Low Maintenance High Quality Wood Alternatives

So why would you choose something besides wood? Look, natural wood is a beautiful product, but it requires a lot of ongoing maintenance and that’s not for everyone. So in this recent exterior renovation we completed, we incorporated some products that look like wood, but they’re not. And they require very little maintenance on an ongoing basis. 

Wood Alternative 1: Metal Siding/Cladding

Let’s start off with the post, beam and purlin detail here by the entry of this home. This is made to look like your classic timber beam construction style, but it’s actually made of dimensional lumber and it’s clad in a metal siding product with a wood grain print on it. This is a great product from Lux Architectural Products. It looks really nice, it’s nice and clean, and requires zero maintenance. You can wipe it off if you want. But it looks like wood and it’s available in many different colours. 

You can really get the look that you want with this product, whether you want that natural fir look or you want it looking like cedar, or you want to go dark into the walnuts. There are lots of different choices. And again, no maintenance. 

Wood Alternative 2: Fiberboard Siding

Another product we used here on the siding is a James Hardie siding product. It’s actually a cement fiberboard, but it has the wood grain pattern within the board. So it looks like a wood siding product, but it’s actually made of cement fiberboard. 

There’s a second benefit to using cement fiberboard instead of wood—it’s fire retardant. So it’s actually good for your insurance rates. You can get a discount if your house has this product on as siding because it’s not flammable like a natural wood product, or some vinyl siding products. So that’s a great reason to use it as well. 

Wood Alternative 3: Fiberglass Door

Lastly, the front door in this renovation is a fiberglass door—again, with a wood grain pattern on the door. And it’s a very modern-looking door. Even when you get up close it looks like wood, but it’s made of fiberglass. And the benefit of fiberglass versus wood, especially in our Edmonton climate, is that it doesn’t expand and contract the way that wood or steel will. It’s far more stable and it can handle those changes in humidity and temperature. So you’ll generally get a far longer warranty on a fiberglass door, than you would on a steel door or a wood door. 

So there are three products you can check out that are a great alternative to natural wood products. They have a beautiful look and again, they come with very low maintenance or no maintenance requirements. If you’d like to know more about these products, talk to your contractor, or reach out to us here with your questions about your renovation.