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In many situations, information on stem diameters inside bark (dib) are more desirable than on diameters outside bark (dob). However, obtaining dib measurements is usually expensive, time-consuming, and prone to significant measurement errors when done on standing trees. Many bark thickness equations have been proposed to estimate the dibs of standing trees. In this study, we compared several commonly used bark thickness equations for seven conifer species in the Acadian Region of North America. Mixed-effects modeling techniques were employed to fit linear and non-linear bark thickness equations. We found the equation proposed by Cao and Pepper (South J Appl Forestry 10:220–224, 1986; Eq. 5) performed significantly better than other equations for most of our study species. The Cao and Pepper (South J Appl Forestry 10:220–224, 1986) equation is a function of dob, relative height in the …