2x4 price in Canada: what a 2x4x8 costs at Quebec retailers

A 2x4x8 is a stud: a piece of spruce, pine or fir (the trade calls the mix SPF) that is nominally 2 inches by 4 inches and exactly 8 feet long. After drying and planing, the real cross-section is about 1 1/2 inches by 3 1/2 inches. The length is the only true number on the tag.

That is why wall math never uses 2 and 4. A 2x4 wall is 3 1/2 inches deep, and a 2x6 wall is 5 1/2. For an 8 ft ceiling, framers often buy precut studs of 92 5/8 inches, which leave room for a bottom plate and two top plates. Precut studs are sold separately from the 8 ft piece priced on this page.

The table below is the 2x4x8 price at each Quebec retailer, seen October 13, 2026. The cheapest store is $3.39 at Patrick Morin and the priciest $4.35 at lauremat, a gap of $0.96 per stud (28 percent).

Patrick Morin and RONA list their lowest 2x4 as an economy grade board, a step below stud grade, so part of that gap is the board and not the store.

Prices move with the weekly flyer, so the cheapest store this week is not always the cheapest next week.

A 2x4 is the item shoppers compare first, so stores watch it closely and a few cents can separate two chains. Three things explain most of the gap.

Count before you compare prices. For a wall with studs at 16 inches on centre, take the wall length in feet times 0.75, add one, and that is your studs. Then add the plates: a bottom plate and two top plates run the full length of the wall. Add extras for corners and for every door and window.

A common rule of thumb is about one stud per linear foot of wall once plates, corners and openings are counted.

At that rule, a job of 100 studs costs $339 at the cheapest store we track and $435 at the priciest, before tax. That spread is the reason to price a whole list rather than a single stud.

The shelf prices on this page are what Quebec retailers charge. If you build somewhere else, the best official yardstick we have is Statistics Canada's building construction price index, which follows what builders pay for wood, plastics and composites in a single-detached house in each province.

Quebec, where our shelf prices come from, reads 118.8, up 5.0% on a year earlier. That is the highest of the 9 provinces Statistics Canada tracks, and Ontario is lowest at 97.4 in the second quarter of 2026. These are cost indexes set to 100 in a base period: they say how fast lumber and panel costs have moved in each province, not what a single item sells for at your local store. We will publish real shelf prices for your province as it goes live.

Untreated SPF is made for dry, protected framing: interior walls, ceilings, and wall framing that sits inside the weather barrier. It should not touch the ground or sit exposed to rain.

For outdoor structures, pressure-treated lumber is the standard choice. We price the decking boards in our treated lumber guide, and the 2x6 in the guide on the framing size most cold-climate exterior walls use.