While horizontal lap siding remains one of the most popular and frequently used siding styles across the country, it’s far from the only way to side your home. Many other siding styles, such as vertical siding, can sometimes help you highlight areas of your home’s architecture and design much more effectively.
Vertical House Siding Ideas
Traditional vertical siding, such as board-and-batten, can make a very striking statement on many architectural styles. This is true whether you use the vertical planks as an accent or to cover the building’s exterior in its entirety. These 9 vertical house siding ideas will help you discover exactly what’s possible with this unique and eye-catching siding style.
1. Dual Style
When your home has many rooflines and additions to it, it can become a bit of a visual puzzle to put together. You want to give equal visual weight to each section, and not have them all blend together until they are difficult to break apart.
This beach property makes great use of both two siding styles and two roofing styles, combining the different shapes into one, dynamic façade. Cedar-look shingles with traditional roofing shingles cover some of the house, while board-and-batten vertical siding with standing seam roofing cover the other areas. The colors of each section match perfectly, while the roofing and siding work together in harmony to produce a home with a lot of interest and visual appeal.
2. Farmhouse Style Façade
Farmhouse style homes have been gaining a lot of popularity of late, as the rustic modern style continues to grow. Therefore, things like front porches, farmhouse colors, and other accents are growing in popularity as well.
This charming white home uses board-and-batten vertical siding over the entire front façade. Paired with a classic front porch and traditional color scheme, it gives a modern, farmhouse style to the home. The garage is left in traditional horizontal lap siding, which helps highlight the vertical siding on the main building, creating some contrast that makes for a more interesting design.
3. Bump Out Accent
Homes that have wings or areas that abut the main section of the home may get a little out of balance visually, particularly if more emphasis is given to one side or another, such as the use of a porch on one half. Therefore, additional visual weight sometimes needs to be added to help restore symmetry to the design.
This home uses Dutch lap siding over the majority of its exterior, so the use of vertical siding on the bump out just to the side of the porch helps bring a little extra interest to the façade. Combined with the board-and-batten are four inset window panels, which helps highlight the area in further. Together, these features help provide balance to the porch and bring the home into better visual alignment.
4. Lifting Upper Story
Town houses can often get a little lost, style-wise, when each home in the row uses the same colors and siding styles. Even varying colors sometimes isn’t enough to really make one home stand out from those around it.
This town house helps break the mold and gains additional visual height by using wide, board-and-batten vertical siding just on the upper story. By changing the direction of the siding in this one area, it forces the viewer to look up, which in turn visually enhances the height of the building. This can be an important feature in a home that needs to set itself apart a bit from its neighbors.
5. Architectural Call Outs
There are many ways to make a home unique, often by simply changing the exterior architecture in subtle ways. Eaves, hipped roofs, dormers, and other features can help create a more interesting design, and each one needs to be treated differently to help make the most of the placement.
This home has some unique architectural features, such as the roofline and the windows above the garage. These features might get lost, however, if they were treated to the same type of siding as the rest of the façade. Therefore, by switching to vertical siding just in these areas, you have the chance to highlight unique architectural additions like these, calling them out and bringing extra attention to them. This enhances the entire home, and makes for a more interesting appearance for the exterior.
6. Stand Out Side Building
Many homes today are made up of interconnected buildings like this one. Additions can help you maximize the amount of space that you have in your home, but unless they are seamless to the original plan and architecture, sometimes they can really stick out.
To help make the transition easier, rather than covering both in the same type of siding, highlight the differences between them by switching siding types. This side building uses a vertical board-and-batten siding over the majority of the exterior, using a horizontal lap only as an accent. Combined with the more architectural look of the main home, this gives the entire property a fresh look and a lot of visual appeal.
7. Window Accent
Sometimes homes have enough going on with the front of their exterior, and don’t need any extra help or changes in the siding to call out features. With homes like this one, however, where both the front and the side are highly visible from the curb, adding a little vertical siding around the upper story windows can help call out this area, helping it match up with the front façade and eliminating the need for more shutters.
In turn, the contrast between the front windows and the windows on the side of the home helps to increase the visual appeal, and adds a little bit of depth to the exterior. By using the shutters only on the front of the house, it helps make them a little more special, and therefore the vertical siding a little more special as well.
8. Accents Under the Eaves
Not every home has a roofline that ends right at the second story; some have an additional peak that extends upward, raising the height of the home and bringing the eyes upward. In this case, simply extending the lap siding upward would do nothing to highlight the area, and would even detract from its appeal.
By using vertical siding just beneath the eaves at attic level, it helps capture the eye as it travels automatically to this area. The look is matched again on the side of the home, this time with the vertical siding extending downward slightly to call out this particular area of the home, and helping to increase the diversity of the exterior.
9. Bold Coloring
One of the best things about siding, is that the fact that color choices can vary from home to home. In some cases, this may mean using a bold, bright color over a traditional neutral.
In this case, the blue coloring and dark roof bring out the dramatic contrast with white trim. This combination, combined with the bright colors in the landscape, is very appealing, giving a more modern and interesting look to the façade.
Try Vertical Siding
Vertical board-and-batten siding is not new, but when used in new and exciting ways it can help bring a fresh look to many homes. If you need to update your home’s façade, consider adding some vertical siding to give it the lift it requires.
