Particle boards are an important material for furniture production. In this sector, two tasks have had priority during recent years: to reduce the weight of the panels and to reduce the formaldehyde emission. As the production methods have been more or less the same for decades, these tasks have to be tackled by reducing or replacing the raw material in the board production.In this study, the possibility of replacing wood with reed canary grass (Phalaris arundinacea L.) to obtain a light-weight particle board has been studied. The boards studied were three-layered with a core of wood/reed canary grass particles and a surface of 100 % wood particles. A protein-based adhesive was tested as an alternative to a UMF adhesive to reduce the formaldehyde emission. Different combinations of densities between 250 and 450 kg/m3 were included in the study and no additional treatments were made to the raw materials.The results showed poor mechanical and swelling properties of all the tested boards regardless of the design. The main explanation of the poor properties is the poor wetting of the reed canary grass surface by the adhesives. A pre-treatment of the reed canary grass particles with steam, lipase enzyme or alkali is suggested to increase the wettability.