Fairhaven Siding Cedar siding has a real appeal. It's a natural material, it smells good on a warm day, and a freshly finished cedar home has a warmth that's hard to fake with anything else. We get asked about it often, especially from homeowners restoring older Fairhaven homes that originally had cedar shingles or clapboards. Here's the honest answer: we don't install it, and we think you deserve to know exactly why before you spend money on it.
What Cedar Gets Right
Cedar is naturally resistant to rot and insects compared to most other softwoods, thanks to oils in the wood itself. It takes stain and paint well, it's lightweight and easy to work with, and it has a long track record on Pacific Northwest homes going back generations. If you like the look of natural wood grain, nothing else quite matches it. We're not going to pretend otherwise.
Where Cedar Struggles in Whatcom County
The problem isn't cedar as a species of wood. The problem is what our specific climate does to it over time. Fairhaven sits right on Bellingham Bay, which means salt-laden air is a constant, low-level presence on every exterior surface. Add Whatcom County's long, wet winters — driving rain that comes in sideways off the water for weeks at a time — and a moss and lichen season that can run eight or nine months of the year, and you've created about as hard an environment for wood siding as exists in the continental U.S.
Here's what that combination does to cedar over a 10-to-20 year span:
- Moisture cycling. Wood swells when it's wet and shrinks when it dries. In a climate where "dry" barely happens for half the year, cedar boards are almost always holding some moisture. That constant swelling and shrinking works joints loose, opens hairline cracks, and eventually lets water behind the board where you can't see it.
- Salt air acceleration. Salt is hygroscopic — it pulls moisture out of the air and holds it against surfaces. On a home a few blocks from the water, that means cedar siding stays damp longer after every rain than the same siding would inland. Damp wood is exactly what rot fungus and moss need to get established.
- Moss and lichen growth. Cedar's rough, absorbent surface is a good substrate for moss spores. Once moss takes hold, it holds water against the wood around the clock, which speeds up decay underneath the growth — often invisibly, until a board finally fails.
- Finish maintenance. Cedar only performs as advertised if the stain or paint film stays intact. In this climate, that means re-coating every 3 to 5 years, sometimes sooner on south and west-facing walls that take the worst of the driving rain. Skip a cycle and the wood starts absorbing water directly, which shortens its life fast.
The Real Cost Isn't the Install — It's the Decade After
Cedar siding is rarely the homeowner's problem in year one. It's a problem in year eight, when a section behind a downspout or under an eave has quietly rotted, or when moss has crept up the north wall faster than anyone expected. By then you're looking at spot repairs, re-staining, and eventually a full re-side — years ahead of the timeline you budgeted for. We've installed and repaired enough wood siding on Whatcom County homes to know that the maintenance schedule cedar actually requires, versus the one homeowners plan for, rarely match up.
That gap is the whole reason we stopped installing it. We'd rather tell you this up front than sell you a product we know needs more attention than most households have time for.
Why We Install James Hardie Instead
James Hardie fiber cement siding solves the exact problems cedar runs into here. It's non-combustible and dimensionally stable, so it doesn't swell, shrink, or crack the way wood does when it cycles between wet and dry. It doesn't rot, and it's far less hospitable to moss and lichen than a rough wood surface — a real advantage during a moss season that runs most of the year.
Hardie's ColorPlus factory finish is baked on and warranted against fading and peeling, which means no re-staining cycle every few years. And Hardie engineers specific product lines (HZ5 and HZ10) for exactly this kind of climate — wet, coastal, moisture-heavy — rather than a one-size-fits-all approach. Add a strong transferable warranty, and you get a material that's built to handle Fairhaven's salt air and rain instead of slowly losing the fight against it.
Our Bottom Line
Cedar isn't a bad material. It's a material that asks for more upkeep than most homes near Bellingham Bay can realistically give it, year after year, for decades. We'd rather stand behind one product we trust to perform in this exact climate than install something we know will bring you back sooner than you'd like.
If you're weighing cedar against fiber cement for your home, we're happy to walk through both honestly — no pressure, no sales script. Reach out for a free estimate and we'll help you figure out what actually makes sense for your house and your budget.