Lynden Siding Vinyl siding covers more houses in America than any other exterior product, and there's a reason for that: it's inexpensive, it's fast to install, and for a lot of climates it does a perfectly adequate job. We get asked about it often, and we want to be upfront about why it's not on our truck. This isn't a knock on every homeowner who has it or every contractor who installs it. It's an explanation of the trade-offs we weighed and why we decided, as a company, to build our business around one product line instead: James Hardie fiber cement.
What Vinyl Siding Actually Gets Right
Before getting into why we don't install it, it's worth being fair about what vinyl does well, because pretending otherwise would just be marketing.
- Lower upfront material and labor cost than most alternatives
- No painting required — color is molded into the panel
- Lightweight, which makes it fast to hang and easy to ship
- Won't rot, since it's a petroleum-based product with no wood content
- Widely available in a range of colors and profiles
For a lot of markets — drier climates, tract housing, budget-driven remodels — vinyl is a reasonable choice. Our issue isn't with the product in the abstract. It's with how it performs specifically here, in Lynden, in Whatcom County, on homes that sit through decades of Pacific Northwest weather.
Why Local Climate Changes the Calculation
Whatcom County isn't a hard climate in the sense of extreme heat or hard freezes, but it's a relentless one. We get long stretches of driving rain off the Strait of Georgia and Bellingham Bay, salt-laden air moving inland from Puget Sound, and a moss and algae season that can run eight or nine months of the year on north-facing walls and shaded elevations. None of that is dramatic on any single day. It's cumulative, and cumulative wear is exactly where vinyl siding's weaknesses show up.
Salt Air and Panel Degradation
Vinyl siding is a rigid PVC panel held in place with a nailing hem that allows it to expand and contract with temperature. Salt-carrying moisture works into those overlaps and fastener slots over the years, and combined with UV exposure it accelerates the chalking and brittleness that vinyl is already prone to. It doesn't rust like metal, but it does become more fragile, and fragile vinyl in a coastal wind event is a real repair call we get.
Driving Rain and Water Management
Vinyl siding is installed as a "rain screen" of sorts — it's not fully sealed, because it can't be; it needs gaps to expand and contract. That's fine in light weather. In sustained, wind-driven rain, which Whatcom County gets regularly off the water, wind can force moisture up and under panels, especially around corners, window trim, and butt joints. The siding itself won't absorb water, but what's behind it — house wrap, sheathing, framing — can take on moisture over time if the assembly isn't detailed perfectly.
Moss and Organic Growth
Our moss season is long, and vinyl's textured, slightly porous surface gives algae and moss something to grip, particularly on shaded north walls and under overhangs. It's cosmetic, not structural, but it means regular washing to keep a house looking maintained — which cuts against vinyl's reputation as a "no-maintenance" product.
Installation Sensitivity We're Not Willing to Gamble On
Vinyl siding has a narrower margin for installation error than most homeowners realize. It has to be hung loose enough to expand and contract with temperature swings, but tight enough not to rattle, bow, or gap. Nail it too tight and it buckles in summer heat. Nail it too loose and it can blow off in a windstorm. Because it's a floating, interlocking system rather than a fastened, monolithic surface, small mistakes compound visibly — waviness, gaps at corners, panels that flex when you press on them.
We're not saying vinyl can't be installed correctly. It can, by crews who specialize in it and do it constantly. But we made a decision to specialize in one installation system and do it at a high standard, rather than run crews across five different products with five different tolerances. Fiber cement has its own installation discipline, but it doesn't have the same expansion-and-contraction tightrope that vinyl requires.
Impact Resistance and Cold-Weather Brittleness
Vinyl is flexible in warm weather and noticeably more brittle in cold weather — exactly the kind of swing we get here, where a summer afternoon can be 75°F and a January night can drop well below freezing with wind off the water. A thrown branch, a ladder bump, or hail can crack a cold panel in a way it wouldn't crack in July. Cracked panels are also difficult to color-match years later, since vinyl fades unevenly with UV exposure and older stock is rarely available in the exact original shade.
Appearance Over Time
New vinyl siding looks clean. The question is what it looks like at year twelve or year twenty. Because color is baked into the plastic itself rather than applied as a coating, fading is uniform across the wall but permanent — there's no refinishing option short of full replacement. Panels can also warp slightly from heat (a well-known issue near south-facing windows or dark-colored panels absorbing sun), leaving a rippled look that catches the eye in raking light.
Vinyl vs. Fiber Cement: A Straight Comparison
| Factor | Vinyl Siding | James Hardie Fiber Cement |
|---|---|---|
| Material | PVC plastic panel | Cement, sand, and cellulose fiber |
| Combustibility | Melts/burns under heat | Non-combustible |
| Finish | Color molded into plastic | Factory-baked ColorPlus finish |
| Coastal/moisture performance | Adequate; seams and fasteners are the weak point | Engineered climate-specific HZ formulations |
| Impact resistance | Brittle in cold, can crack | Dense and rigid; resists impact |
| Repainting needed | No, but can't be practically refinished if faded | Not typically, and can be repainted if ever desired |
| Typical warranty | Varies by manufacturer, often prorated | Strong transferable manufacturer warranty |
| Upfront cost | Lower | Higher |
Why We Standardized on James Hardie
We install James Hardie fiber cement exclusively, and it's not because it's the only product on the market — it's because after years of doing exterior work in this climate, it's the one system we trust to hold up on a coastal, moss-prone, rain-heavy corner of Washington without needing to caveat it. It's non-combustible, which matters more every year as wildfire smoke seasons stretch into the Pacific Northwest. Its ColorPlus factory finish is baked on and backed by its own finish warranty, rather than relying on field-applied paint or the base material's own color. Hardie also engineers region-specific HZ product lines rather than selling one panel everywhere, which lines up with how differently siding actually performs from a dry inland climate to a wet coastal one like ours.
We also like that Hardie backs the product with a real, transferable warranty structure — something buyers notice when a home eventually goes up for sale. None of that means fiber cement is maintenance-free or magic. It still needs to be installed to spec, caulked and flashed correctly, and it's heavier and pricier upfront. But when we weighed durability, fire performance, appearance longevity, and how a product actually behaves after fifteen years of Whatcom County weather, it was the clear choice for the kind of company we wanted to run.
What This Means If You're Comparing Siding Options
If you're currently gathering quotes and vinyl is on the table, here's a practical checklist for evaluating it honestly against fiber cement, regardless of who you hire:
- Ask how the product performs specifically in coastal, high-moisture climates — not just its general spec sheet
- Ask what the manufacturer warranty actually covers, and whether it's prorated over time
- Ask how repairs are handled if a panel cracks or fades unevenly years down the line
- Ask what happens to the material in a house fire or close exposure to one
- Ask the contractor how many different siding products they install, and how deep their experience is with each one
- Get the installation details in writing — fastening method, flashing details, manufacturer instructions followed
A contractor who installs five different siding types is spreading expertise five ways. We'd rather be excellent at one system that we believe is right for this area than adequate at several.
If you're weighing siding options for a home in Lynden or anywhere else in Whatcom County, we're happy to walk your house, talk through what we're seeing, and give you a straightforward, no-pressure estimate for Hardie fiber cement — use the form below to get started.