Sheetrock vs. Drywall: What Are the Differences?

Spend any amount of time on a construction site or watching DIY videos, and you’ll hear a variety of ways to describe drywall. I’ve been on job sites where the terminology changed depending on who was handling the material. The delivery truck carried “Sheetrock,” the installers hung “drywall,” and the mud crew called it “wallboard.”

We’ll look at where all of these names come from and explore and differences between them. And I’ll share my own reason (very personal) for preferring one term over the others.

What Is Drywall?

Drywall is a wall covering consisting of a hardened gypsum paste sandwiched between two sheets of paper.

Civil war veteran Augustine Sackett invented the earliest incarnation of what we call drywall in 1894. Traditionally, wall interiors were covered with wet plaster, a technique that creates a smooth surface but requires multiple coats and the steady hand of an experienced installer.

Sackett’s innovation? Stacking alternating layers of gypsum plaster and paper, letting it harden into a solid sheet, then hanging it directly on wall studs. (Gypsum is a mineral that hardens into a solid, durable material.)

This new invention was called Sackett Board, but over the years it picked up nicknames. Plasterboard described its contents, wallboard described where it was hung, and drywall differentiated it from wet plaster walls.

What Is Sheetrock?

Sheetrock is a brand name for a specific brand of drywall. But it’s also used as a generic term for drywall, much like Kleenex for facial tissue, or Q-tips for cotton swabs.

In 1902 the Sackett Plaster Company merged with several other businesses to form the United States Gypsum Company, now known as USG.

They made a major design improvement to Sackett Board in 1913, when, according to USG, “the two interior plies of paper in the board were eliminated, leaving a solid gypsum core between the top and bottom sheets, and was rebranded as Adamant Board.”

Adamant Board was essentially modern drywall, but sales didn’t take off. So USG sales representative D.L. Hunter suggested a re-brand to Sheetrock. One hundred years later, that term has become so ubiquitous that many people use “sheetrock” to mean any kind of drywall. (At Family Handyman, we prefer “drywall” as our generic term.)

When Was Drywall Widely Adapted?

Drywall became increasingly common in commercial construction, especially at the 1933-34 Chicago World’s Fair. It took until the 1940s before it began to be widely used in American homes. And that’s where my story comes in.

Several places around the U.S. claim to be the site of the first residential drywall installation. One of the earliest is Colonial Hills in Ohio, a neighborhood fast-tracked for development by the Defense Homes Corporation to provide residences for industry workers during World War II.

As part of the hurry-up, the government insisted on wallboard rather than plaster. The result was a community that may be the first residential neighborhood built with Sheetrock.

Seventy years later, as a contractor working in Colonial Hills, I met a woman in the neighborhood. She told me she lived in one of the first homes in America built with Sheetrock. Now, how can a construction guy not be smitten with that opening line? Reader, I married her!

How Does Sheetrock Differ From Generic Drywall?

As much as I enjoy my own connection to Sheetrock, there’s not much difference between Sheetrock and any other type of well-made drywall. But that qualifier of “well-made” is critical. Poorly-made drywall can be brittle and crumble too easily, plus have more serious issues as well.

In the late 2000s, low-quality drywall produced emissions that impacted thousands of consumers. Toxic off-gassing caused health and respiratory issues, along with corroded pipes and electrical systems. Ultimately, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) found these Chinese-made sheets were manufactured with sulfur and other chemicals.

We’ve said Sheetrock is to drywall as Kleenex is to facial tissue, and that’s true. Most of the time, you probably won’t notice the difference between the brand name and a generic replacement.

But I know when I’ve got a runny nose, low-quality tissue feels like sandpaper. So if you’re in doubt, opt for the known quantity of Sheetrock or another quality brand name, like Certainteed or Georgia-Pacific’s ToughRock. All “sheetrock” is not the same.