A metal spoon and a wooden spoon can sit in the same room all night and reach essentially the same temperature.
Touch them in the morning, and the metal usually feels much colder.
The reason is not that your thermometer would find a secret temperature difference. Your skin is responding to how quickly heat moves.
Your hand is warmer than the room
Human skin is usually warmer than ordinary indoor objects.
When you touch a room-temperature spoon, heat begins moving from your warmer hand into the cooler material.
Your temperature-sensing nerves respond to what is happening in your skin. They do not directly read the object’s temperature like a digital thermometer.
If your skin loses heat quickly, the object feels colder.
Metal conducts heat well
Metals are good thermal conductors. Heat can move through them relatively quickly.
When your warm finger touches metal, the metal carries energy away from the contact point and into the rest of the object. That lets more heat keep leaving your skin.
Your fingertip cools quickly, and your nervous system reports a strong cold sensation.
Wood is a much poorer thermal conductor. Heat accumulates near the surface where your finger touches it instead of being carried away as efficiently.
Your skin therefore cools more slowly.
Same room. Similar temperature. Very different heat transfer.
The effect reverses when the objects are hot
Put metal and wood at a temperature hotter than your skin and the same property works in the opposite direction.
Metal can transfer heat into your hand more quickly, so it can feel hotter and can burn you faster.
This is why metal cookware needs insulated handles and why grabbing a metal object from a hot oven is considerably worse than touching many poor heat conductors at the same temperature.
Good thermal conductivity does not mean “cold.”
It means “fast heat transfer.”
Why can tile feel colder than carpet?
The same principle explains why a tile floor often feels colder than carpet even when both have been in the same room.
Tile conducts heat away from a bare foot more readily. Carpet, especially with trapped air among its fibers, is a much better insulator.
Your feet notice the rate of heat loss.
The thermostat may insist the floor surfaces are nearly the same temperature. Your toes remain unconvinced.
Does this mean touch cannot tell temperature at all?
Touch is useful, but it is not a reliable thermometer.
Material, moisture, airflow, contact area, and how quickly heat moves can all affect what something feels like.
That is also why touching objects is a terrible way to judge whether something is safe around extreme temperatures.
Why does metal eventually stop feeling quite as cold?
As you keep holding a small metal object, heat from your hand warms it. The temperature difference between your skin and the object becomes smaller, so heat flow slows.
A tiny coin can warm quickly. A large metal railing can keep carrying heat away for much longer because there is far more material available to absorb the energy.
So metal is not mysteriously colder than wood.
Your hand is performing a crude heat-transfer experiment every time you touch it.
Metal is simply winning that experiment very quickly.
A related explanation is Why are there rocks on train tracks?, which looks at another familiar effect from the same general system.
And that’s the short explanation.
Related explanations: Why are there rocks on train tracks? and Why do static shocks happen in winter?