Anacortes Cedar Looks Great on the Showroom Sample. Anacortes Weather Has Other Plans.
Cedar siding has a real following, and for good reason. Nothing manufactured quite matches the grain, warmth, and character of real wood on a house. We get asked about it constantly, especially on craftsman and Pacific Northwest-style homes around Anacortes where cedar just looks like it belongs. So let's be straight about it: cedar is a legitimate, time-tested siding material. It's also one of the higher-maintenance choices you can put on a house in this particular climate, and Skagit County's mix of salt air, driving rain, and long moss seasons is not a gentle environment for wood.
This page isn't here to trash cedar. It's here to walk through what owning a cedar-sided home in this area actually involves, year over year, so you can decide with clear eyes. We'll also explain why, after years of installing and repairing siding on Fidalgo Island and around the county, we made the call to stop installing cedar and put James Hardie fiber cement on homes instead.
What Cedar Gets Right
Before the trade-offs, credit where it's due:
- Natural insulating value. Wood has better inherent R-value than vinyl or fiber cement, though modern wall assemblies make this a smaller factor than it used to be.
- Repairability. A damaged board can often be cut out and replaced without disturbing the whole wall, if you can match the weathering.
- Real wood grain. No factory finish fully replicates it. If that texture is the look you want, cedar delivers it because it simply is that material.
- Renewable material. Properly sourced cedar is a renewable resource, which matters to some homeowners on principle.
If a homeowner tells us they want cedar because they love the look and understand the upkeep, we respect that. It's an informed choice. The problem is most homeowners hear "cedar" and picture the stained sample board in the shop, not what that same board looks like on a west-facing wall in Anacortes after eight winters.
The Maintenance Reality: What "Upkeep" Actually Means
Refinishing Is Not Optional, and It's Not a One-Time Thing
Cedar needs a film-forming finish — stain or paint — to control moisture movement in and out of the wood. That finish breaks down under UV exposure and moisture cycling. In a marine climate like ours, with long wet stretches followed by intense summer sun on south and west exposures, most cedar siding needs restaining or repainting on a cycle of roughly every 3 to 7 years depending on finish quality, exposure, and how well the first coat was applied. Skip a cycle and you're not just touching up color — you're often dealing with cupping, checking, and moisture intrusion that requires board replacement, not just a fresh coat.
Moss, Mildew, and the Skagit County Damp Season
Anacortes sits in a pocket that gets less rain than Seattle, but the humidity, fog, and shaded north walls common on wooded lots still create ideal conditions for moss and mildew growth on wood siding. Once organic growth establishes itself on cedar, it holds moisture against the wood surface, which accelerates decay underneath even when the surface looks mostly fine. Homeowners with cedar siding in shaded or north-facing areas typically need periodic soft-washing to keep growth in check — another recurring cost most people don't budget for when they choose the material.
Salt Air Changes the Math
Being this close to Guemes Channel and the Sound means airborne salt is a real factor on exposed walls, especially anything facing open water. Salt accelerates the breakdown of exterior finishes and can leave a fine residue that holds moisture against wood surfaces between rain events. It's not that cedar can't handle a marine environment — it's that the maintenance interval tightens up, and homes closer to the water need more frequent attention than the same siding would need a few miles inland.
Where Cedar Problems Actually Start
| Failure Point | Why It Happens Here | Consequence If Ignored |
|---|---|---|
| End grain and cut edges | Factory finish rarely seals field-cut ends; installers must field-treat every cut | Water wicks into the board from the end, rotting from the inside out |
| Butt joints and laps | Driving rain forces water behind laps if caulking or flashing details are off | Hidden moisture damage behind the siding, often found late |
| North and shaded walls | Slow drying + local moss/mildew pressure | Surface growth traps moisture, finish fails early |
| Ground-level boards | Splash-back and landscaping moisture | Accelerated rot at the bottom courses |
| Nail heads | Standard fasteners can bleed rust through light stains | Cosmetic staining, sometimes fastener corrosion over time |
The Cost Picture Over Time
Cedar's sticker price at install is often close to premium fiber cement, sometimes higher depending on grade and grain quality. The real difference shows up over the life of the siding. A homeowner should plan for:
- Refinishing every 3-7 years, including labor, prep (washing, scraping, sanding failed spots), and materials
- Periodic soft-washing to control moss and mildew, especially on shaded or north-facing walls
- Board-by-board replacement as end grain, joints, or ground-level courses fail over the decades
- A shorter realistic service life before major intervention is needed, compared to fiber cement systems installed to spec
None of that means cedar is a bad product. It means the true cost of cedar siding is spread out over its lifespan in a way that a one-time quote doesn't capture, and in a climate with this much moisture exposure, that ongoing cost is higher than most homeowners expect going in.
Installation Sensitivity Matters More Than People Think
A lot of cedar's reputation problems trace back to installation shortcuts, not the wood itself. Back-priming every board on all six sides, sealing cut ends in the field, using stainless or hot-dip galvanized fasteners, and detailing flashing correctly at every joint all take real time and real discipline. Skip any of it and the siding's actual lifespan drops well below what the wood is capable of. The trouble is that from the curb, a corner-cut cedar install looks identical to a correct one — until the first winter reveals which is which. That's a hard thing to guarantee across every job, every crew, every year.
Why We Standardized on James Hardie Instead
We used to install cedar. We stopped, not because cedar is a scam or a bad material, but because we got tired of being the crew that homeowners called five years later asking why their beautiful cedar siding needed board replacement on the north wall, or why the finish was failing faster than they'd been told to expect. We wanted to put something on Anacortes homes that would still look right after a decade of Skagit County winters without demanding a maintenance schedule most people don't have time for.
James Hardie fiber cement gave us that. It's non-combustible, which matters in a state that has seen more wildfire smoke and risk in recent years. It's engineered specifically for this kind of climate through Hardie's HZ10 product line, built to handle sustained moisture exposure. The ColorPlus factory finish is baked on and warrantied against fading and peeling for far longer than a field-applied wood stain will hold up, which means no repainting cycle every few years. And because the color is factory-applied, you don't have color inconsistency issues that come from staining wood boards from different trees and different cuts.
It's also just simpler to own. No moss-driven refinishing schedule, no end-grain sealing to maintain, no soft-washing routine to keep ahead of decay. You wash it occasionally and you're done.
If You Still Want Cedar
Some homeowners will read all of this and still want cedar, and that's a legitimate call — it's your home and your budget. If that's the direction you go, a few things matter more than anything else:
- Insist on back-primed boards and field-sealed cut ends, no exceptions
- Use stainless steel fasteners, not standard galvanized, especially this close to salt air
- Budget for refinishing every 3-5 years on exposed walls, sooner on south and west exposures
- Plan for periodic professional soft-washing, not pressure washing, which can damage wood fiber
- Choose a high-quality penetrating or solid-body stain system and stick to the manufacturer's recoat schedule
We won't install it, but we'd rather tell you how to do it right than let you find out the hard way.
What This Means for Your Decision
Cedar siding is a real, honest product with a genuine look that some homeowners will always prefer. But it comes with a maintenance commitment that's easy to underestimate, and in a climate with this much rain, moss pressure, and salt exposure, that commitment doesn't ease up over time — it compounds. If low-maintenance, long-term performance matters more to you than the specific texture of real wood grain, fiber cement gives you a very close aesthetic with none of the recurring refinishing burden.
If you're weighing cedar against other options for your Anacortes home, we're happy to walk the exterior with you, talk through what each material actually demands over its lifespan, and give you a straightforward, no-pressure estimate for what James Hardie siding would look like on your house.