I live in California and got my small deck replaced last year with redwood. It's what I had before and the only material I considered. I sealed it at the end of the summer with a transparent redwood stain/sealer. Our fences are all redwood too but I'm letting mine age/gray/darken naturally.

We have a large wood deck and dock holding up well (2 years) so far. Neighbors put in a composite dock, everyone learned quickly how hot it stays most of the year (Florida). Too hot for bare feet. I found the following;

From deckmagazine.com

”. One thing he discovered is that wood stays cooler - by a considerable margin - than synthetic decking, with the exception of ipe and PT decking, which still stayed cooler than all but a few types of wood-composite decking. The hottest decking? Lightweight all-PVC. In fact, Finlay found that denser, heavier boards with wood/plastic cores are consistently cooler than all-plastic boards, and that darker colors get warmer than lighter colors within the same type of decking. ”

”

Yes, there is upkeep to wood, but I would never consider anything else. Get the best wood you can afford. Fake wood is not free from upkeep.

We have the glass railing and love it. Especially since our view is down...if there were solid railings, we'd miss it all.

We have a composite material...not trex, but I don't remember the specific brand. We've had it for 9 years now and have had no problem. Once in awhile DH will gently powerwash it. But we've never missed having to sand and seal it once!

I'm a big barefooter and needed something that would be smooth under foot and this works fine.

Once someone spilled some red wine on it...I hit it with some oxyclean and it came right up.

They could have improved them since I had experience with the fake wood. It has been awhile.

At our house in Maine, we have Trex on the new deck that we added off the MBR. I took some convincing but I love it. Our porch is wood and when we had to replace the front steps we went w Trex too. I suppose color can be an issue but we had gray painted wood anyway and I'm very happy how it turned out; the gray is perfect IMHO. No pic, but then you've been there. : )

The contractor who does all our work recommended Trex. I’m not too particular about the color. In reading more today it sounds like their higher end product may be okay. I also read that Azek and Timbertech are good but who knows. Hopefully the new Trex product is much better than the old product that was subject of the class action lawsuits. We have a very old composite deck at our place in the city and it stains horribly and always looks terrible. We power washed it when we moved in which created a huge mess of black gunk sprayed all over. It looked terrible again within a year. That one is going to need to be replaced as well.

I have gray trex. 3 years now on Puget Sound. No issues. I maintained my parents wood decks for years. Constant maintenance.

I'm in MN too and my cedar 2nd floor deck off a bedroom, new just before I bought the house, is covered in snow/rain it seems 3/4 of the year, and the remaining time it is blazing hot (south facing). It requires yearly sanding and restaining; no stains, even top products, hold up well. If I had to do it again, Katz, I'd go for Trex just because of the maintenance. I don't think Trex otherwise looks very good, not at a historic home (mine) or a lake cabin. I guess a third alternative is just let it weather naturally.

We had a deck. Living in the middle of an old growth burr oak stand we have a lot of shade, not a lot of direct sun on or near the house. The deck was wood when we arrived. After a few years it was evident the wood would be a forever maintenance nightmare. What to do. Our home is a walk out ranch. We decided to remove it and put in a raised brick paver patio. We love it. No more maintenance.

OMG, after your comments on Trek, 3katz, i went back and looked at my contractor's emails and found this below. We have Azek. The names are similar.

See page 39:

http://www.azek.com/files/files/2014_AZEK_DPRP_Catalog_HR_Web.pdf

The product we have is called Azek Porch.

Our first deck at our previous home was 5/4 wide plank mahogany and it was beautiful but it was hot in the summer and the smooth surface was slippery when wet and required yearly cleaning. Thirty years later it's still on the enclosed porch and looks fantastic.

We replaced that deck with Timbertech which was still hot in the summer and the textured surface allowed algae to grow in the shady areas which was difficult to remove. Even worse it was an early version of the product which had ground up wood pulp mixed with the plastic and over the years the wood portion absorbed moisture and the entire deck warped until it was a safety hazard.

Originally we went with a raised deck so that we wouldn't have any steps between the house and the dining area on the deck. But the deck was only 2 steps up from the yard and in retrospect I wish we had either gone with a slate or bluestone patio or continued the pavers from the pool area. In the long run it would have been much less maintenance.

At our house in the PA mountains we are in the woods but the house is situated so that the deck receives a good amount of sun. That home is stained cedar and DH couldn't bear the thought of having plastic in the middle of the forest. The original deck was clear cedar and lasted about 18 years when DH decided to replace it with mahogany when we put the addition on the house. It's not the same kind of mahogany that we had 35 years ago at our other home. It's been in place for 6 years and has a less uniform look than the Trex which DH likes. Our contractor also does commercial work and we looked at some of the decks he has installed over the years to see how they held up. His opinion is that if you go with wood you also need to make sure to use the right stain and sealer.

The pine railing is original and about 20 years old, this summer we'll be replacing it with mahogany and glass, somewhat like the photo Annie posted.

Very good insights - you are all reconfirming my own thoughts about pros and cons of each type of product. Keep 'em coming - maybe something will sway me one way or the other. We have talked about getting wood and just letting it go natural and not sealing it every year or two - just a gentle power wash to clean it up. Other than just not being people who love doing home maintenance, the problem with sealing our decks has always been having enough rain free days when we have time to clean it, let it dry and then seal and dry. I did tell DH that when I'm retired I would have time to do it but really, is that what I want to be doing the older I get? And finding people to hire to do this kind of thing were our cabin is, isn't easy. You really can't count on hiring it out.

A big concern about the composites is that they're more expensive than cedar (what is commonly used here) and then they don't hold up. I think it would be easier to replace a cedar board which would age to match pretty quickly than trying to replace any part of a disintegrating composite deck. When we were looking at replacing the deck at our old house I had a guy come out and give me an estimate on ipe - way more than I wanted to spend on a house I was moving out of. I might consider that now but I don't think I could find anyone in the area who has experience with it and frankly, it bothers me using wood from a rainforest.

Somehow a decision will have to come to me by spring....

Our neighbor has a composite decking and it is so stinking hot in the summer you have to have shoes on and the dogs can't walked on it. It's a light color on a south facing deck in the midwest. Anyone else have this problem.

Meanwhile we replaced our decking last year after 27 years. Relatively cheap pressure treated decking that didn't get stained as often as it should have! Yes we had to stain it but it didn't take long and wasn't much of an issue. We are modifying the rails this summer to have the wire cables. The deck railing are really what is a PITA to stain.

RNmom - what did you replace your 27 year old deck with? More pressure treated? It sounds like staining it was a little bit of an issue if you didn't do it as often as you should have. On the plus side it did hold up for 27 years. The deck at our old house did as well and yes agree, the wood railings are a real pain to maintain. Definitely will not have any of those going forward. Even our deck in the city has aluminum and glass railing and it looks like new after 19 years (unlike the deck itself).

Ours came with the house and it is nearing the end of its useful life. We plan to replace it with trex type material in the next few years.

Yes, we used pressure treated wood again. I would have really like to started all over with a new design but DH wouldn't have that, Deck is a decent size, up one story, etc. Would have been pricey for something we don't use that often.

I am hoping that we will stain this one a little more often (wishful thinking) if we don't have to do the spindles on the railings. Being south facing really limits workable hours for staining before the deck gets too warm and the stain dries on contact. We do have a large umbrella and sun shade hanging that made it a little easier this time. Our house is grey and we stained the floor a walnut shade that continues the hardwood floor color out to the deck from inside the house. Railings will stay the grey stain.

Believe me, I'd put in a stone/concrete patio any day over a deck but alas my situations are upper level of a walkout home so no patio in the cards.

My deck off the master is cedar, and still in good shape although I'm not sure of the age. I would venture a guess of 20+ years. I scrub it, bucket of slightly soapy water and brush, late winter each year. If I were to replace it, I'd go with the Trex like are at my SILs beach and main house, both proving to be easiest maintenance in wet PNW. Hot under foot rarely an issue here. The colors of those composite materials have greatly improved since they were first introduced.

My brothers is wood, mahogany. They've been in that house 12 years and twice he's reconditioned after deep cleaning (many mature fir around their home). About a full weekend job plus some days for the preservative (an oil?) to dry. That's per deck, there are two off the back of his house. They are lovely. I wouldn't want to spend a week rehabbing them every few years though.

We pulled out our existing deck, it was just made with some kind of wood-we're not even sure what it was, but it was grooved on the underside. The PO had installed it and it was a very bad job that he'd done. Twice I fell on it-one resulted in me fracturing vertebrea in my back, the other I fell thru a board that snapped and just got bruised up. DH also fell thru snapped boards and we decided that was it-it's got to go!

We researched all kinds of materials, I wanted no maintenance, but found that the composite decking wasn't a good idea for our wet weather-too slippery. Thought about cedar but it was high maintenance, so we just went with pressure treated. We've completely redesigned the deck, too, to make it more usable for how WE use it.

We haven't finished it yet but what we've done we're very happy with. We'll stain it when it's done, and I want to add some railing in a few spots-its' not very high off the ground, but the ground is not level, so some areas are higher. I want to do a cable railing.

We will be redoing our deck this year, too. I will be going with a composite because I just don't want the upkeep. I would like to use a cable railing-it opens the view, but I worry about using glass bc of cleaning (ETA: ours is a second floor deck-basement is walkout and main floor is the upper level), so would need to haul out the ladder regularly to clean the outside and I know that won't happen!), birds possibly running into it (our yard is very wooded and I do feed the birds) , and the heat generated when the sun hits it (it would make for a greenhouse effect on my pots which are numerous).

I am hoping to have installed a raised patio like Arcy mentioned above to make an accessible walk out without the maintenance issues of decking; I also have a ranch...I need about 16" to reach the door. (Arcy, how did your raised patio get tied into the house without creating moisture issues? Sorry OP for derailing!)

We have Trek on our deck and we love it. We have another product similar to Trek that can be used underwater on our dock and we’re very happy with it.

I say no, no, no to composite. I'm glad people here have had good experiences with it but do some googling about the brand/product if you haven't already. I'm looking forward to the day we replace our composite fence. Issues with warping, breaking, etc. I also think it looks like fake wood. It may also depend on where you live climate wise. We have all four seasons here.

We are in So Cal, have wood decks painted gray. Lots of maintenance and termite issues. Although wood is cooler than a composite it still gets really hot in summer. Hopefully we won’t have to replace the deck during our time here but if we do I would consider Trex.