Anacortes Exterior Two Wood-Look Sidings, Two Very Different Materials
When homeowners in Anacortes start comparing siding options, two products keep coming up: James Hardie fiber cement and LP SmartSide engineered wood. Both look like painted wood siding once installed. Both hold up better than the raw cedar and spruce products they were designed to replace. But underneath the paint, they're built from fundamentally different materials, and that difference matters a lot once you factor in Skagit County's salt air, driving rain, and long moss season.
We get asked often enough why we only install James Hardie fiber cement and don't offer LP SmartSide as an option. It's a fair question, and the honest answer requires actually explaining what each product is, not just picking a side and moving on.
What LP SmartSide Actually Is
LP SmartSide is an engineered wood product. Wood strands are bonded with resins under heat and pressure into a substrate, then treated with a zinc borate additive to resist fungal decay and insects, and finished with a primed or coated surface at the factory. It's a real step up from old-school solid wood siding, and it has legitimate strengths: it's lighter to handle, generally less expensive than fiber cement, easier to cut and nail without special blades, and it takes an impact without cracking the way a brittle material can.
Those are real advantages, and we're not going to pretend otherwise. Where engineered wood runs into trouble is at the edges — literally. Any cut end, seam, or fastener penetration exposes the wood-strand core, and that's the point where moisture can work its way in if the site isn't sealed correctly during installation and re-sealed on schedule afterward. In a climate like ours, where rain blows sideways off the Sound for months at a stretch, those seams get tested constantly.
Why Our Climate Is the Real Test
Anacortes sits right on the water, which means siding here deals with more than just rain volume. Salt-laden air accelerates the breakdown of paint films and finishes faster than it does further inland. Add in the shaded, damp conditions common under mature evergreens across Skagit County, and you get a long moss and algae season where anything with a porous or wood-based surface is going to collect growth if it isn't cleaned and maintained. Engineered wood siding depends heavily on its factory or field-applied coating to keep moisture out of that wood-strand core — which means the maintenance schedule isn't optional, it's structural. Skip a repaint or let caulk joints fail, and you're not just dealing with cosmetics; you're risking the substrate underneath.
Manufacturer warranties on engineered wood products typically reflect this — coverage is often conditioned on documented maintenance, including repainting within specific intervals. That's a reasonable ask from the manufacturer's side, but it puts a real, ongoing obligation on the homeowner that a lot of people don't fully register at the time of installation.
What Fiber Cement Is Built From
James Hardie siding starts from a different premise entirely. It's made from cement, sand, and cellulose fiber, cured into a dense, dimensionally stable board. There's no wood-strand core to protect from moisture intrusion, and the material itself is non-combustible. Hardie's ColorPlus finish is baked on and cured at the factory rather than applied on site, which gives it more consistent coverage and better fade resistance than field-applied paint. And Hardie's HZ product lines are engineered by climate zone — the HZ5 products used in the Pacific Northwest are formulated for exactly the freeze-thaw cycling, sustained moisture, and coastal exposure we get here.
Side-by-Side Basics
| Factor | LP SmartSide (Engineered Wood) | James Hardie (Fiber Cement) |
|---|---|---|
| Core material | Wood strand + resin | Cement, sand, cellulose fiber |
| Combustibility | Combustible | Non-combustible |
| Finish | Primed or coated, often needs field paint | Factory-baked ColorPlus finish |
| Moisture vulnerability | Highest at cut edges/seams | Not moisture-reactive at the core |
| Maintenance dependency | Warranty tied to repaint schedule | Lower ongoing coating maintenance |
Why We Standardized on Hardie
We install one product because consistency is part of what makes a warranty and an installation actually mean something. When a crew works with the same material system day in and day out — the same flashing details, the same fastening patterns, the same caulk and clearance requirements — the quality of the finished job goes up and the callbacks go down. Splitting our crews' expertise across two very different material systems doesn't serve our customers as well as getting genuinely good at one.
Fiber cement also lines up better with what we see holding up on Anacortes homes over the long run: a non-combustible core, a factory finish that isn't relying on a homeowner's repaint schedule to stay watertight, and a product line engineered specifically for this coastal climate rather than adapted to it. LP SmartSide is a legitimate product and plenty of contractors do good work with it. It's just not what we choose to put our name behind.
If you're weighing siding options for a home in Anacortes or elsewhere in Skagit County, we're happy to walk through what we see in this climate and answer questions directly — no pressure, no sales script. Reach out for a free estimate and we'll give you a straight read on your project.