Why does metal feel colder than wood?

Your skin is about 33 degrees Celsius, noticeably warmer than an object at room temperature. Touching something transfers heat from your hand to the object – and how quickly that happens determines how cold something feels.

With metal, this happens very fast: it has high thermal conductivity and quickly conducts the heat from your hand into the interior of the material. This cools your skin more strongly at the contact point – and that's exactly what your thermoreceptors perceive as cold, regardless of the metal's actual temperature.

Wood, on the other hand, conducts heat very poorly. The heat from your hand barely spreads through the material, the contact point warms up to nearly skin temperature, and much less heat is drawn from your hand. So you're not actually feeling the object's temperature – you're feeling how much your skin cools down on contact.