Cedar is a popular roofing material. The wood is often split by hand to either make symmetrical shingles or irregularly shaped shakes. These days, you can find these cedar shingles and shakes on walls as well – they’re an unorthodox but beloved form of siding.
Of course, being wood, they need a lot of care to maintain their appearance and utility. Cedar is susceptible to fungi, wood rot, warping, termites, and other insects. So vinyl cedar is often used as a colorful compromise. Let’s explore some cedar vinyl siding ideas you can try out.
1. Dashing Dormer
The key difference between cedar shingles and cedar shakes is that shingles are symmetrically uniform while shakes are asymmetric and uneven. But many designers and contractors use the terms interchangeably, especially for cedar vinyl siding that’s made from cedar molds. On this house, the gable is clad with pale grey cedar vinyl above tan clapboard.
2. Cedar on Brick
As a construction material, brick is sentimental and rustic. But it can be overpowering because those bright red tones draw attention away from everything else. Especially if the brick feature is as bulky as this chevron chimney. The wall behind the chimney is brick too. So to add a little visual variation, the dormer behind the brick is clad in cedar vinyl siding.
3. Find a Foundry
Foundry Siding has a popular line of faux stone and faux wood vinyl cladding. This image shows their brown cedar vinyl siding. The vinyl on this front façade looks beautifully rustic. The color is realistic and that grain looks pleasantly tactile. Styled with a traditional lantern, that wall seems to have stepped out of the past to grace this modern building with its light.
4. Window Highlights
The focus of this photo is on the window trim. The black vinyl shutters are a rustic delight, and they don’t have the drama associated with their wooden cousins. But our point of interest is the wall behind those windows. It’s clad in subtle grey cedar vinyl siding. The simple understated style elevates the attractiveness of that faux-wood window dressing.
5. Gorgeous Garage
Garages are often tucked under the house as a mini-basement. Or if it’s a suburb, you might share your external garage wall with the neighbor. So what if you have a larger home with an exposed garage wall? Garages rarely have windows, so that’s a lot of siding! On this house, they did install a corner window. The rest is cedar vinyl siding with a brick bottom border.
6. Colorful Cedar Selections
Cedar vinyl siding has several advantages of true cedar shakes and shingles. Being plastic, vinyl won’t be affected by rain, pests, or atmospheric moisture. To clean it, you just hose it down at high pressure. It doesn’t need staining or treating. But its biggest advantage is color selection. This swatch shows just a few of the available cedar vinyl siding colors.
7. Discover Cedar
Cedar Discover is a line of cedar vinyl siding supplied by Ply Gem. It’s part of their Mastic siding and accessories sub-section, and it comes with a lifetime warranty. Ply Gem also offers siding in aluminum and steel, so be sure of what you’re buying. Their cedar siding has brackets along the entire length of the shingle or shake, so it attaches more securely.
8. Splashy Splits
Split shingle siding is designed to mimic hand-split planks of cedar. But because it’s vinyl, it comes in a far wider selection of colors. Foundry cedar vinyl siding is available in 30+ shades. And the advantage of using a brand like Foundry is you can get the same color in varying styles. This house has identical grey monochromes but in clapboard, stone, and cedar.
9. Pillars of Trim
Construction focuses on the sturdiness and stability of a project while design is more concerned with style. But with a clever contractor, both matters can merge their priority. In this extension, slight design tweaks drastically elevate the elegance of this home. The gable curves out at the ends and the window trim does the same. The walls have cedar vinyl siding.
10. No-J Faux-Wood Vinyl
When you’re installing vinyl siding, you’ll probably use J channels for the corners and windows. You might even use ledge siding, corner siding, or pillar siding. But for this house, the contractor decided to skip the Js to make the siding resemble natural cedar shanks. But this cedar vinyl siding is a pretty shade of blue and works well with those hung windows.
11. The Right Shade of Green
Cedar vinyl’s biggest benefit is sometimes seen as its keenest drawback – the color options. After all, if you see pink cedar shingles, you’ll know they’re obviously not wood. And some owners worry those colors make the siding look cheap and fake. But as you can see with this jungle green cedar vinyl siding, plastic exteriors can still look woodsy and sophisticated.
12. Staggered Snow
Yes, siding can be snow white. And a white vinyl home isn’t the dirt magnet you’d expect. It’s plastic, and vinyl rarely stains, so any smudges can easily be hosed off. This shade of Foundry Cedar Vinyl siding is called Snow, and the shanks are arranged in a staggered brick pattern. This gives them the uneven appearance of authentically hand-cut cedar shakes.
13. DIY Magic
There’s a stereotype about a man’s man – someone from the Midwest who built his house from scratch. And the middling generation is embracing this with their tiny houses, van life, and all those homesteading channels on YouTube. But if you want a traditional house that looks DIY, try stacking river rocks and use the uneven faux shakes in this cedar vinyl siding.
14. Red Stone Lining
Understated exteriors are a statement in themselves. They say a lot about the personality of the residents. Some people have sunny houses with bright flowers and vibrant colors. But if your style is muted, this cedar vinyl siding is perfect for you. It’s a mild shade of grey with a border of red brick at ground level. The chimney is also clad in grey faux cedar shake siding.
15. Vented Shutters and Cedar
Old-world houses didn’t have glass in their windows. Instead, the opening had wooden shutters – hence the name. But in modern construction, we still flank our windows with decorative shutters. Some of those shutters don’t even close! This home has gapped shutters for ventilation, with half-circle windows above. The walls have grey cedar vinyl siding.
16. Towering Perfection
Foundry has several styles of cedar vinyl shingles. One of these series is called Perfection. It comprises cedar shakes that have fine lines printed in parallel patterns. From a distance, these lines trace distinct shadows on the shakes. They come in lots of colors. This home uses barnyard red cedar shakes in rounded towers. Their specific brand name is Russet 278.
17. Eyes on the Door
Logically, when you look at a house, you’ll focus on the doors because that’s how you get in. But doors have complex structural mechanisms, meaning their exteriors often stay simple. So when you put all this effort into a decorative door, you don’t want the walls and windows distracting your door’s admirers. Subtle grey cedar vinyl siding is a clever way to ensure that.
18. Mix Match Magic
If you buy cedar siding in a pale shade, it might be mistaken for clapboard siding from a distance. This is because the fine lines on the shanks are only visible from a few feet away. You can get darker colors with distinct grains, but you might worry this will overwhelm the styling of your house. In this example, red cedar vinyl siding works as an accent on the gables.
19. Cedar Impressions from CertainTeed
CertainTeed has established itself in the space of artificial wood and faux stone. It comes in 40+ colors and its CertaGrain series is particularly popular. But while you can buy cedar vinyl siding in almost any tone, you may opt for shades that are closer to the natural color of hand-split cedar. This blended brown fits that brief and the grain detail is pretty as well.
20. Grainy Grey Shingles
As you might have noticed, Foundry Shingles and Shakes come in four styles – perfection, grayne, round, and FPX. Grayne shingles are focused on reproducing realistic wood grain details. They come in a dozen colors from natural woodsy tones like Treated Cedar 453 to Lake Blue 403 and Ridge Moss 404. The cedar vinyl siding here is a majestic Aged Grey 451.
21. Rounds and Rectangles
Mixing the color and texture of your exterior wall cladding can give gorgeous results if you play it right. On this house, the alternating surfaces have brown clapboard siding or pale grey cedar vinyl siding. The cedar sections have half-circle windows while the clapboard portions have rectangular windows. Both window styles are flanked by similarly shaped shutters.
22. Almost Blocked
Staggered construction is common when you’re building with baked bricks, concrete blocks, or quarried stone. Of these three, concrete blocks are the plainest because they have a smooth, synthetic texture in comparison to porous bricks or chipped slate. So if you want that flat concrete effect but in plastic, you can try this plain, non-textured cedar vinyl siding.
23. Altogether Almond
Sometimes you get a song stuck in your head – an earworm. If it happens when you’re writing, you might unconsciously use the ‘earword’ multiple times in the same paragraph. But what if it’s a color? This homeowner decided they were really into almond and they wanted it everywhere. They combined almond-colored clapboard and cedar vinyl siding.
24. Scaly Snow
You might think of them as scallops. Or shrimp tails. Or fish scales. Either way, those half-circle shingles are an attention-grabbing form of décor. At the shingle store, they’re referred to as round shingles, and the ones on this house are branded Snow 123, but you can order them in half a dozen colors from Eggshell 034 to a subtle bluish-grey Oceanside 202.
25. White on Red
In an earlier example, builders used tame grey siding to nudge attention towards a bolder wooden door. In this example, the cedar vinyl siding is a bold red in a matte tone. But it covers the entire house exterior so you may soon get visual fatigue. To break the boldness, the windows are dressed with thick white trim that pulls your eyes with its intricate detail.
26. (Not) Like Brick
This house has a loud brick element with white grout. The massive brick chimney can be seen from all angles, including the front yard. To maintain this staggered pattern, the house is clad in greenish grey cedar vinyl siding that matches the brick design. The brand is Mastic Cedar Discovery from Ply Gem and you can choose from 15 standard or 19 premium shades.
27. Field Proven Excellence!
Foundry has a special category of cedar vinyl siding called FPX. It’s a cross between their grayne siding (wood-grain) and perfection siding (fine parallel lines). It’s highly textured and fireproof, with a limited lifetime warranty. FPX comes in 36 shades ranging from Corn Silk to Autumn Gold. And their handy specs sheet helps you match the color in other brands.
28. Board and Batten on Cedar
Here’s another example of adding interest to a monochromatic theme by playing with texture. All the siding on this house is the same shade of tan. But the walls are done in board and batten siding while the gables and the dormer have cedar vinyl siding. The dark brown shutters go well with that tan tone, and there’s some stonework around the entryway too.
29. Set in Stone
This looks like an old home built with raw stone and hand-split cedar. But the prairie windows suggest it might be a modified rendering with faux stone siding on the walls and cedar vinyl siding on the gables. The garage (and the section of the garage that links to the main house) is done in clapboard vinyl siding. The overall effect is cozy and contemporary.
30. Decorative Decisions
Here’s a close-up of Provia cedar vinyl siding, which they offer either as uneven hand-split shakes or half-circle scallops. As you can see, the texture is quite detailed, and the work that goes into making each shingle is reflected in the price. It’s why these faux cedar shakes are recommended as accent pieces coupled with larger volumes of vertical or horizontal siding.
31. White Brick House?
For our final exhibit, we’re looking at a grand construction of whitewashed brick. Except it’s plastic, not ceramic, and it’s grey, not white. Cape Grey 401, to be specific. But the gambrel roofing, the functional window shutters, and the abstract stone foundation all add to the elegant eccentricity of this house. It even has a vintage wind vane cresting the house!
What are your favorite cedar vinyl siding ideas? Show us some photos in the comments!