Teak vs eucalyptus

What eucalyptus actually is

Eucalyptus outdoor furniture is usually Eucalyptus grandis, a fast-growing plantation hardwood. It is dense, it has a pleasant warm grain, it takes a finish well, and it is cheap because it grows quickly and plantations are abundant.

It genuinely has more natural durability than acacia, which is the reason it is worth separating from the general "budget hardwood" bucket. But it is a distant second to teak, and the reason is the same one that applies to every wood: heartwood is what carries decay resistance, and fast-grown plantation timber contains a high proportion of juvenile wood with weaker extractive content.

Side by side

The movement problem

The practical failure that catches eucalyptus owners out is not rot — it is movement. Eucalyptus is dimensionally less stable than teak, meaning it swells and shrinks more as moisture content changes. In a wet spring followed by a hot dry spell, that cycling opens checks along the grain and splits at the end grain, especially around fasteners where the wood is restrained and cannot move freely.

This is why eucalyptus furniture often looks fine through its first winter and starts showing cracks in its second summer. It is also why sealing matters more than it does on acacia: a good seal slows moisture exchange, which reduces the size of each movement cycle.

Which to buy

Buy teak if

• You want to buy once and stop thinking about it.
• You will not commit to an annual maintenance job — teak is fine ignored.
• You want something repairable and long-lived enough to be worth repairing.

Buy eucalyptus if

• You want a real hardwood look at well under teak prices.
• You will seal it properly, including the end grain, and reseal annually.
• It will be covered or stored in winter rather than standing in freeze-thaw.
• You are furnishing a space you may reconfigure in a few years anyway.

A note on the third wood in this conversation: acacia is more common than eucalyptus at the budget end and is slightly less durable. If you are choosing between the two cheap hardwoods, eucalyptus is the marginally better bet — and neither changes the calculation against teak.

And if the maintenance schedule is the sticking point rather than the price, the honest alternative is not another wood at all. It is HDPE poly lumber, which asks nothing of you ever.