What Are The Best Cladding Alternatives?

There are a number of alternative exterior decor options available to you. Naturally, if you live in a preservation area or a listed building, your options will be significantly limited. If for instance your home is rendered with a lime mortar, you will need to speak to a specialist heritage builder who can accommodate your specific requirements. Additionally, if your home is not listed but is already rendered, removing older render and replacing with anything other than more render can be complicated as the old render will have marked the brickwork, so you will need to cover this up with new render or cladding.

Renovation can be an expensive process and ‘mission-creep’ can mean those budgets are all too soon eaten up. Nevertheless, we still want our project to be finished and for our homes to look beautiful when we’re done. This may mean you have to compromise over your first choice of materials:

Whilst composite cladding is a popular option, for some it is simply too expensive and therefore not an option. Simple to install, timber cladding is a cheaper alternative to composite and has a naturally, warm, organic homely feel once installed. Timber cladding can be purchased from most timber merchants and cut to your required length. When ordering, remember to allow 5% wastage for offcuts and overlaps. Timber requires regular maintenance so only install it on a doer-upper you’re planning to sell, as it may cost you more in the long run otherwise. While still relatively price competitive, prices for timber are increasing and showing no real signs of dropping! So the perceived gap between the traditional timber stuff and composite cladding may not be as wide as you once thought!

Take a walk around your neighbourhood and look at the homes that have been repointed. It is amazing what a difference repointing the mortar will make to those old bricks. Shining lime mortar will bring your brickwork to life again. To remove the old mortar, if you’re confident doing so you can hire scaffolding and cut it out with an angle grinder, taking care not to damage the brickwork. Care must be taken when operating at height and appropriate PPE, including safety gloves, and goggles should be worn at all times.

If repointing is not an option and bricks have become darkened by soot or traffic pollution you may like to consider painting your house. Choose a warm colour which blends with the roof and surrounding homes so as to be eye-catching but not imposing. Popular tones are whites, creams and pastel shades. If you live in a more modern house or have a red tile roof, you could experiment with brighter, exotic colours but always consult with neighbours and or the local council as complaints could lead to an expensive repaint.

All too often, in England we are faced with covering over the fad of the last occupant in order to modernise our home and bring it up to date. Damaged brickwork, bricked up windows or peeling paint can lead to your home looking unfinished and neglected. A simple coating of render in mortar or stucco will cover over any damaged bricks and give you a new surface to paint in any shade you like. Stucco attracts dirt due to its textured effect and so needs painting more often than a plain render.

It may be that having investigated these options, you are not really sold on any of them! Composite cladding is not as expensive as you might think and gives you the power to transform the face of your home, garden room or commercial premises. NeoTimber® has three ranges available, Classic, Deluxe and Slatted with a range suitable for you and your budget. We’ve priced our boards fairly to make them as affordable as possible. Feel free to explore our full cladding range and to request samples of our stunning composite cladding. You’ll be amazed by the quality, and pleasantly surprised by the price.