Hardie Plank Lap Siding is sold in "Select Cedarmill" (imitation roughsawn) and Smooth as well as Beaded Cedarmill and Smooth so if you keep within your budget you can have either finish.

IMO painted imitation roughsawn cedar looks a little silly since the real stuff would be stained instead of painted.

We used a wood grain Nichiha lap siding, as we got it at a great price. Not my first choice, but it looks better than I thought it would. Smooth might stay a little cleaner, as I've noticed that the grain gets dusty.

We used the wood grain Hardie Plank siding on our 1897 Farm House and had it painted blueish grey and white. This was our only option in Hardie other than smooth, from what I recall, as we did it back in 2010. I don't think it looks silly at all.

Went with smooth (for the more modern look you mention) and painted it. I love it!

But...... the seams are easily visible. Especially if you're doing the porch ceiling in smooth.

We used the wood grain. It was pre-painted. House is ten yrs old. We re-painted this fall. If I used fiber cement again, I think I would choose smooth. Just like the look better.

Correct me if I'm wrong but it appears to me that Hardie is offering fiber-cement lap siding that is intended to look as much as possible like traditional smooth and rough sawn cedar lap siding.

Smooth cedar lap siding is clear, knot-free cedar planed to be completely smooth so it can be stained or painted. Rough sawn cedar lap siding is a lesser grade of cedar with imperfections that is cut with a large circular or band saw with no further surface treatment so the face grain is raised. In addition to the raised grain, a circular saw will leave curved marks and a band saw will leave vertical marks. It is too rough to be painted so it is usually stained or left unfinished.

What Hardie calls Cedarmill lap siding has an exaggerated raised grain but it is smooth enough to be painted and has no saw marks so it looks more like something produced in a mold rather than a sawmill.

I believe that if you must copy something, it is important to copy it well.

Rough sawn cedar lap siding (cut with a band saw):

Hardie Cedarmill lap siding

To each their own. I like he Hardie cedarmill lap siding well enough...

The problem is neither side is completely correct for an old house. The smooth side looks too smooth and the wood grain side looks too rough. So what's the answer?

Smooth vertical-grain resawn pine and cedar "clapboard" lap siding is still being made the same way it was in the early 19th century except the saws are no longer powered by water. First grade smooth lap siding has a vertical grain to reduce warping and hide the grain of the wood for painting. Rough sawn lap siding is a lesser grade that is flat-sawn with a face grain. I'm not aware of any intermediate grade of sawn lap siding other than smooth and rough.

Most of my house still has smooth painted white pine clapboards installed in 1891.

The grained version looks fake to me when I see it up close, but it's fine from a distance. (We did use the smooth, but not for lap siding, it was a reverse board and batten installation.)

The only wood I have seen that looks like that is sandblasted hardwood.

So being that someone like myself is limited to hardie, then smooth side is better. I was leaning that way, but wasn't 100% sure.

I believe most imitative trim is reversible but I wasn't aware that HardiePlank was. Consider using the Beaded Smooth HardiePlank to add some character.

I've never had a client who wanted anything other than natural materials on the face of their house so I only know what I read about fiber-cement siding. If I were to suggest a fiber-cement product, I would prefer shingles because they add texture to the house and eliminate corner boards, a huge architectural bonus IMO.

I do agree with you and would prefer shingles too but the hardie shingles are double the price of the lap siding.

Double? Wow!

Then factory dipped or pressure treated cedar shingles are still a good choice.

I wouldn't put up with such a poor, rough finish on my cedar clapboards so I certainly wouldn't tolerate it on a manufactured product. There's nothing more irritating than "the look of real wood"-- it almost never looks anything like wood. The fake raised grain is just nasty.

Painted lap siding with corner boards creates a uniform semi-formal texture that works well with certain house designs but if you are considering the Craftsman Style, although it is not necessary to adhere to all of the characteristics of that style, because it springs from such a rich and influential design philosophy, those characteristics deserve to be considered before selecting exterior cladding that might even contradict that philosophy.

"The American Arts and Crafts Movement shared the British movement's reform philosophy, encouraging originality, simplicity of form, local natural materials, and the visibility of handicraft ..." Wikapedia

I have often selected painted lap siding with corner boards for Victorian and Colonial Revival house styles and although Hardie is not made for 4" to-the-weather coursing, I'm sure it could be substituted for painted cedar clapboards. For less formal houses, I often select treated cedar shingles with no corner boards to emphasize the massing and roof forms of the house. I don't add windows or other design elements until the 3D massing model is acceptable without them.

Because the house shown below was deep in a forest I wanted the siding to be red cedar shingles with dark green windows but the owners preferred white cedar with a bleaching oil and white windows that I think would be more appropriate on the ocean but it worked out fine.

There is no end of variations possible with cedar shingles especially the stained and pressure treated kind.

Hardie is made for 4" exposure and is quite common in this area (Boston).

Beautiful and as it turns out when I was googling cedar shakes, this house you worked on came up in my search. :)

I'm going to stick with the hardie smooth side, and assume I should do 4" exposure? I know my old 1898 house had cedar with that narrow an exposure.

Hardie plank is "always" done in the fake wood grain around here. I prefer the smooth. It would have been the same price, but would have been a special order, a few weeks to come in. We had a siding crew ready to start "tomorrow", so I had to go with the wood grain. Then the siding crew disappeared, and the material sat on site for 6 months. But given that stuff is practically as expensive as gold and not returnable, I was stuck with the grained. Grrr. The trim I could specify in smooth or fake grain.

ascorsonelli - Could you tell me what exposure you had on the siding? Also, what product did you use for trim and the posts? Looks beautiful!

Thanks Dreamhouse! I believe it's the 6" but will measure tomorrow. Everything is Hardie--trim and posts included. Contractor built the latter to my specs.

Thank you! I'd love to see any other pics of your project exterior. Did you use smooth Hardie trim for the posts? Thanks!

Turns out it's 8 1/4" (7" exposure). Best I can tell everything except the underside trim (what's the proper terminology??) is smooth. Like I mentioned before, the porch ceiling left plenty to be desired--but that could be bc of a poor install?!

It looks silly because real wood siding when installed new would hot have grain texture on it unless you really screwed up the installation (makes no difference if it was painted or stain). I paid extra to have my siding smooth so it looks like wood siding rather than a vinyl imitation of wood.

Hahaha! Don't feel bad dantastic, I will probably still use textured siding despite the bashing it has received on this thread. I feel like it will probably hide all the dents from the pucks and baseballs better...Ugly siding lovers unite! ;)

And thank you, ascorsonelli! I love the styling of your exterior! Did you get pre-finished or did you paint? If so, what color? Love the light grey.

Aww, shucks ;) Thanks for the kind words! It was unfinished that we had painted. DH actually picked the final color (after I gave him choices of course)! Sherwin Williams Mineral Deposit

ascorsonelli:. When my builder uses Hardie for porch ceilings like yours, he uses Hardie 1 x 3 trim pieces to create a 4 ft by 4 ft grid pattern which completely hides those seams. Looks like nicely trimmed out 4' x 4' panels.

ascorsonelli: Love your house! Did you find that imperfections in paint were more easily visible with the smooth Hardie? I am building a house that is traditional in style, but I like the smooth finish. Trying to decide which to use, and my husband thinks the one advantage to wood-grain is that paint drips will be more easily disguised. Do you still love your smooth finish? Thanks!

zookeeper93, I love your house color! Can you tell me the name of the paint color that you used?

@keywest230, yes! We ended up doing the same to hide the seams.

@corimike, I haven't noticed any paint issues. Still loving the smooth! I personally think the wood-grain looks too fake, but I'll tell you, someone thought our smooth-finish was mdf! Yikes.

@ascorsonelli Thanks for the response! What did you end up doing for exterior window trim? Did you do something smooth, rough sawn?

I would like to know if you should use smooth trim on the cedar rough siding. We will be painting our farmhouse white with black shutters. I liked the smooth siding but our contractor talked us into rough!!

Any followup on using hardie cedar rough siding with smooth trim?

What type of followup are you looking for? There should be nothing wrong or any reason why is would not work fine.

Have you guys done this? eg Hardie board board&batten with Cedarmill panel and smooth trim and bats? Does it look good? Maybe better than all cedarmill (too rustic looking?) or all smooth (too modern/clean/bland?)?