Glulam vs steel in one line: for the spans a family house actually needs, glulam (glued laminated timber) does the job steel does, while staying warm to the touch, kind to the foundation and attractive enough to leave exposed. Steel still wins where sections must be minimal or spans extreme. The interesting question is not which material is stronger; it is which one makes the house better to live in.

Open-plan kitchens, glazed gables, carports, roofs that fly past the wall line: all of it hangs on beams. The reflex in much of Europe is still a steel I-beam boxed in plasterboard. In a timber house that reflex deserves a challenge.

What glulam is

Glulam is dried timber lamellas glued into one engineered section: beams, columns and curved members sized to the load. Because the lamellas are graded and defects are dispersed, a glulam beam is stronger and far more predictable than the same size of sawn timber. It can also be produced in lengths and shapes a sawmill cannot cut. It is the long-span member of the engineered timber family, and it is how we frame the parts of a house that massive walls alone cannot reach. You can see where it fits in our glulam structures range.

Where glulam beats steel in a house

Weight per span. Glulam delivers the performance a house span needs at much lower weight than a steel section doing the same job. Lighter members mean easier lifting, simpler connections and less load pushed into walls and foundations.

No cold bridge. Steel conducts heat brilliantly, which is exactly what you do not want passing through an insulated envelope. A steel beam in the thermal layer is a cold bridge that has to be wrapped and carefully detailed; timber conducts far less heat and needs none of that ceremony.

Fire behaviour you can calculate. Unprotected steel loses strength quickly in a fire and is normally clad for that reason. Thick timber chars at a predictable rate and keeps carrying load while the char protects the core, which is why exposed glulam is accepted in European fire design (Eurocode 5) when sized and detailed correctly, not a romantic exception.

It is the finish. A glulam beam is structure and ceiling in one. No boxing, no plasterboard, no painter. In our houses the frame is often the best-looking thing in the room, and clients stop hiding it.

And the carbon column: steel is energy-intensive to make, while wood stores biogenic carbon for as long as it stays in the building. If the embodied footprint of your build matters to you, the beam is one of the easiest places to act.

The cases steel still owns

Fair is fair. Steel takes the point where the section must disappear: a slim flitch hidden in a floor zone, a transfer beam under brutal point loads, spans and cantilevers at the edge of what residential engineering asks for. Steel also shrugs off damp detailing mistakes that would punish timber. If your architect needs a 12-metre clear opening with a 240-millimetre structural zone, steel is probably the right answer, and forcing wood into that opening helps nobody.

In a typical house, though, those cases are the exceptions. The everyday spans, the ridge beam, the open kitchen, the terrace roof, sit comfortably inside what glulam does best.

Glulam vs steel on cost, answered like an engineer

Per beam, prices move with the steel market and the timber market, and the gap is rarely dramatic. The truer comparison is installed cost: steel arrives heavy. It needs a crane, a welder or bolted plates, and then cladding and fire protection before anyone calls it finished. Glulam arrives lighter, goes up with timber connectors, and is already the ceiling. We price structures as part of the whole house, individually, because a beam quote without its connections and finishes is marketing, not budgeting.

How it plays with massive walls

Glulam is not a rival to our MHM solid timber walls; it is their long-armed partner. The wall system carries the house, and glulam takes over where the design opens up: ridge lines, wide living rooms, carports and covered terraces. One material logic from foundation to ridge, which is rather the point of building in wood at all.

Questions from the drawing board

Are glulam beams stronger than steel?

Kilogram for kilogram, glulam competes surprisingly well; section for section, steel is stronger. In a house the glulam vs steel question is usually academic: both can carry your span, so the decision falls to thermal behaviour, fire detailing, weight and looks.

What are the disadvantages of glulam?

It needs bigger sections than steel for the same job, it must be kept dry at the connections, and long curved members need transport planning. All three are design problems, solved on paper.

Is glulam cheaper than steel?

Sometimes on the beam, more often on the installed result, once cranage, fireproofing and cladding of steel are counted. Ask for the installed comparison, not the price per metre.

Put a span to it

If a drawing on your table has a long opening and a question mark, send it over. We will tell you straight whether it is a glulam job or a steel one, and what it costs as part of a real house rather than an isolated beam price. Send it through the project form, or size the rest of the house in the configurator while it is on your mind.

The real A-frame house problems are sloped walls that eat floor space, less daylight through the roof sides, insulation that has to live in the rafters, and a first floor that needs careful planning. None is fatal. All of them are solvable at the design stage, and much cheaper there than on site. Here is the honest list, from people who engineer A-frame kits for European sites.

Half of what ranks for this question is not even about A-frames; it is about ordinary timber-frame houses. So let us talk about the actual triangle.

Problem 1: the sloped walls really do cost you space

In an A-frame, the roof is the wall. That means the gross floor area is not the same as the stand-up area. On a small footprint the loss is felt at the edges of every room: beds, desks and wardrobes want vertical walls.

What fixes it is deliberate planning, not optimism. Low zones become storage, benches and bathtubs. The stand-up zone stays in the middle. Our A-frame house kits run from 30 to 90 square metres, in one or two storeys, and the floor plan is drawn around this geometry from day one. An A-frame is a roof you live inside; treat it that way and it works.

Problem 2: daylight comes from two ends

The long sides are roof, so the natural places for glass are the two gable ends. Done lazily, that means a bright living room and a dim middle.

The answer is a big glazed gable to the view, roof windows over the darker zones, and a floor plan that puts daytime rooms at the glass. This is standard practice, not invention, but it has to be decided before production, because openings in a structural roof are engineering, not decoration.

Problem 3: the roof is also the insulation

A four-season A-frame lives or dies in the rafter build-up. The slope is the envelope: insulation thickness, airtightness and ventilation all sit in that one sandwich. Skimp there and the house is a summer cabin with winter bills.

This is where a kit either earns its money or does not. Our kits are engineered as proper insulated houses for year-round living, not festival cabins. Ask any kit supplier, including us, one question: show me the roof section, layer by layer. The answer tells you everything.

Problem 4: the first floor is a triangle too

Upstairs the geometry tightens. Headroom is generous at the ridge and gone at the sides, so the first floor works as a sleeping loft, a study or a children's level, not as a second ground floor. On 30 to 90 square metres you plan one full storey plus a clever one, and the house feels larger than its floor area suggests.

Problem 5: it is a niche shape

Be honest with yourself about this one. An A-frame photographs beautifully, sheds snow very well and encloses volume with very little material. It is also a specific way to live. If you need four bedrooms, straight walls everywhere and a formal dining room, the triangle is the wrong tool; a compact solid timber house will serve you better, and we will be the first to say so.

But as a lake house, a mountain cabin or a small full-time home for one or two people, the A-frame is a strong choice when character, compact planning and fast assembly matter. Steep roofs love snow country, which is exactly where the shape makes the most sense.

Two A-frame house problems that are not real

Structure: a properly engineered A-frame is a set of braced triangles, one of the most stable shapes you can build, and our kits are calculated for the snow and wind loads of the specific site, not for a brochure. Lifespan: the frame is ordinary structural timber, and kept dry at the details it lasts as long as any well-built wooden house. We give a 5 to 10 year guarantee on materials, and the timeline is honest too: one to three months of design, one to two months of production, one to three weeks of assembly on your foundation.

What buyers ask before they order

What is the biggest disadvantage of an A-frame house?

Usable space. The sloped sides reduce stand-up area, so an A-frame needs a floor plan drawn for the triangle. Storage in the low zones and living in the middle solves most of it.

Can you live in an A-frame all year in Europe?

Yes, if the roof build-up is engineered for it: proper insulation thickness, airtight layers and ventilation. That is the difference between a house kit and a summer cabin kit.

Are A-frame houses cheaper to build?

Often, per enclosed volume, because the shape uses less material and assembles fast. But glazed gables and roof windows are where budgets grow. We price each kit individually, so the number you get is for your version, not a teaser.

Is an A-frame house solid timber?

No. An A-frame is a timber frame structure by nature. If you want massive glue-free walls, look at our MHM solid timber houses instead; if you want the triangle, we build it as a proper insulated frame.

Decide with a drawing, not a mood board

All the A-frame house problems above are cheap to solve on paper and expensive to solve on site. Tell us where you build and how you want to live in it, and we will answer with a floor plan, a roof section and a real price. The configurator is the fastest way to sketch yours; a note to our project manager works just as well.

In short: MHM vs CLT vs timber frame is a choice between three different walls. A timber frame is a light skeleton filled with insulation. CLT is a solid engineered panel, glued in cross layers. MHM (Massiv-Holz-Mauer) is also a solid cross-layered wall, but it is fixed mechanically, without glue, so the wood keeps breathing. If you want a massive, vapour-permeable wall for a year-round home, MHM is the one to study first.

People searching for a "CLT house" usually want the feeling of solid wood: quiet rooms, stable temperature, walls that are the structure rather than a hollow sandwich. What most of them have never been told is that CLT has a glue-free sibling. The comparison below is the one we walk every client through.

What each wall actually is

A timber frame is a stud skeleton, typically 45 by 145 millimetres or similar, with insulation between the studs and boards on both faces. The wood carries the load, the insulation holds the warmth, and membranes handle the airtightness. It is light, quick and usually the lowest-cost of the three. Nearly every manufacturer in Europe builds it roughly the same way, which is why it rarely feels like a distinctive material choice.

CLT (cross-laminated timber) is a solid panel of boards stacked in crossing layers and glued under press. It is a superb structural material: dimensionally stable, strong enough for multi-storey buildings, precise to the millimetre. The glue is the point, and also the compromise. The panel no longer moves, but it no longer breathes the way plain timber does.

MHM (Massiv-Holz-Mauer) takes the same cross-layered idea and removes the glue. Layers of dried softwood boards are pressed into one solid wall element and fixed mechanically. No adhesive in the wall and no plastic foils in the panel, just wood. The wall stays vapour-permeable, so moisture migrates through the structure instead of being trapped in it. More than 7,000 houses have been built with the system since 2002, according to its German licensor, yet in English almost nobody explains it. We build with it, so we will.

MHM vs CLT vs timber frame: the comparison that matters

	Timber frame	CLT	MHM
Wall type	Hollow, insulated skeleton	Solid glued panel	Solid glue-free panel
Glue in the wall	Little to none	Yes, structural adhesive	No
Vapour behaviour	Depends on membranes	Largely closed	Vapour-permeable, breathing
Thermal mass	Low	High	High
Feel of the rooms	Light, drywall-like	Solid, quiet	Solid, quiet, all wood
Typical cost position	Lowest	Higher than frame	Higher than frame

On paper, MHM vs CLT is a close call. In practice the glue question decides it for a lot of families: if the reason you want wood is a healthy indoor climate, a wall with no adhesive and no plastic films is the cleaner answer. Our MHM walls come in thicknesses from 100 to 345 millimetres, so the wall itself can be sized to the climate it will live in.

Where each one honestly wins

A timber frame wins on budget and speed. For a small weekend cabin, a garden office or a rental unit, a well-built frame is honestly enough; the massive wall earns its place on a year-round home you plan to keep. Frame construction is also how we build our A-frame house kits, because an A-frame is a roof-shaped structure where a massive wall makes little sense.

CLT wins in engineering-heavy projects: tall buildings, big cantilevers, tight tolerances on large spans. If your architect is drawing a four-storey structure, CLT belongs on the table.

MHM wins the family house. Load-bearing solid walls, high thermal mass that evens out summer heat and winter cold, and no glue anywhere in the panel. It also repairs like wood, because it is only wood.

The combination is real, too. Massive walls cost more than frame, so on a two-storey house we often put MHM or CLT on the ground floor, where you live most of the day, and a frame structure above. You keep the solid-wood climate where it matters and take the saving where it does not.

Proof, not promises

The system we sell is the same MHM behind the private house in Pirita, Tallinn, built by our manufacturing partner EstHus: 252.8 square metres of glue-free walls, clay plaster inside, wood-fibre insulation, named Best Private House at Estonia's Prefab House of the Year 2023. Awards do not build houses, but they do tell you an independent jury looked at a glue-free solid wall and found nothing to argue with.

Common questions

What is the alternative to CLT?

MHM is the closest alternative: the same cross-layered solid wall, fixed mechanically instead of glued. It trades some of CLT's engineering headroom for a glue-free, vapour-permeable wall.

Is MHM cheaper than CLT?

They sit in the same band, above timber frame. The honest answer depends on the design, the spans and the factory's distance from your site. We price each project individually.

Can you mix MHM with timber frame?

Yes, and we often do: solid ground floor, frame upper floor. It is a sensible way to keep the budget in check without giving up the massive-wall feel where you spend your time.

How long does a solid timber wall last?

Kept dry at the details, solid wood walls are built for generations; timber buildings centuries old are still standing across Europe. We back our materials with a 5 to 10 year guarantee, and the wall itself is designed to outlive the paperwork.

Talk it through with numbers

If you are weighing these three walls for a real plot, do not decide from a table. Tell us the site, the size and the winters you get, and we will answer with a real specification and a real price. Start in the configurator or talk to our project manager: one person, from first call to keys.