Understanding the Fine Print of Siding Warranties

Whether you’re buying a new home or remodeling your existing house, choosing a siding material comes with a number of decisions—material, profile and color, to name a few. Just as important is the robustness of the siding’s warranty. After all, there are few better indicators of a product’s quality and lifespan.

Unfortunately, the language of siding warranties—and nearly every building product, for that matter—can vary greatly from manufacturer to manufacturer. If you don’t read the fine print, you may be left helpless if products start to fade or fail prematurely.

Here’s what to look out for.

Get to Know Your Siding Warranties
Warranties are notoriously hard to decipher—there’s a lot of jargon, legal speak and fine print. But understanding the meaning behind the warranty and what it actually covers is important.

When in doubt, ask your contractor, retailer or the manufacturer itself for a layman’s explanation of what the warranty covers and when. For siding, this not only means manufacturer defects and other obvious flaws, but also color and fading. For what length of time is color fading covered? And how much change is considered fading?

Vinyl siding is one product category in which you might find some big differences if you dig into the fine print.

For example, Westlake Royal Building Products™’ Royal^® and Exterior Portfolio^® siding lines with Chromatix™ Color Technology carry an industry-leading Double Lifetime Warranty. While most other vinyl companies prorate the coverage for the second owner of the house, Royal and Exterior Portfolio provide full coverage to the second owner. This additional coverage not only instills peace of mind, it can help increase resale value.

In addition to Double Lifetime coverage, the use of Chromatix technology enables us to warrant fade to as low as 3 Hunter Units (a common measure of color difference), while most other vinyl manufacturers only warrant a higher fade amount of 4 Hunter Units. The following image shows the approximate magnitude of 3 Hunter Units of fade with a typical gray color.

This also can be the case in considering vinyl siding to other materials. In comparing Royal and Exterior Portfolio’s surface finish coverage versus a fiber cement manufacturer’s prefinished offering, Royal and Exterior Portfolio both offer a Double Lifetime Warranty with fade coverage of 3 or 4 Hunter units, depending on the color, while the fiber cement product carries just a 15-year warranty for chipping and flaking, but only covers fade of up to 4 Delta E for just three years.

A Portfolio of Robust Siding Warranties
Along with Royal and Exterior Portfolio, many of Westlake Royal Building Products’ other siding lines carry strong warranties. For example, Celect^® Cellular Composite Siding carries a 25-year color-protection warranty covering fade of up to 4 Delta E. CraneBoard^® SolidCore Siding^® comes with a life-of-the-home limited warranty.

For further guidance, reach out to our customer service representatives to get more details and a full understanding of warranty offerings.