Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) produces scarring in the peripheral and basilar regions of the lung with macroscopically normal-appearing tissue in the central and apical areas. This study involved comparing transcriptomic profiles of the latter with transcriptomes of scarred IPF and healthy control lung tissues. The primary goal of the research was to elucidate the pathobiology of the disease in its earliest stages. Tissue samples were taken from lung explants of 3 IPF patients and healthy lung tissue from 3 transplant donors. Dataset includes 10 sequence reads from macroscopically normal-appearing areas and 8 from scarred regions from IPF lungs, and an additional 8 from the normal control tissue for a total of 26 samples. 1 supplementary PDF and 7 supplementary datasets in Excel are available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cellimm.2018.01.002