External Cladding

External cladding acts as an additional protective layer for your home, whilst also aesthetically improving the look and feel of your house. Exterior cladding are applied to your home, are non-loadbearing and help protect your home against the environment and weather.

Western Red Cedar is often referred to as the best timber for external cladding, due to its durable nature, versatile design options, and ease to work with. Outside of our composite timber-look cladding options, we are avid users of Western Red Cedar for our external cladding projects and recommend it highly.

Softwoods can definitely be used for exterior cladding outside, with Western Red Cedar being one of our most popular external cladding options, which is a softwood timber.

External cladding can be installed in 10 steps, however, should be handled by builders, installers, specifiers, or competent handymen. The steps for installing exterior wall cladding include:

1. Apply building wrap batten over the building wrap
2. Create a gap to let moisture out
3. Check your cladding before applying
4. Seal the back face
5. Install the cladding
6. Apply fixings
7. Apply joins
8. Finish wall ends, corners doors and windows
9. Preserve your exterior cladding

External cladding is often a more affordable option when compared to bricking and can also be a faster installation process.

For residential applications in Australia, permission would not be required for replacing external cladding, however for major projects such as commercial jobs, planning permission would most likely be needed.

When you consider the lifespan of rendering compared to cladding, exterior cladding can be considered cheaper when factoring in repainting, labour, and maintenance costs of render. These ongoing costs of rendering can really add up, whilst our external timber cladding alternatives are generally quite low maintenance when compared.

When considering how expensive cladding is, there are a few factors that will determine the final cost of your project, and these factors can vary greatly depending on your cladding specifications. The key cost considerations of timber cladding includes the timber species used for the external cladding, the profile/finish selected, the size of the project, the labour required and finally the installation costs.

All of these factors can vary the price from around a hundred dollars per square metre to a few hundred dollars per square meter. To get an accurate and customised quote specific to your project, get in touch with the Modinex today for a free quote and sample.