Shake siding uses wood shakes, or shake-style products in vinyl and fiber cement, installed on exterior walls rather than roofs, bringing the distinctive rustic, textured appearance typically associated with roofing shakes to a home’s vertical wall surfaces instead.
This wall application allows homeowners to incorporate shake’s distinctive rustic texture as an accent or full siding treatment, often combined with other siding materials for visual variety across different sections of a home’s exterior.
Synthetic shake siding products, made from vinyl or fiber cement, offer this same distinctive textured appearance with generally lower maintenance requirements than authentic wood shakes would demand.
What Does Shake Siding Involve?
- Wood shakes, or synthetic vinyl or fiber cement alternatives
- Distinctive rustic, textured surface appearance
- Often used as an accent alongside other siding materials
- Regular maintenance for authentic wood versions
Why Is Shake Siding Important?
The distinctive textured, rustic appearance shake siding provides offers homeowners a way to add architectural interest and visual variety to their exterior, whether as a full treatment or a targeted accent on gables, dormers, or other specific wall sections. This flexibility in application has made shake siding a popular choice for adding character without necessarily committing to it across an entire home’s exterior.
Choosing between authentic wood shake and synthetic alternatives involves the same fundamental tradeoffs that apply to other wood versus synthetic siding decisions, balancing wood’s authentic character against synthetic materials’ typically lower maintenance requirements and often better long-term cost value. This flexibility in application and material choice makes shake siding a genuinely versatile design tool. This adaptability continues to make shake a popular choice for adding distinctive character.
Shake Siding vs. Wood Shakes
Shake siding describes the wall application, using shake-style material on vertical surfaces. Wood shakes more specifically describes the roofing material itself, though the same hand-split cedar product can be adapted for either roofing or wall siding applications.