Every Major House Siding Compared — Vinyl, Fiber Cement, Wood, Metal, and Engineered Wood

Every siding material has a sales brochure and a failure mode. Ten years of walking estimates taught me to price the second one. Here’s the field guide, material by material.

Vinyl: the value default

Roughly half of new American homes wear vinyl for one reason: installed cost, typically the lowest of any option. It never needs paint, resists insects and rot, and installs fast.

How it fails: it gets brittle with UV age, cracks on impact (hail, baseballs, string trimmers), and can warp near grills or from sunlight reflected off neighboring windows. Dark colors fade. Expect 20–40 years, less in hail country. It’s also the material most sensitive to bad installation — nailed tight instead of hung loose, it buckles in July.

Fiber cement: the durability pick

Cement, sand, and cellulose pressed into planks. It shrugs off fire, insects, rot, and most hail, holds paint far longer than wood, and carries warranties of 30–50 years.

How it fails: slowly, at the details — caulked joints, unpainted cut ends wicking moisture, and any spot where installers skipped the clearance gaps. It’s heavy, dusty to cut (silica — respirators required), and labor costs meaningfully more than vinyl.

Wood: the beauty tax

Cedar and redwood clapboard remain the look everything else imitates. Repairable board by board, ages gracefully — if maintained.

How it fails: paint every 5–7 years, stain more often, and any lapse invites rot, woodpeckers, and carpenter bees. Owning wood siding is a subscription, not a purchase.

Engineered wood: the compromise

Resin-bonded wood strands, primed at the factory. Cheaper and lighter than fiber cement, warmer-looking than vinyl. Modern formulations are far better than the 1990s products that spawned lawsuits — but moisture discipline at cut edges and butt joints is still everything.

Metal: the century play

Steel takes hail better than aluminum; aluminum shrugs off coastal salt. Standing-seam and board-form profiles have escaped the farm-building aesthetic. Costs run near fiber cement.

How it fails: dents, scratched coatings, and galvanic surprises where dissimilar metals touch. Done right, it outlasts its owner.

The honest comparison

Cheapest installed: vinyl. Longest service with least attention: metal, then fiber cement. Best repairability: wood. On resale, fiber cement consistently returns among the highest cost-recovery of any exterior project. Whatever the material, flashing and clearances decide its lifespan more than the brochure does — siding fails at its edges.