Anacortes Siding An Honest Answer to a Question We Get a Lot
Homeowners in Anacortes and around Skagit County ask us fairly often why we don't offer LP SmartSide. It's a fair question — SmartSide is a well-known product, it's sold at most lumberyards, and plenty of contractors install it. Our answer isn't that it's a bad product. It's that after years of tearing off failed siding and re-siding homes along this stretch of the Salish Sea, we made a decision to install one product system — James Hardie fiber cement — and stand behind it completely. This page explains what LP SmartSide actually is, what it does well, and the specific trade-offs that led us to leave it off our list.
What LP SmartSide Actually Is
LP SmartSide is an engineered wood siding. The core is strand board — wood strands bonded with resin under heat and pressure, similar in concept to OSB sheathing but manufactured to a siding-grade density. The panels and lap boards are treated with a zinc borate additive for insect and decay resistance, then coated with a primer or factory finish. It comes in lap siding, panel siding, and trim, and it's marketed as a lower-cost, easier-to-install alternative to real wood or fiber cement.
It's important to be clear about what it is not: it's not a fiber cement product, and it's not a solid-wood product either. It's a hybrid — wood fiber engineered to behave more consistently than raw lumber, but still fundamentally a wood-based material that depends on its outer coating and sealed edges to stay dry.
Where SmartSide Genuinely Performs Well
We're not going to pretend this is a bad product, because it isn't. In the right climate, installed by a careful crew, and maintained on schedule, SmartSide holds up reasonably well and it looks good doing it.
- It's noticeably lighter than fiber cement, which speeds up handling and installation labor
- It cuts and nails more like traditional wood siding, which crews familiar with wood products pick up quickly
- The factory-primed and prefinished options reduce some of the on-site painting burden compared to raw cedar
- It's generally less expensive per square than fiber cement, which matters on tighter budgets
- It comes in a range of textures — smooth, cedar-grain lap, and panel styles — that give a similar look to wood siding
If you live somewhere dry and inland, with an installer who follows every detail in LP's installation manual, SmartSide can be a reasonable choice. Our concern is more specific: what happens to a wood-based composite siding on a home that sits a few miles from Rosario Strait or Guemes Channel, under a marine layer that barely lifts for weeks at a time.
Why Skagit County's Climate Is the Real Issue
Anacortes sits at the edge of the water on three sides. That gives us the scenery, but it also gives us salt-laden air, wind-driven rain that hits siding at an angle rather than falling straight down, and a wet season that stretches from fall through spring with barely a break. On top of that, the shaded, damp conditions common on north-facing walls and tree-lined lots around Skagit County create a long moss and algae season that keeps siding surfaces damp even between storms.
Engineered wood siding is more moisture-tolerant than raw lumber, but it is still wood fiber at its core. Its performance depends almost entirely on the factory coating and the sealant at every cut edge, seam, fastener, and penetration staying intact. In a drier climate, a small gap in that seal might sit there for years without consequence. Here, with rain coming sideways off the water and moisture sitting in the air for days, any breach in that protective layer has a much shorter runway before it becomes a real problem — swelling at panel edges, soft spots at butt joints, or coating failure where moss holds moisture against the surface.
Installation Sensitivity
LP's own installation instructions are detailed for a reason — proper clearance from grade, correct flashing at every horizontal joint, sealed cut ends, and specific fastener patterns are not optional extras, they're what makes the product perform as designed. That level of precision is achievable, but it leaves very little margin for the kind of shortcuts that happen on a rushed job or with a crew that installs several different siding products and doesn't specialize in one system. On a home exposed to driving rain and salt air, an installation detail that's slightly off doesn't just look wrong — it becomes the entry point for moisture over time.
The Maintenance Commitment It Asks For
This is the part that matters most for a homeowner deciding what to put on their house for the next 20-plus years. SmartSide's warranty and long-term performance both depend on an ongoing maintenance routine, not a one-time installation. Caulking at joints and trim needs to be inspected and refreshed periodically. Paint or finish needs to be maintained before it wears thin. Cut edges exposed during any later repair or trim work need to be field-sealed correctly, every time.
We're not raising this to scare anyone — plenty of products require maintenance. The issue is proportional: in a marine climate with a long wet season, the consequences of skipping a maintenance cycle show up faster and cost more to fix than they would somewhere drier. We'd rather install something whose long-term performance isn't riding on the homeowner remembering to re-caulk on schedule.
| Factor | LP SmartSide | James Hardie Fiber Cement |
|---|---|---|
| Core material | Engineered wood strand, resin-bonded | Cement, sand, and cellulose fiber |
| Moisture behavior | Coating and sealant-dependent; swells if breached | Non-combustible, dimensionally stable, engineered for wet climates |
| Salt air / coastal exposure | Requires diligent coating and joint maintenance | ColorPlus finish designed to resist coastal weathering |
| Ongoing maintenance | Periodic re-caulking and finish upkeep required | Minimal; factory finish holds up with routine cleaning |
| Fire resistance | Wood-based, combustible | Non-combustible |
| Typical material cost | Lower | Moderate to higher |
Warranty Structure — Read the Fine Print
Like most siding manufacturers, LP backs SmartSide with a limited warranty, but the coverage is conditioned on installation following their published instructions to the letter and on the homeowner maintaining the finish and sealant on schedule. That's a reasonable structure on paper, but it puts the burden of proof back on the homeowner if something goes wrong years down the road — did the caulking get refreshed on time, was every cut edge sealed during a later gutter or trim repair, was the clearance from grade maintained after a landscaping change. Those are hard conversations to have after the fact.
We'd rather install a product with a warranty structure that isn't quietly resting on years of perfect maintenance records.
Why We Standardized on James Hardie Instead
After weighing these trade-offs against what actually holds up on homes here, we made the call to install James Hardie fiber cement exclusively. A few reasons that decision made sense for this specific area:
- It's non-combustible — cement-based, not wood-based, which matters for both fire safety and moisture behavior
- It's dimensionally stable — it doesn't swell, cup, or expand the way wood-fiber products can when moisture gets in
- ColorPlus factory finish is baked on and warrantied separately from the substrate, which is a meaningful difference from field-applied or factory-primed finishes that still need site touch-up
- HZ5 formulations are engineered specifically for regions with the freeze-thaw and moisture cycles we get in the Pacific Northwest, not a one-size-fits-all national product
- A strong, transferable warranty that isn't riding on a homeowner's maintenance log the way some engineered wood warranties are
None of this means Hardie is maintenance-free forever — no exterior product is. But the maintenance it does require (occasional washing, keeping paint touched up if it's been repainted, normal caulk checks at trim) is a lighter lift than what an engineered wood product asks for in a climate like ours.
What This Means If You're Comparing Bids
If you're getting quotes for a siding job in Anacortes and one bid includes LP SmartSide at a lower price, that's not automatically a bad bid — it just means you're comparing two different products with different long-term commitments, not just two prices for the same thing. Here's what we'd suggest asking any contractor, us included:
- What warranty backs the material itself, and what voids it?
- What maintenance schedule does the manufacturer actually require to keep that warranty valid?
- Is the crew installing this product specialized in it, or is it one of several systems they rotate through?
- How is the product rated for fire and moisture exposure specifically?
- What does a 15- or 20-year-old installation of this product look like on a home in a similar coastal setting?
Those questions apply whether you're looking at SmartSide, vinyl, or fiber cement. We just happen to be able to answer them very directly for the one product we install.
Get a Straight Answer for Your Home
We're glad to walk through your specific house, its exposure, and what a Hardie installation would look like and cost — no pressure, no upsell script. If you'd like an honest, no-obligation estimate, fill out the form below and we'll get back to you.