2-1/8	2.125	4-1/4	4.25
     7/16	0.4375	2-3/16	2.1875	4-5/16	4.3125
     15/16	0.9375	2-1/4	2.25	4-3/8	4.375
     1/2	0.5	2-5/16	2.3125	4-7/16	4.4375
     17/32	0.53125	2-3/8	2.375	4-1/2	4.50
     9/16	0.5625	2-7/16	2.4375	4-9/16	4.5625
     19/32	0.59375	2-1/2	2.50	4-5/8	4.625
     5/8	0.625	2-9/16	2.5625	4-11/16	4.6875
     11/16	0.6875	2-5/8	2.625	5	5.00
     3/4	0.75	2-11/16	2.6875	5-1/16	5.0625
     13/16	0.8125	2-3/4	2.75	5-1/8	5.125
     7/8	0.875	2-7/8	2.875	5-3/16	5.1875
     13/16	0.8125	2-15/16	2.9375	5-1/4	5.25
     15/16	0.9375	3	3.00	5-3/8	5.375
     1	1.00	3-1/16	3.0625	5-7/16	5.4375
     1-1/16	1.0625	3-1/8	3.125	5-1/2	5.50
     1-1/8	1.125	3-3/16	3.1875	5-5/8	5.625
     1-3/16	1.1875	3-1/4	3.25	5-3/4	5.75
     1-1/4	1.25	3-5/16	3.3125	5-7/8	5.875
     1-5/16	1.3125	3-3/8	3.375	5-15/16	5.9375
     1-3/8	1.375	3-7/16	3.4375	6	6.00
     1-7/16	1.4375	3-1/2	3.50
     1-1/2	1.50	3-9/16	3.5625

4. You can include multiple units of your chosen profile type in your calculation by changing the figure in the ‘Quantity’ input in box (6).
5. Once you’ve entered all of the required information, you can use the ‘Calculate’ button to complete your calculation. You can also reset the plywood weight calculator using the ‘Reset’ button if you’d like to complete another calculation.

How Heavy Is Plywood?

How Heavy Is a Sheet of Plywood?

For those in the United States, or anyone working with imperial sizing, the weight of a standard 4-ft x 8-ft plywood sheet ranges from around 10 lbs (softwood plywood – 1/8″ thickness) to almost 233 lbs (pressure-treated plywood – 1-1/2″ thickness).

Here’s a full summary of the approximate weight of various 4-foot by 8-foot plywood sheet types across a variety of imperial thicknesses:

For readers outside the United States, or anyone working with metric sizing, the weight of a standard 2440mm by 1220mm plywood sheet ranges from around 3 kg (softwood plywood – 2mm thickness) to almost 106 kg (pressure-treated plywood – 38mm thickness).

Here’s a full summary of the approximate weight of various 2440mm by 1220mm plywood sheet types across a variety of metric thicknesses:

How Much Does Plywood Weigh per Square Foot?

The table below summarizes the approximate weights of various plywood sheet types on a square foot basis.

The weights have been calculated based on the plywood densities shown in this table later in the article:

How Much Does Plywood Weigh per Square Meter?

The table below summarizes the approximate weights of various plywood sheet types on a square meter basis.

The weights have been calculated based on the plywood densities shown in this table later in the article:

Plywood vs. MDF Weight

Medium-density fiberboard, or MDF, is renowned for being particularly heavy.

MDF is around 55% heavier than lighter plywood variants, such as softwood plywood, and approximately 20% heavier than premium baltic birch plywood. MDF typically weighs more than all plywood variants, except pressure-treated plywood, with this weighing almost 34% more than a similarly sized MDF sheet.

Below, we’ve summarized the weight of plywood versus MDF sheets from lightest to heaviest:

Plywood vs. OSB Weight

Like plywood, OSB is another engineered sheet material commonly used in construction.

OSB is easily recognizable by its haphazard appearance, formed from thin strands of veneer bonded in a cross-oriented pattern.

OSB is around 31% heavier than lighter plywood variants, such as softwood plywood, and approximately 9% heavier than premium baltic birch plywood. OSB typically weighs more than all plywood variants, except pressure-treated plywood, which tips the scale at about 46% more than a typical OSB sheet of similar size.

A contributing factor to OSB’s higher weight is its lack of voids or knots common in cheaper plywood variants, with these defects lowering the density and weight of these sheets.

Here’s a summary table that ranks the weight of plywood and OSB sheets from lightest to heaviest:

Plywood Density – An Overview

We can define the density of an object or construction material as its mass per unit volume.

The density and the volume (in other words, the size in terms of length, width, and thickness) impact a plywood sheet’s mass (i.e., its weight).

Here is a summary of the various densities for common plywood types in both metric (kilograms per cubic meter) and imperial (pounds per cubic foot) units:

As shown above, most plywood types have a density slightly lower than that of OSB (approximately 515 kg/m³ or 39.95 lb/ft³), which is reflected in the lower weight of these sheets versus OSB.

Similarly, the density figures above also lead to the majority of plywood sheet types having a lower weight than comparably sized MDF sheets (the density of MDF is around 700 kg/m³ or 43.70 lb/ft³, for reference).

How Do You Calculate the Weight of Plywood?

The easiest way to calculate the weight of plywood is by using the handy calculator above.

It’s pretty straightforward to calculate the weight manually if preferred, though, and you can do so using the following equation:

You can use this same equation regardless of whether you’re working with imperial units, such as feet or yards, or metric units such as millimeters, centimeters, or meters.

The first requirement to use the above equation is to calculate the volume of the plywood sheet in question, and this is relatively easy for both rectangular and square sheets.

You can use the following equation to work out the volume of your plywood sheet:

The second input you’ll need is the density of your sheet’s material, which we can define as its ‘mass per unit volume,’ or, in other words, how heavy the sheet is for a given size.

With a quick search online, it’s pretty easy to find density figures for most sheet types, but we’ve included a table here showing the average density values for various plywood types.

We do recommend using a manufacturer’s or supplier’s density figure where available, though, as these will be more accurate than the average density figures we have quoted.

Let’s look at a real-life example to show you step-by-step how to calculate the weight of a plywood sheet:

How to Calculate the Weight of a 1/2-inch Plywood Sheet:

To calculate the weight of a plywood sheet (we’ll assume a hardwood plywood sheet for this example), we’ll need to know the following three dimensions:

Whereby:

We also need to consider the density of the hardwood plywood, but we’ll focus on the dimensions only for now.

Let’s assume the following dimensions for the hardwood plywood sheet in this example:

• Width: 4-ft
• Length: 8-ft
• Thickness: 1/2-inch

The first step is to calculate the plywood sheet’s volume, and we’ll get this by multiplying the cross-sectional area of the sheet by its length.

To get the area, we can multiply the sheet’s width by its thickness as per the equation below.

Note: We’ve converted the sheet’s 1/2″ thickness to feet to keep the width and thickness units consistent for the calculation.

Now that we have the sheet’s cross-sectional area, we can calculate its overall volume using the following equation:

The final step is to multiply the sheet’s volume by the density of hardwood plywood to find the sheet’s overall weight. We’ll assume a density of 34.82 lb/ft³ for the hardwood plywood in our example as follows:

As shown, if we multiply the sheet’s volume by the typical density of hardwood plywood, we end up with a final weight of 46.80 lbs or 21.23 kg for the sheet in this example.