Ferndale Siding Cedar siding has a long history in the Pacific Northwest, and it's easy to see the appeal. It's a natural material, it smells good on a warm day, and a freshly finished cedar home has a warmth that manufactured products try hard to imitate. We get asked about it often, especially from homeowners who grew up around older cedar-sided homes in Whatcom County. But after years of doing exterior work in Ferndale's climate, we made the decision to stop installing it. Here's the honest reasoning.
What cedar actually gets right
Cedar has natural oils that give it some inherent resistance to decay and insects, more than most other softwoods. It's lightweight, machines well, and takes stain or paint in a way that produces a genuinely attractive finish. For a homeowner who wants an authentic wood look and is prepared to commit to its care schedule, cedar isn't a bad material. Our issue isn't with cedar as a product — it's with what it takes to keep cedar performing well on a home in this specific climate, and what happens when that care schedule slips, which in our experience it almost always does.
The maintenance math doesn't work here
Cedar siding is a maintenance commitment, not a one-time install. To hold up, it needs a quality finish — stain or paint — reapplied on a regular cycle, typically every 3 to 5 years depending on exposure. Skip that cycle, or apply the wrong product, and the wood starts absorbing moisture it can't shed fast enough.
Ferndale sits close enough to the Strait of Georgia and Bellingham Bay that salt-laden air is a real factor on siding, not just a coastal talking point. Salt air accelerates the breakdown of exterior finishes, and it does so unevenly depending on which side of the house faces the water and prevailing wind. Combine that with Whatcom County's driving rain events — the kind that come in sideways off the water — and you get moisture finding its way into end grain, seams, and nail penetrations faster than a typical maintenance schedule anticipates.
Moss, moisture, and the long gray season
Anyone who has owned a home in this part of Washington knows the moss season isn't really a season — it's most of the year. Cedar's textured, absorbent surface is a moss magnet, especially on north-facing walls and areas shaded by trees or roof overhangs. Moss and algae hold moisture directly against the wood, which is exactly the condition that leads to rot, cupping, and finish failure underneath the growth before you ever see a visible problem on the surface.
Pressure washing cedar to remove moss is common advice, but done even slightly wrong it drives water into the wood fibers and strips the finish, making the next growth cycle worse, not better. We've replaced enough rotted cedar boards on homes that were otherwise well cared for to know this isn't a rare failure mode around here — it's the expected outcome of this climate meeting this material over enough years.
Installation sensitivity and hidden costs
Cedar siding is also less forgiving to install than people assume. Proper detailing — back-priming every board on all six sides, correct fastener spacing, adequate drainage gaps, careful flashing at every penetration — matters enormously with wood siding, far more than it does with engineered products. Skimp on any of that, which happens often in the industry because it adds labor time, and you've shortened the siding's real-world life before the first coat of finish even goes on. We were unwilling to keep installing a product where the gap between "installed correctly" and "installed the way it's usually done" was this large and this consequential.
There's also a cost dimension worth being honest about: cedar's purchase price is often comparable to or higher than fiber cement, but the total cost over 15-20 years — refinishing labor, board replacement, moss remediation — tends to run well beyond what homeowners budget for at the outset.
Why we install James Hardie instead
James Hardie fiber cement is non-combustible and doesn't rot, doesn't feed moss the way bare or lightly finished wood does, and holds its factory-applied ColorPlus finish for years without the recoat cycle cedar demands. Hardie's HZ5 product line is engineered for climates like ours, with freeze-thaw cycling, sustained moisture, and coastal exposure specifically in mind. It carries a strong transferable warranty backed by the manufacturer, not just the installer, which matters when a home changes hands.
None of that makes fiber cement "better" than cedar in some abstract sense — it makes it a better match for what a Ferndale exterior actually has to survive year after year. That's the standard we hold every product to before we put it on a home, and it's why James Hardie is the only siding system we install.
If you're weighing your options for a siding replacement or new install, we're happy to walk through what your home's exposure looks like and give you a straightforward, no-pressure estimate.