Lately, my wife has been pouring through design magazines, looking at ideas for our house.  Looking through several recent House Beautiful and Architectural Design issues she had, the comeback of wood furniture was noticeable.  This is excellent news for Alder as a species.

In the House Beautiful article titled 12 Furniture Trends That Will Dominate 2025, According to Designers, January 6, 2025

Blonde Wood Finishes

JENNIFER HUGHES

“In 2025, we are adding a bit of ‘light’ when it comes to our wood finishes. Instead of a ‘dark on dark’ mix of fabric and wood finishes, mixing in a light wood or white finish provides much-needed contrast to your pieces.”
—Tracy Morris, founder of Tracy Morris Design

Now, as a relatively biased company we think Alder is the perfect species for manufacturers to center on since it allows such a wide array of finishes.  We at Cascade are seeing better markets out of the holidays and are now seeing holes in our inventory that we didn’t see in 2023 or 2024.  The current spot shortages are despite running full production schedules and having ample log inventories.

And beyond furniture, Architectural Design recently noted in their December 12 article titled 7 DIY Trends You’ll Be Seeing in Home Renovations in 2025 that the blond woods of Scandi-style interiors have been on their way out for some time, but in 2025, homes will embrace darker finishes in earnest. “We’re excited to use darker wood tones across floors, staircases, and mantles in the new year,” say Slocum and Bordelon.

In fact, “wood-infused architectural warmth” landed on Houzz’s trend report, with wood accents appearing in the form of ceiling beams, millwork, trim, wall paneling, and more.  This is another positive in the direction of Alder, as its ease of machinability, flexibility of finishing, moderate price, and wide availability.

We are headed back to more of a balanced market where some degree of planning and forward ordering will be necessary on the part of distributors and manufacturers.  The Cascade sales team excels in making sure the distributors that rely on our products have adequate inventories either on hand or in-process for most orders.  Start looking at March and even April, getting us some idea of what you will need.  We can plan production accordingly and fill in the key items.  Our customer relationships thrive because of the constant dialog between you and us.  When a truck gets ready, we are fine with highly mixed trucks and swapping items on and off at the time of shipment, it’s just time to move the focus to a general 30-day outlook so we can have what you need when you need it.

Rick Barrett
Cascade Sales Manager