A grade isn’t a score for how “good” a piece of timber is. It tells you what rules it has been sorted against.
Structural softwood is strength graded. C16 and C24 are strength classes for load-bearing work. They describe structural performance—not how clean, straight or attractive every face will be. A C24 board can still have knots and other natural features.
Appearance grading is different. It considers visible characteristics such as knots, splits, sapwood and colour. The rules vary between species, products and suppliers, so the name of the grade only tells part of the story.
At the yard, the label is the starting point. We still look at the job. A joist, a cladding face and a piece of joinery are asking very different things of the timber.
So the useful question isn’t simply, “Is it graded?” It’s: “Graded for what—and is it right for this job?”