James Hardie Siding for Two-Storey Homes

The design problem with tall walls

A two-storey side wall is a lot of unbroken surface. Cover it in one material and one colour and it can look like a blank slab, particularly on a narrow lot where the side walls are what you see driving up the street. The front often has the opposite problem: garage door, entry, windows and gables all competing.

Ways to break up the height

• A band board at the floor line. A horizontal trim board between the storeys divides the wall and gives a natural place to change material or colour.
• Different siding above and below. Lap siding on the main floor with board and batten or shingle above, or the reverse.
• Gable accents. Shingle or vertical siding in the peaks.
• Two tones. A darker colour below and lighter above keeps the house grounded.

Don’t use all of these at once. One or two is plenty.

The garage front

On a front-garage house the garage door is the largest thing on the facade. Choose its colour as part of the scheme, not afterwards. The wall above the garage is a good spot for an accent material. And the wall beside the garage door takes more knocks than any other, from bins, bikes and car doors, which is one more reason to use a tough cladding there.

Roof-to-wall joints

Two-storey houses usually have lower roofs meeting upper walls: over the garage, a porch or a bay. These joints need step flashing and kick-out flashing so roof water goes into the eavestrough and not behind the siding. The siding is held up off the shingles. Ask how these junctions will be handled; they’re where a lot of water damage on two-storey houses begins. See clearances.

What height does to the job

• Scaffolding or lifts. Needed for safe work on upper walls, and they take time to set up and move.
• Handling. Fibre cement is heavy. Getting long boards up and fastened at height is slower than at ground level.
• Narrow side yards. On zero-lot-line and tight lots there may be little room to stand a ladder. Sometimes access from the neighbour’s side has to be arranged.
• Wind. Upper walls are more exposed, and work stops sooner on windy days.

All of this is why a two-storey costs more per wall than a bungalow of the same footprint. The cost guide has more.

Side walls close to neighbours

Where houses sit close together, building rules can limit what may be used on the facing walls. Non-combustible cladding such as fibre cement is well suited to these locations. Your installer should know what applies to your lot.

Doing it in stages

Some owners re-side the front first and the rest later. It can be done, but matching colour and finish years apart is harder than doing it together, and you pay for set-up twice. If budget is the constraint, ask for a quote both ways.

See also how long installation takes.