FIELD NOTES // WOOD FENCE

Board-On-Board, Shadowbox Or Spaced Picket?

Board-on-board uses overlapping boards for a tighter visual screen. Shadowbox alternates boards on each side of the rail, with views through some angles. Spaced pickets leave deliberate gaps for a more open boundary. Choose around the privacy, appearance and containment you need.

By Get Your Fence On · AUGUST 21, 2026 · Updated SEPTEMBER 6, 2026 · 5 MIN READ

Close view of vertical wood fence boards with narrow gaps between them

Vertical boards with the gaps that open as green lumber dries. How the boards are arranged - overlapped, alternated or spaced - is the whole difference between the three styles. Illustration only.

Most wood privacy fence comes down to how the boards are arranged. The arrangement changes the privacy, the wind load, the material count and what the fence looks like from your neighbor's side.

1. Board-on-board

Boards overlap each other, so there is no gap to see through even after the wood dries and shrinks. This is the most private of the three and uses the most material, because you are paying for that overlap.

If your reason for building is privacy, this is the one that still delivers it in year five.

Board-on-board is the full privacy fence: pickets overlap each other on the same face so there is no line of sight through the fence at any angle, and no gap opens as the boards dry and shrink. That last point is the reason it exists. Fresh lumber loses width as it seasons, and a fence built with pickets butted edge to edge develops a gap at every joint by the second summer. With the overlap, shrinkage just narrows the overlap; the screen stays solid .

It costs more because it uses more wood - roughly a third more pickets than a flat privacy fence of the same length - and more nails and labor to set them. It is also the heaviest of the three styles per foot, which means posts and rails sized for it, not for a picket fence. Cedar is the classic material because it stays flat and resists decay without treatment; treated pine is the value option and needs its posts rated for ground contact regardless of what the pickets are.

One face is the finished face. The side with the overlapping boards looks like a solid wall; the other side shows the rails and the picket backs. Many cities and most homeowners' associations require the finished face outward, toward the street or the neighbor, and that decides where the rails go before the first post is set.

Sources: Real Cedar (WRCLA) - Best fence ideas: board-on-board, shadowbox and picket · Real Cedar (WRCLA) - Western Red Cedar fence specifications · Dunn Lumber - Best practices for building a Western Red Cedar fence · Real Cedar (WRCLA) - Prebuilt fence panels

2. Shadowbox

Boards alternate from one side of the rail to the other. It looks essentially the same from both sides, which makes it a common choice on a shared property line.

It gives you privacy straight on and a partial view at an angle, and it lets air move through, which is easier on the fence in wind.

Shadowbox alternates pickets on both faces of the rails, so from straight on it reads as a solid fence while from an angle you see the slots between the boards. It is the neighborly style: both sides get a finished face, air moves through it, and it does not present a flat wall to the wind the way a solid fence does. Because the boards are spaced, it uses about the same amount of wood as board-on-board, but the look is lighter.

The privacy is real but partial. Standing at a window looking straight at it, you see boards; walking past at an angle, you see through the gaps for a moment. For most backyards that is exactly enough. For a hot tub or a bedroom window facing a sidewalk it may not be, and that is the question to answer before choosing it. The wind relief is the underrated benefit: on an open lot the solid fence is the one that works its posts loose.

Sources: Long Fence - What is a shadowbox fence? · Real Cedar (WRCLA) - Best fence ideas: board-on-board, shadowbox and picket · Dunn Lumber - Best practices for building a Western Red Cedar fence · Real Cedar (WRCLA) - Western Red Cedar fence specifications

A board fence seen from an angle, showing the gaps between boards

From an angle you can see what a style actually does: boards alternated across the rails read solid head-on and open as you walk past. Illustration only.

3. Spaced picket

Boards sit side by side with a deliberate gap. This is containment and definition rather than privacy - it keeps a dog in and marks a line while letting light and air through.

It uses the least material of the three and suits a front yard or a garden boundary better than a screen.

Spaced picket is the front-yard fence: boards set with a gap between them on one face of the rails, usually shorter, often with a shaped top. It marks a boundary, keeps a small dog and a toddler where they belong, and lets the house be seen. Because it uses the least wood and the lightest structure, it is the least expensive of the three per foot, and it is also the one most affected by the quality of the boards, since every one of them is on display.

Spacing is a choice with consequences. Wide gaps look open and let a medium dog through; tight gaps read heavier and close off the view. Green lumber installed tight will open its own gaps as it dries; kiln-dried boards should be set at the gap you want, because they will not move much. Ask which you are getting, and ask for a sample gap at the estimate .

Sources: Real Cedar (WRCLA) - Best fence ideas: board-on-board, shadowbox and picket · Real Cedar (WRCLA) - Western Red Cedar fence specifications · Southern Forest Products Association - Southern Pine Use Guide · Dunn Lumber - Best practices for building a Western Red Cedar fence

4. A note on posts

Whichever style you choose, ask what the posts are. Steel posts cost more up front and outlast wood in the ground, and the post is the part that decides how long the fence stands.

Cedar left bare weathers to a silver gray. If you want it to stay closer to its original color, plan on a finish applied after the build.

Whatever the pickets are, the posts are what the fence stands on, and they are the part in the ground. Treated posts should carry the ground-contact use category - UC4A in the industry's rating system - which is a different treatment level than the boards above ground need. A post rated for above-ground use, set in soil, is the reason so many fences fail at the base while the pickets are still fine.

Depth and footing matter as much as the rating. In the Kansas City area the frost line sits around thirty-six inches, and a post that does not reach below the frost gets lifted a little each winter until the fence leans. Concrete around the post, gravel at the bottom for drainage, and a post that is plumb and braced while the concrete cures are the details that decide whether the fence is straight in ten years. None of it shows when the job is done, which is why it should be on the estimate in writing .

Sources: AWPA - Use Category information for residential treated wood · AWPA Standard U1 - Use Category System (excerpt) · Preserved Wood - Preservative use categories · QUIKRETE - Setting posts (project guide) · Sakrete - How to set posts and poles

5. What we build most, and what people regret

If you took a year of our wood privacy jobs and stacked them up, board-on-board wins on the ones where somebody wanted the fence to disappear as a subject and just be solid, and shadowbox wins on the ones where two neighbors were splitting the cost or the wind comes across open ground. Spaced picket is the front-yard fence and the dog fence, and it is the one people most often wish they had built a foot taller.

The regret we hear most about board-on-board is weight. It is the heaviest of the three per foot, and on a long run in a windy spot the posts carry real load. That is a footing conversation, not a style conversation, and it is why we do not quote board-on-board on the same post schedule as a picket fence. The second regret is the finished side: one face shows rails, and if nobody decided which way that faces before the posts went in, somebody is unhappy at the end.

For shadowbox the regret is privacy, and it is always the same sentence: it looked solid at the store. From straight on it is solid. Walk past at an angle and you see through it, which is exactly what it is designed to do, and which is either perfect or wrong depending on whether the thing you are screening is a street or a hot tub. Stand where the viewer will stand, at the angle they will stand, before you choose.

For spaced picket the regret is the dog. A gap that looks tight on a drawing is a doorway to a determined terrier, and boards move as they dry. If containment is the point, say so and we will close the spacing or change the style, because a fence that does not do the one job you bought it for is an expensive decoration.

Sources: USDA Forest Products Laboratory - Wood Handbook · American Wood Protection Association - use categories for ground contact · University of Missouri Extension - fencing and exterior wood · National Weather Service Kansas City - local climate data · Preserved Wood Council - treated lumber in exterior use