Builders Don’t Use Vertical Siding as Much as They Should

Board and Batten and other styles of vertical siding can be done with vinyl, fiber cement, wood and many other types of siding material.

If you have an arch, as pictured, it’s hard to scribe with horizontal planks, but easy when using vertical siding. And when you have to go around a curve, whether using fiber cement or vinyl, this can become impossible with horizontal planks that don’t bend, but it's easy with vertical ones that do.

Another example: If seams in horizontal siding make you cringe, then vertical siding, which comes in lengths up to 12 feet, will often allow you to wrap an architectural focal point, such as the entry to a home, without a single visible seam by running lengths of siding from floor to ceiling.

I like vinyl in this instance because the depth of the battens approaches the thickness of real 1-by material, whereas T1-11 and other sheet goods have 1/8-inch cuts scribed into the panes that don’t satisfactorily mimic the real thing.

— Fernando Pagés Ruiz is ProTradeCraft's Latin America Editor. He is currently building a business in Ecuador and a house in Mexico. Formerly, he was a builder in the Great Plains and mountain states. He is author of Building an Affordable House and Affordable Remodel (Taunton Press).