All applications of wood involve drying the material from the green state. The cell wall may be viewed as a laminate consisting of different layers. The layers have different orientations and therefore different moisture expansion characteristics. As a result, stresses will develop in the layers due to drying. Micromechanical models for fibre composite materials were used in combination with a laminate analogy in order to calculate these drying stresses in the cell wall layers S1, S2 and S3. Resulting stresses were very high. In reality viscoelastic effects will significantly reduce stresses at high moisture content. However, at lower moisture content irreversible cell wall damage is likely to form as a result of the stresses computed by the model.