What's Outside Counts: A Guide to Exterior Siding Options

Your home’s exterior is a jacket it will wear for the rest of its life—or at least twenty years—but choosing the right siding for your home is more than a matter of taste; it’s a delicate balance of cost, functionality, and aesthetics.

Wood

Wood siding predominated in U.S. homes until well into the twentieth century. For nearly two centuries, it was a pragmatic choice: ever-expanding western territories and (seemingly) endless virgin forest provided raw materials for homesteaders and builders. Architects incorporated wood exteriors into defining North American styles: Cape Cod, Adirondack, bungalow, shingle-style, saltbox, colonial, and cottage-style are built traditionally in wood.

Today, wood siding is a favorite of historical preservationists and everyday homebuilders with an eye toward tradition. Caleb Seward, materials handler at R.K. Miles, a regional lumber supplier says, “I prefer wood to just about anything else. It’s durable, looks great and there are options accommodate a range of budgets.”

Clapboard

Clapboards, also called lap or bevel siding, are thin, interlocking wedges, installed horizontally against the house frame. Originally split from tree trucks rather than sawed, pine clapboards were used widely in coastal colonial and farmhouse-style homes.

Today, clapboard is milled from redwood, cedar, fir, spruce and pine and comes with a number of grades, from unblemished extra-clears to rustic cottage-styles.

Determining the right wood for your home is a matter of geography and budget. At $7-$10 per square foot, redwood and cedar can get costly, but both are prized for their straight grain and natural resistance to rot and insect damage. They are good choices for homeowners who prefer staining to painting, and can be a great choice for coastal areas, where the salt air acts as a natural preservative.

Pine, spruce, and fir are more economical options at $3-$6 per square foot. They are not rot-resistant and must be properly sealed and maintained to prevent shrinking, cupping, and cracking. However, with proper maintenance, all three of these softwoods will hold finishes well and are excellent choices for homeowners who wish to paint the exterior of their homes.

Shakes and Shingles

Originally, shakes were split from a block of wood with a mallet and froe. Shingles were sawn.

Today, both shingles and shakes are milled, but shakes are left in a thicker, more irregular form. This irregularity gives them a rustic, cottage-style charm, but can leave houses susceptible to water and wind damage. Shingles are thinner, milled more precisely, and designed to lay flat. They are well suited to refined Cape Cod and bungalow styles.

[Above: An old barn with vertical siding, attached to a small shed of cedar shingles and another outbuilding, done in clapboard.]

Cement-Fiber, Fiberglass, and Other Composites

Cement

If fiber cement siding had a mantra, it might be Appearance Without Maintenance. Made with a mixture of wood pulp and Portland cement, fiber cement was introduced about twenty-five years ago, and now covers fifteen percent of new homes. “Upfront costs can be high—higher than wood,” says John Glinsky, a sales manager for R.K. Miles, “but it is durable, requires minimal upkeep and adds to the resale value of a home.”

Cement siding can also be a good choice with the environmentally conscious; Peter Pfeiffer, the designer of the first Zero-Energy Home, says “James Hardie [a leading manufacturer of fiber cement siding] products are 'green' is because they incorporate natural ingredients that are low in toxicity. And, they last longer than other products.”

Cement-fiber products come in similar styles as their traditional wooden counterparts: vertical boards, lap siding, and shingles.

Fiberglass

One of the most expensive options, at about $10 per square foot, fiberglass siding from companies like Ultrex, are designed to withstand extreme temperature changes. Like glass, its low thermal expansion can guarantee tight seals around windows and doors, which, in turn, provides one of the lowest risks of moisture damage to the frame. Rigid boards come in a variety of factory-produced colors that resist warping, rust, and discoloration.

Other Composites

Composite siding is a growing industry, and over the last ten years, several companies designed products meant to outperform vinyl and cement siding, all while maintaining the classic look of wood. A product called LP SmartSide blends wood fibers with zinc compounds.

Another product, Alside Revolution, blends 50% natural wood material with PVC and other structural polymers. These siding panels stack and attach with nail clips, and require special training to install, but the rigid boards have the ease and durability of fiberglass with the feel-good aspect of recycled materials, for $3-$4.50 per square foot.

Other companies, such as Everlast Siding of New England, use a composite of minerals, stone and resin. Solid construction means the planks won’t bend or bow like cement siding, and, unlike some wood-composites, they can be installed using traditional carpentry tools.

“Everlast Siding has proven to be a great alternative to wood, fiber cement and vinyl siding,” says Lilia Gosselin of Everlast, “Unlike other composites such as fiber cement siding, it does not need painting, will never peel because it's colored all the way through and contains no moisture-absorbing wood fibers in the product.” This siding can be excellent choice for homes in wet inland areas and in places where temperature and humidity ranges may cause natural wood materials to buckle.

Vinyl

At about $2 per square foot, vinyl siding can seem like a thrifty homeowner’s dream, and in many ways it can be a practical choice. The polypropylene-based products don’t need the painting and upkeep of wood, and can be installed quickly and easily. The clipping, overlapping panels are often thin and prone to cracks—the material expands and contracts with temperature changes at four to six times the rate of wood and composite products—and can be traps for mold if not properly installed. Recently, companies like Alside and Xteria have started to offer a range of color, thickness and joining options for vinyl laps, shingles, shakes, some of which closely resemble wood grain.

Choosing the right exterior is a matter of cost, priorities, tastes, and architectural dictates. Sure, it might look silly to see an American craftsman house in bright red cement siding, but it can also be fun to shake things up. Traditionalists may insist a saltbox only be wood clapboard—and there is something beautiful about a respect for time-tested tradition—but the spirit of American individualism that brought us California, the Hudson River School, reality TV, and kimchi tacos leaves room for mishmashes, oddballs, appropriation and innovation. So give your house her jacket—leather, jean, wood-composite, or vinyl—and tell her to wear it proudly.