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Wood cell walls fluoresce as a result of UV and visible light excitation due to the presence of lignin. Fluorescence spectroscopy has revealed characteristic spectral differences in various wood types, notably normal and compression wood. In order to extend this method of characterising cell walls we examined the fluorescence lifetime of wood cell walls using TCSPC (Time‐Correlated Single Photon Counting) as a method of potentially detecting differences in lignin composition and measuring the molecular environment within cell walls. The fluorescence decay curves of both normal and compression wood from pine contain three exponential decay components with a mean lifetime of τ_m = 473 ps in normal wood and 418 ps in compression wood. Lifetimes are spatially resolved to different cell wall layers or cell types where individual lifetimes are shown to have a log‐normal distribution. The differences in …