Cedar, vinyl siding costs: Pricey materials mean experimentation
On the easternmost edge of Long Island's South Fork, the weather is "unforgiving," said Montauk-based builder Jason Biondo.
"The hot, the cold, the wind, the rain, the snow," detailed Biondo, who grew up in the area and has been building there for decades. "Cedar is one of the few things that can handle a Montauk winter and summer."
Cedar shake and shingles have characterized the Hamptons landscape for generations. The style has also seeped into pockets of western Long Island. Builder Mark Sagliocca, of Brightwaters Building Company Inc., has used it on projects in Islip, Bay Shore and Brightwaters.
"Cedar shake, regardless if it's the Hamptons or farther west or anywhere else in the country, or the world for that matter, is a very hardy siding," Sagliocca said.
But the cost of cedar products — some are nearly $700 per 100 square feet, industry experts say — has priced some homeowners out of the traditional style and encouraged experimentation with a patchwork of materials that fit their budgets.
'A timeless design'
This Rockville Centre home was redone with cedar siding about a decade ago. Credit: Rise Media
People drive by and stop us since we've done this house, and are just so taken with how it looks because it really just looks so different and special.
— Stacy Bowe, of Rockville Centre
The Rockville Centre home Stacy Bowe shares with her husband and children has worn a few different outfits over the past two decades. The Bowes replaced vinyl siding with Hardie siding, then Hardie with cedar.
"The aesthetic drove a lot of it," Bowe said of the decision to cover the house in reddish-hued cedar shake during a renovation about 10 years ago. Listed for nearly $1.4 million by Nancy Slavin of Douglas Elliman, the home is currently in contract.
When she looks at the house, Bowe, a retail executive, recalls summers spent in Amagansett and Montauk. The wood has weathered over the years. Today, she appreciates the natural wood and accepts the lack of control over its uniformity.
"People drive by and stop us since we've done this house, and are just so taken with how it looks because it really just looks so different and special," Bowe said. "Every time I drive up, it's like a proud moment."
Kyle Roskot, of The Agency, said, "I'm seeing more and more of them pop up all over, and I think it definitely has to do with people loving classic Nantucket and Hamptons-style homes, and they're a timeless design."
The design of this West Islip home was inspired by the film "Something's Gotta Give" and incorporated cedar siding to complete the exterior look. Credit: James Carbone
They took numerous trips out to the Hamptons, taking pictures of houses that they loved. All with that cedar siding.
— Kyle Roskot, of The Agency, the listing agent on the home
Alaskan yellow cedar was key in the renovation of a West Islip house designed it to look like the Hamptons home featured in the 2003 film "Something's Gotta Give."
"They took numerous trips out to the Hamptons, taking pictures of houses that they loved," said Roskot, the listing agent on the nearly $4 million home. "All with that cedar siding."
The popularity of cedar on the East End is a product of functionality and style, and Biondo said the product will "always" be popular in the area.
"The reason why it's so prevalent out here and has been for 200 years is that it holds up," Biondo said. "When you see it here on the East End, we borrow a lot of ideas from New England. From the way that we frame houses, to the way that we finish them."
Most of the time, Biondo finishes houses in "New England cottage style," he said. The traditional shingle-style Hamptons home falls into this category.
"Cedar can kind of go the distance," Biondo said. "It's not a very dense grain; so it can get absolutely soaking wet, and the next day, if the sun's out and the wind's blowing, it completely dries out."
Cedar often costs more than other materials
Pat Hughes, director of Exterior Sales for Riverhead Building Supply, said prices can offset the appeal of cedar. Credit: Rick Kopstein
For some, though, the aesthetic and functional appeal of cedar is offset by the cost. The price of cedar — shake, shingle or other — varies depending on a set of factors that includes type and material.
As points of reference, Pat Hughes, director of Exterior Sales for Riverhead Building Supply, offered several examples. One variety of Red Cedar perfection sold by Riverhead Building Supply costs $414 for 100 square feet. A type of white cedar, installed with 5-inch exposure, costs $508 per 100 square feet. An ultra white cedar sells for $692 per 100 square feet.
Vinyl clapboard ranges in price from $110 to $200 for 100 square feet, Hughes said. Vinyl shake can cost anywhere from $400 to $600 per 100 square feet, he said. These materials necessitate accessories that depend on choice of insulation, or lack thereof, which means an additional cost of $50 to $150 per 100 square feet, he said.
James Hardie Hardieplank, or clapboard, which has become a popular choice, starts at $325 per 100 square feet, Hughes said. Accessories are dependent upon which materials are used for corner boards, house wrap, nails, window trim and caulk, he said.
Hardie Shingle, he said, costs about $600 per 100 square feet. As an estimate for accessories for Hardieplank or Hardie Shingle, Hughes offered $100 per 100 square feet. Hardie products are pre-painted by the factory, he added.
Credit: Rick Kopstein
Despite the cost, Hughes still finds himself selling large quantities of cedar shake. The company stocks product so that it is immediately available to contractors, Hughes said.
"The boom caused by COVID really set the market for shingles," Hughes said "They became hard to find, the prices really went up."
During the pandemic, Hughes said, some items cost double what they cost now. A few cost even more than double current prices, he said.
Price and supply have since recovered a bit, he said, but cedar shake remains expensive.
"That's probably gonna be your most expensive option, a cedar shake product," Hughes said, adding, "most of the stuff that we're buying comes from out west, Canada."
Still, Roskot has noticed cedar shake on homes in South Shore areas.
"If you drive through waterfront in West Islip, Islip, Brightwaters, South Bay Shore, you see them all the time now, especially on some of the newer builds they do the triple-dipped cedar siding," Roskot said.
Sagliocca, who builds across Long Island's South Shore, chose Alaskan yellow cedar for his own Brightwaters home.
"I want it to weather to look like it was 100 years old like you'd see in Nantucket, where they don't really stain the cedar, everything is left natural," Sagliocca said. "My house that was built 20 years ago looks like it's been there 50, 60, 70 years."
Patina can deter some homeowners
Workers for Copper Solutions Corp. install sapele mahogany siding on a house in Montauk. Credit: Gordon M. Grant
Overall, though, Biondo said he has seen homeowners start to stray from cedar. Not only is the price often prohibitive, but wood has a natural patina process — changes to its color and texture as a result of weathering. When the natural tannins work their way out of the wood several months after installation, Biondo said, the wood's color changes.
Red cedar, which Biondo said is commonly used, can turn black depending on which side of the house it is on.
"That's a big deterrent for a lot of people," Biondo said. "But people have kind of now, in the last two years, gotten hip to that, and we use an Alaskan yellow cedar."
Sagliocca said homes in the $500,000 to $900,000 range might have vinyl siding, while homes with asking prices upward of $900,000 often use "more of the natural products, whether it be stone, brick cedar. And then you have your composites."
Riverhead Building Supply has multiple types of cedar planks from which buyers and builders can choose. Credit: Rick Kopstein
In the multimillion-dollar sphere, Sagliocca sees varied requests.
"A lot of people are still old school and they want brick and stucco," Sagliocca said. "Or they may want all cedar, but specific cedar — there are different grades of cedar, different thicknesses of cedar."
When Sagliocca builds spec houses, or new builds to be sold to an unknown buyer, he usually chooses stone and cedar, he said. For specific clients, the architect and homeowner make most of the decisions.
As to the appearance of cedar siding beyond Montauk and the Hamptons, Biondo theorized homebuyers and builders who can afford cedar siding may just be following suit.
"There's some pretty high-end houses on the East End, doesn't matter which fork you're on," Biondo said. "So, maybe people are just traveling more and seeing that and copying it."
Experimentation, budget compromises
Credit: Gordon M. Grant
Especially over the past year, Biondo said he has had had to come up with affordable alternatives to cedar siding. Often, he sees homeowners choose synthetic siding products, including cement-based HardiePlank and poly-ash Boral. These products also require less maintenance, he said.
On a current project, Biondo is covering one-third of a house in stucco and its wings in mahogany. On a past project in Ditch Plains, he combined three elements: clear cedar tongue and groove, corrugated metal and standing seam metal roofing.
"If you really want to push the envelope, and you're going more towards the modern aspect," Biondo said, "there is a huge movement now of houses that look like they belong in Malibu, California, instead of Montauk. And, you can really get away with mixing metals and stucco with your woods."
Some of Biondo's current client base is a "younger generation" that is now in the housing market.
"They kind of are leaning more towards that contemporary modern feel, which is a lot of steel, and glass and flat roofs," Biondo said. "And since it doesn't really snow up here anymore, it's kind of not a big deal to have a flat roof."
Hughes still sees strong demand for the product in its various forms, including shakes and clapboard, but other products have also grown in popularity, Hughes said. Thermally modified hemlock, he said, has become more popular because it is said to be impervious to rot and insects.
And though there have been advances in installation to improve performance, cedar shake production is still relatively traditional, according to Hughes.
"It's not as technologically advanced as you would think it is, it's literally a person in front of a saw," Hughes said.
"But cedar's always going to be a popular product," Hughes said. "It's a timeless look."
History of cedar shake and why it has stuck around
"Frankly, many of the house styles today are fruit salad when it comes to architectural styles," said Robert Reuter, a trustee of the Three Village Community Trust and member of Brookhaven Town’s Historic District Advisory Committee. "They’re sort of almost cartoonish in how many different materials and shapes and things they use."
Shingles remain an option, Reuter said, and are strongly rooted in architectural history. Reuter lives in a restored 1888 Victorian with a cedar shingle roof in East Setauket, he added.
"I think part of the appreciation for shingles comes from it being one of the very first building materials in our Colonial history," Reuter said. "What we would refer to as the vernacular Colonial farmhouse, pretty much exclusively used shingles."
Part of the reason for this, Reuter said, is that houses from the 17th and 18th centuries employed all hand work.
"Shingles were relatively easy to fabricate by splitting logs, and the expression ‘hand splits’ came from the process whereby they would just sort of wedge apart a block of cedar and create shingles of various sizes," he said.
Reuter cited various shingle-covered landmarks within the Three Village community, including the Brewster House and Hawkins House.
"The aesthetic is really baked in," he said of the style. "People go through historic areas and they see the shingle-covered houses and it registers."
Once, shingles were an affordable option, Reuter said, in part because they could be left natural and did not require painting. Today, cedar shake is on the opposite end of the economic spectrum.
"Shingle style" homes were popular in East Hampton's "resort architecture" in the 1800s, according to "East Hampton's Heritage" by Clay Lancaster and Robert A. M. Stern, published in 1982.
"The first important summer house to be built in a vernacular or provincial style was that of Thomas and Mary Nimmo Moran, two of the Tile Club artists who had decided to make East Hampton their permanent summer home," Stern wrote of the home built in 1884. The Morans may have "set the tone for the summer cottages built in the 1890s," he said of the style that resembled a "traditional East Hampton barn" with its shingles, gables and other details.
The style was "fashionable" beyond the Hamptons at that time, Stern wrote. Architect I. H. Green, who had offices in Sayville, also used it in his designs, including an East Hampton residence known as "Pudding Hill" and a commission on an adjacent parcel in the late 1880s.
Arielle Dollinger joined Newsday as a staff reporter in 2022. Previously, she covered local and national news as a freelancer for The New York Times, Newsday and other outlets.
