Everett Cedar Looks Great on Day One. The Question Is Day 1,000.
Cedar siding has a real appeal. It's a natural material, it smells good on a warm afternoon, and a freshly finished cedar home has a warmth that manufactured products spend a lot of marketing budget trying to imitate. We're not going to pretend otherwise. But we're an exteriors contractor working in Everett and around Snohomish County, and our job is to tell homeowners what a product actually asks of them over the next 20 years — not just what it looks like at installation.
After enough seasons watching how wood performs against this specific climate, we made a decision: we don't install cedar siding. Here's the honest reasoning, not a sales pitch against it.
What Cedar Gets Right
- Natural insulation value. Wood has decent thermal properties compared to some other traditional materials.
- Repairable in sections. A damaged board can sometimes be cut out and replaced without redoing a whole wall.
- Ages with character, if maintained. Stained or oiled cedar that's kept up on schedule can look distinctive for years.
The catch is in that last line: "if maintained" and "on schedule." That's where cedar and our climate stop getting along.
Why Our Climate Is Hard on Wood Siding
Everett sits close enough to Puget Sound that salt-laden air reaches exterior surfaces regularly, and Snohomish County's rain doesn't fall straight down for months at a time — it drives sideways into siding, especially on west- and south-facing walls. Add a long moss and algae season that stretches from fall through spring, and you have three separate stressors working on a porous, organic material at the same time:
- Moisture cycling. Cedar swells when wet and shrinks as it dries. Repeated cycling loosens fasteners, opens hairline cracks in the finish, and eventually cups or checks the boards themselves.
- Salt air. Airborne salt accelerates finish breakdown on wood siding, meaning stain and sealant fail sooner near the water than they would inland.
- Moss and algae growth. Wood is an organic, absorbent surface — exactly what moss and algae need to take hold. Once established, growth holds moisture against the board around the clock, which is the fastest path to rot.
The Maintenance Reality
This is the part that doesn't make it into cedar's marketing. To keep wood siding performing the way it did on installation day, it needs:
| Task | Typical Frequency in This Climate |
|---|---|
| Re-stain or reseal | Every 2-4 years, sooner on sun/rain-exposed elevations |
| Moss and algae treatment | Annually, sometimes twice a year near heavy shade or the water |
| Caulk and fastener inspection | Annually |
| Board replacement (rot, splitting) | Ongoing, increasing with age |
Skip a cycle or two — which is easy to do, since most homeowners aren't thinking about siding maintenance every spring — and cedar doesn't just look worse. Trapped moisture behind a failing finish can reach the sheathing underneath, and that's a repair bill that has nothing to do with cosmetics.
Why We Don't Install It
We're not saying cedar is a bad material. We're saying it's a high-commitment material, and most homeowners choosing new siding are trying to get away from high commitment. When we install something, we want to stand behind how it performs in this specific climate for decades, not years — and a product that depends on a homeowner keeping a strict recoating schedule against salt air, driving rain, and moss pressure isn't a system we're comfortable putting our name on.
What We Install Instead
We install James Hardie fiber cement siding exclusively, and the reasoning is a direct answer to everything above. Fiber cement doesn't absorb moisture the way wood does, so it doesn't swell, cup, or feed moss growth the same way. Hardie's ColorPlus finish is baked on at the factory rather than field-applied, which means it's engineered to resist fading and doesn't ask for a recoat every few years. Hardie also builds climate-specific HZ product lines, so the siding going on an Everett home is manufactured for Pacific Northwest wet-climate conditions rather than a generic national spec. And it's non-combustible, which matters regardless of climate.
None of that means zero maintenance — every exterior benefits from periodic washing and inspection. But it means the baseline maintenance burden is dramatically lower than wood, and the material isn't fighting the same losing battle against moisture that cedar is.
The Honest Bottom Line
If you love the idea of cedar and are genuinely committed to a recoating and inspection schedule for the life of the siding, that's a legitimate choice for some homes. We simply don't think it's the right long-term fit for most homeowners in a climate that combines salt air, driving rain, and a moss season that never fully lets up. That's our honest professional opinion, and it's why we built our business around one material instead of offering several.
If you're weighing cedar against fiber cement for your home, we're happy to walk the exterior with you and talk through what each option would actually mean for your maintenance calendar. Reach out for a free, no-pressure estimate — no obligation, just a straight answer.