Simpson Strong-Tie Deck Screws: Wood, Composite, and More

Simpson Strong-Tie has built an entire lineup of deck screws designed for specific decking materials, environments, and installation methods. 

If you're working on a deck, whether it's a backyard pressure-treated build, a high-end tropical hardwood project, or even a composite deck for a customer who doesn't want fasteners to be visible, there's a Simpson deck screw made for it. Check out the options below and choose what works best for your project.

Deck screws take a beating. They're buried in wood or composite material that expands and contracts with every season. They're exposed to rain, UV, humidity, salt air, and whatever chemicals are in the treated lumber you're fastening through. 

A screw that's not rated for those conditions won't just fail quietly — it'll stain your boards, corrode at the head, and leave you or your customer with a deck that looks like it aged 10 years in two.

Here's what actually separates a good deck screw from a bad one:

Once you understand what you're working with, picking the right Simpson deck screw becomes straightforward. Let's go through the four categories.

These are the go-to fasteners for traditional wood decking installations — pressure-treated pine, cedar, redwood, and similar softwoods. They're sold in bulk loose form, which means you're loading them by hand rather than running them through an auto-feed system. If you're working with a standard drill or impact driver on a residential deck, this is likely the category you'll spend the most time in.

The DWP is Simpson's core wood deck screw, and it's what most professionals are reaching for when they're fastening wood decking boards. 

It's a flat-head screw with Type 316 stainless steel construction — the same grade used in marine hardware — which makes it fully compatible with ACQ, CA, and ACZA pressure-treated lumber without risk of galvanic corrosion or staining.

The DWP uses a T-20 or T-25 6-Lobe drive, depending on the size, which gives you positive bit engagement and clean driving without cam-out, even when you're running a screw gun all day.

Deck-Drive DWP — Flat Head, Type 316 Stainless

For applications where you want a smaller fastener footprint at the surface — fascia boards, decking trim, and PVC trim — Simpson offers the DWP in a trim-head profile. The smaller head diameter reduces splitting near board edges and leaves a cleaner look at the surface.

If you prefer a bugle-head profile — which pulls tight to the board surface and works well on standard decking — Simpson offers these in both Type 305 and Type 316. The bugle head is a good fit when you're not countersinking and just want the screw to sit flat without a recessed pocket.

For PVC trim boards and composite fascia, the 6-Lobe drive and Type 316 material aren't just nice to have — they're necessary. PVC and composite fascia expands and contracts more aggressively than wood, and a standard coated screw will corrode and stain the material over time. 

The white color option is built specifically for white PVC and composite fascia so the fastener disappears into the surface.

Fiber cement siding and trim is dense and abrasive — a standard deck screw doesn't have the geometry to drive cleanly through it without pre-drilling or burning up bits. Simpson makes two dedicated options that solve this. Type 410 stainless is specifically recommended by fiber cement manufacturers for compatibility with the material. Don't substitute a standard screw here.

Composite decking has taken over a significant share of the residential deck market, and for good reason. It's low-maintenance, looks clean, and homeowners love it. But composite boards present a different set of fastening challenges than wood. 

They're denser, they expand and contract more dramatically with temperature swings, and the surface is more sensitive to marks and staining. You need a screw built specifically for composite material.

The DCU is Simpson's workhorse composite screw for face-fastening composite decking boards to wood joists. 

It features Simpson's Quik Guard coating — a proprietary polymer coating that protects the screw from corrosion and staining without leaving visible residue on composite surfaces. The DCU is designed to countersink cleanly without cracking or mushrooming the board surface, which is a common problem when you drive a wood screw into composite at speed.

The DSV is a flat-head wood screw with Quik Guard coating. It's a solid option when you want Quik Guard corrosion protection in a loose format, available in color options to blend with treated lumber or composite board tones.

Hardwood decking — Ipe, Garapa, Cumaru, and other tropical species — is a different animal entirely. These woods are dense, they've got high tannin content that reacts with standard fasteners, and they split easily if you don't use the right screw geometry. The DHPD is built specifically for hardwood decking applications. Pre-drilling is still recommended, but the DHPD's sharp point and specialized thread reduce the force required to drive through dense tropical wood.

When you're fastening composite decking to steel joists — common in commercial decks, elevated walkways, and deck systems with steel framing — you need a screw that's designed to cut through steel substrate without pre-drilling. 

This is one of those screws a lot of guys don't know exists until they're stuck on a commercial job trying to figure out why their standard composite screw won't bite into a steel flange. The DCSD solves that problem.

For composite trim or anywhere you want the smallest possible fastener footprint on a composite surface:

Collated screws are the same fasteners loaded into a plastic strip so they can be run through an auto-feed screw gun. If you're doing a large deck and you're still loading individual screws by hand, you're leaving efficiency on the table. A Quik Drive auto-feed system can dramatically cut your installation time on big jobs where you're driving hundreds or thousands of screws in a day.

The DSV collated screw is the standard option for wood decking with an auto-feed system. It uses a T-25 6-Lobe drive and is available in Tan and Gray to blend with common treated lumber tones.

For applications where a bugle-head profile works better than a flat countersink, Simpson offers collated bugle-head screws in both Type 305 and Type 316. The Type 316 collated option is the right call for coastal projects or any high-production job where corrosion protection can't be compromised.

For large composite deck jobs with an auto-feed system, Simpson's collated composite screws give you the speed of a collated system with the right screw geometry for composite boards. Composite decking requires consistent drive depth — going too deep cracks or sinks the board surface, and the depth stop on an auto-feed system eliminates that variable entirely.

Getting the right screw length is straightforward once you understand the basic principle: you want enough thread engagement in the joist or framing member to hold long-term, without over-penetrating.

For hardwood decking, be conservative with length. Dense species don't compress under load the way softwood does, so you don't need the extra thread depth.