Western Red Cedar is by far the most popular cladding for garden rooms, this is because it requires no ongoing maintenance and has a long lifespan.
We often write on this guide how Western Red Cedar starts out a reddish brown colour and weathers to a silver grey, but some readers have trouble visualising the change in colour so we thought we would show a picture of Western Red Cedar eight years after installation.
True to our regular description the cedar has weathered from a reddish brown to a silver grey colour. The natural resistance to decay isn’t diminished by the colour change, the change comes from exposure to sunlight.
Western Red Cedar is one of the best choices for garden room cladding, it is a very stable wood so there will be minimal shrinkage in the boards, it doesn’t twist like other timbers and has few knots.
Western Red Cedar requires little maintenance thanks to its natural oils which resist fungal and insect attack, because of these natural oils stainless steel fixings should be used as the oil can corrode other metals and cause unsightly staining to the timber.
In our opinion weathered cedar garden rooms look as contemporary albeit in a different way as brand new garden rooms. If you want to maintain the reddish brown colour you could use a preservative although the colour can never match the real thing!
