Ferndale LP SmartSide comes up a lot in conversations with Ferndale homeowners, usually because someone got a quote from another contractor or saw it at a home show. It's a legitimate product with real fans, and we're not going to pretend otherwise. But after years of installing and repairing siding across Whatcom County, we made a standing decision not to install it. Here's the honest reasoning, not a sales pitch.
What LP SmartSide Actually Is
LP SmartSide is engineered wood siding — strand board or fiberboard made from wood strands bonded with resin, then coated with a treated overlay and factory primer or finish. It's lighter than fiber cement, easier to cut without special blades, and generally costs less installed. For builders working on a budget or in drier climates, it can be a reasonable choice. It holds paint well when new, and LP has improved the moisture-resistant coatings over the years.
None of that is in dispute. Where it runs into trouble is moisture — and moisture is the one thing Ferndale and the rest of Whatcom County never run short of.
The Core Problem: It's Still Wood
Strip away the coatings and treatments, and LP SmartSide is a wood product at its core. Wood swells, wicks moisture, and — if water gets past a seam, a fastener hole, or a compromised edge — it can rot from the inside out before anything looks wrong on the surface. The manufacturer has engineered around this with resin treatments and factory sealants, and when everything is installed exactly to spec — correct gaps, correct caulking, correct fastener placement, prompt touch-up of any field cuts — it performs well.
That "installed exactly to spec" clause is the catch. LP SmartSide is genuinely more sensitive to installation errors than fiber cement. A missed caulk line, a cut edge left unsealed, or siding installed too close to grade or a deck surface can let moisture in, and once it's in, wood-based siding doesn't dry out the way fiber cement does. In a climate like ours — driving winter rain off the Strait, salt air drifting in from Bellingham Bay, months of the year where surfaces stay damp under moss and shade — those installation margins get tested constantly, not occasionally.
Where Our Climate Makes the Difference
Whatcom County isn't uniformly harsh, but Ferndale sits close enough to salt water and gets enough sustained wet weather that siding here works harder than it does inland. A few specific factors matter:
- Long wet season: Siding can stay damp for days or weeks at a stretch during our fall and winter storm cycles, which is exactly the condition wood-based products are least suited for.
- Moss and organic growth: Shaded, north-facing walls in this area collect moss and algae readily. That growth holds moisture against the siding surface longer than an open, sunny wall would.
- Salt air: Proximity to the Strait of Georgia and Bellingham Bay means airborne salt accelerates wear on coatings and fasteners, which shortens the life of any protective treatment.
These aren't hypothetical concerns — they're the everyday conditions any siding on a Ferndale home has to shed water in, year after year.
Warranty and Long-Term Ownership
LP backs SmartSide with a warranty, and it's worth reading the fine print on any product before assuming full coverage. Engineered wood warranties commonly carry maintenance obligations — caulking schedules, prompt repainting, addressing any exposed cut edges — that need to be kept up consistently for the warranty to hold. That's a real ongoing commitment for a homeowner, on top of the periodic repainting most wood-based sidings need regardless of warranty terms.
We'd rather not sell a product and then have to explain, five or ten years later, that the moss stains or soft spots on a north wall trace back to a maintenance gap or an installation detail that got missed. It puts us and the homeowner in an awkward spot that's avoidable from the start.
Why We Install James Hardie Instead
We standardized on James Hardie fiber cement siding because it removes the failure mode we're most worried about in this climate: moisture-driven rot. Fiber cement is made from cement, sand, and cellulose fiber — it doesn't feed mold, it doesn't swell and buckle when it takes on water, and it isn't a food source for the moss and organic growth that's common on shaded exterior walls here. Hardie's ColorPlus factory finish is baked on and warranted separately from the substrate, which cuts down on the repainting cycle that engineered wood and cedar both require. Hardie also builds climate-specific HZ product lines engineered for exposure to our kind of weather, and backs the siding with a strong, transferable non-prorated warranty. It costs more up front than LP SmartSide. We think that difference is worth it for a product that's less sensitive to installation variance and holds up better against the specific conditions — rain, salt, and shade-grown moss — that define a Ferndale exterior.
The Bottom Line
LP SmartSide isn't a bad product; it's a product with a moisture tolerance that doesn't match well with our local weather patterns, and a maintenance and installation sensitivity we'd rather not build a home's long-term protection around. We install James Hardie because it's the system we trust to perform here without asking homeowners to babysit it.
If you're weighing siding options for a home in Ferndale or elsewhere in Whatcom County, we're happy to walk through what we install and why. Reach out for a free, no-pressure estimate — no obligation, just an honest look at what your home needs.