James Dulley: Here’s How to Use Aromatic Cedar Wood to Line Your Closet

Dear James: Our bedroom has a cedar closet, but the scent is almost gone, and I plan to build a second cedar closet.

How can I restore the scent, and do you have any tips for the new one?

— Melanie F.

Dear Melanie: Cedar closets are not as common as they used to be, but they are still effective for deterring moths and the resultant holes in woolen clothes.

Most people find the cedar scent to be nostalgic and quite pleasant, but the scent can fade over time.

Natural cedar oils evaporating from the millions of microscopic pores in the cedar wood produce the long-lasting cedar scent. I bet your old cedar closet has also lost its reddish color.

Most of the surface oils have already evaporated out of the surface over the years, and there also probably is a fine layer of dust on it.

To bring back the cedar aroma, vacuum closet walls. Lightly sand the walls with medium sandpaper to open new cedar pores and to allow the cedar oils to start to evaporate again.

Never, never finish a cedar closet with varnish, urethane or any sealer. This coating will block the cedar scent.

If your old closet still does not have a strong enough cedar scent to satisfy you, you can treat the wood with natural cedar oils.

Such oil is available from Giles & Kendall in Huntsville, Alabama. Columbia Forest Products in Greensboro, North Carolina, also manufactures aromatic cedar veneer plywood and has local distributors throughout the country.

When you build your new cedar closet, make sure that you use the proper type of cedar wood.

Aromatic eastern red cedar, mostly from the Appalachians, is the proper variety. Western red cedar, used for the construction of cedar homes, has very little scent at all.

There are three primary types of aromatic cedar that you can use for the inside of your closet.

Solid cedar planks are the best, but they are also the most expensive. A lower-cost option is cedar veneer plywood. You cannot tell it from solid cedar inside the closet.

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If your budget is really tight — and whose isn’t today? — choose cedar chip flakeboard. This flakeboard costs less than half as much as solid cedar planks and it is available in standard 4-by-8-inch sheets.

This also makes construction much easier with lower labor costs.

The basic construction of a cedar closet is similar to any other closet with one exception. It must be well sealed (airtight).

By limiting air leakage out of the closet, the aroma will last years longer without re-sanding. Also, the cedar scent will be stronger so there is a greater chance that it will repel moths.

To make the cedar closet relatively airtight, I often use an inexpensive, weatherstripped exterior door instead of a standard interior door. Install a spring-type door closer to make sure that you do not forget and leave it open.

Don’t forget the threshold seal under the door. It is also very important to carefully caulk all joints and gaps at the corners, ceiling and floor.

Don’t throw away your cedar scraps. When you store clothes for the season, store them in plastic bags with several pieces of freshly sanded cedar scrap pieces.

Each season when you store more clothes, sand the cedar pieces and use them over and over again.

You needn’t feel bad about using aromatic cedar wood for your closet. It is an earth-friendly building material. The trees grow relatively fast, and the lumber companies have very aggressive replanting programs.

James Dulley is a mechanical engineer, an avid Do-It-Yourselfer and a nationally syndicated columnist with Creators.com. Email your questions to him at Here’s How. The opinions expressed are his own.