Anacortes Siding Allura is a real fiber cement siding manufacturer, and on paper its products look a lot like what we install every day. Fiber cement is fiber cement — a blend of cellulose fiber, sand, and Portland cement, formed into planks and baked to cure. Allura makes a legitimate version of that product. So homeowners in Anacortes sometimes ask why we don't offer it as an option alongside James Hardie. It's a fair question, and the honest answer isn't that Allura is a bad product. It's that we made a standardization decision, and we think it's the right one for homes exposed to Skagit County's weather.
What Allura Gets Right
Allura fiber cement is non-combustible, resists rot better than wood-based siding, and holds paint or factory finish reasonably well when installed correctly. It's a legitimate step up from vinyl or engineered wood in terms of durability, and plenty of homes around the country wear it without issue. We're not going to pretend otherwise — fiber cement as a category is good siding, and Allura is part of that category.
Why We Don't Install It Anyway
Our decision comes down to three things: factory finish consistency, product line depth for our climate, and warranty structure — all of which matter more here than they would somewhere dry and mild.
Finish Consistency in a Wet Climate
Anacortes sits right on the water, which means our siding deals with salt air off Rosario Strait and Fidalgo Bay on top of the region's long, wet winters. That combination is hard on any exterior finish. Factory-applied color coatings need to be engineered specifically to resist UV breakdown, moisture cycling, and salt exposure without fading, chalking, or peeling at the plank edges. We've found that consistency — batch to batch, region to region — is where manufacturers differentiate themselves the most, and it's the area where we didn't want to gamble on a secondary supplier when a well-documented option already existed.
Climate-Engineered Product Lines
Skagit County's siding doesn't just get rained on — it gets rained on sideways, for months at a time, with moss and mildew pressure that builds through the fall and winter and rarely fully dries out before spring. Siding here needs a moisture management system behind it that's been specifically engineered for high-rain, marine climates, not a general-purpose product sold the same way in Arizona as it is on the coast. That's a narrower spec than "fiber cement resists rot better than wood," and it's the spec we prioritize when we choose what goes on a house.
Installation Sensitivity and Warranty Structure
Fiber cement siding is only as good as its installation. Gaps, caulking mistakes, or improper fastening can undermine even the best product, and warranty coverage for workmanship issues varies significantly between manufacturers. We wanted a single, well-documented installation standard that our crews train on repeatedly, backed by a manufacturer warranty structure we understand inside and out — not two or three parallel systems with different fastening schedules, clearance requirements, and touch-up procedures. Running one product line means fewer installation errors, because our crews aren't switching specs from job to job.
Why We Standardized on James Hardie
We install James Hardie fiber cement exclusively, for reasons that map directly onto the trade-offs above:
- Non-combustible core — the same fire-resistance benefit fiber cement as a category offers.
- ColorPlus factory finish — a baked-on finish process built to hold color and resist the fade and peel that raw caulked field-painted joints are prone to in coastal, high-moisture climates.
- HZ5 product engineering — Hardie's HZ product lines are built with regional climate zones in mind, including cold, wet, moisture-heavy zones like ours.
- A strong, transferable warranty — coverage that's well-documented and holds up if a home changes hands, which matters to buyers and sellers alike in a market like Anacortes.
- One installation standard — our crews train and re-train on a single spec, which cuts down on the installation errors that cause most siding failures regardless of brand.
None of this means Allura is unsuitable for every home in every climate. It means that for the specific conditions we build against — salt air, driving rain, a moss season that runs half the year — we decided one well-documented, climate-matched system installed the same way every time beats offering multiple products and stretching our crews' expertise across all of them.
What This Means for Your Project
If you're comparing siding options for a home in Anacortes or elsewhere in Skagit County, we'd rather be upfront about what we do and don't install than sell you on a product we're less confident in for this specific environment. That's the same reasoning behind our stance on vinyl, LP SmartSide, Cemplank, primed spruce, and cedar — we're not saying those products can't work anywhere, we're saying we've picked the one system we trust enough to stand behind with our own installation warranty, in our own climate.
If you'd like to talk through your siding options, or just want a straight answer about what would hold up best on your specific home, we're happy to walk the exterior with you. Reach out for a free, no-pressure estimate — there's a form below to get started.