Mixing siding styles is one of the most effective ways to elevate a home exterior from ordinary to eye-catching. By combining profiles like lap siding or board and batten with the right accents, you can add depth, highlight architectural features, and dramatically boost curb appeal.
Whether you’re designing a new home or planning an exterior remodeling project, understanding how different siding styles, materials, and colors work together is key. Below, we’ll walk you through how to choose siding styles, accents, and colors — and share real-world inspiration for mixing siding styles with confidence.
How Do You Choose Siding Styles?
Choosing siding styles starts with understanding what each profile brings to your home’s overall exterior design. The tips below will help you choose the right siding style.
Lap Siding
Lap siding is a classic choice for traditional homes, Craftsman designs, and historic homes because the clean horizontal lines offer timeless appeal. It works well as a primary siding material, creating a sense of tradition and familiarity throughout the home’s exterior.
It’s also useful when you want to de-emphasize height. The horizontal lines can make a home feel longer and lower.
Board and Batten Siding
Board and batten is a type of vertical siding that works well for both farmhouse styles and modern homes. On a farmhouse-style home, it replicates the traditional look of barn siding. In modern homes, the vertical lines and wide panels provide a crisp, clean, minimalist look.
This type of siding can also increase visual interest quite easily. The vertical lines naturally draw the eye upward, creating a heightening effect that can add drama to tall rooflines, high dormers, or soaring gables.
Mixed Lap and Board and Batten Siding
Mixing different siding styles can be a great choice when you need to break up large wall surfaces, highlight architectural details, or avoid a flat, monotonous look. For example, if your home has bump-out additions, dormers, or tall gables, you can use lap siding for the home’s main body and then highlight architectural features with board and batten siding. The contrast between different textures can work wonders to elevate curb appeal.
How Do You Choose Accents?
A beautiful home design starts with choosing the right siding options — but don’t forget to consider accent materials, too. Popular options include stone, brick, natural wood, and wood-look cladding, each of which offers a distinct visual effect.
- Stone and brick accents are often used around foundations, chimneys, or entryways to ground the design, add a rugged look, or create a sense of permanence.
- Natural wood accents — not just wood siding as accent walls, but also beams, trim, and soffits — bring warmth and organic character to home exteriors.
When choosing accents, the key is restraint. Remember that these materials should highlight architectural features — not compete with them. Choose one or two accent materials and use them strategically within your siding design to maintain a balanced look while enhancing curb appeal.
How Do You Choose Siding Colors?
The color palette is one of the last decisions to make — and that’s because it needs to be selected with both the architectural style and accent materials in mind. If you want brick, stone, or wood accents, check out the colors available to you and choose your favorites — then select a siding shade that pairs well with them.
Siding colors should also pair well with trim colors, the color of your shingles or roofing material, and other architectural features like garage doors and your front entryway.
Once you have all the accent details worked out, you can choose siding shades that complement or contrast with the accents. Whatever you do, make sure that the undertones work well together throughout.
For example, if you’ve selected warm-toned natural wood trim and stone foundations with hints of brown and red, warm siding shades — everything from creamy off-whites to dark chocolate browns — will be your best bet for creating an effortlessly cohesive look.
Mixing Siding Styles: 6 Real-World Exterior Design Ideas
Want to see how real homeowners are mixing siding styles to create fabulous exterior designs? You’re in luck. Read below for inspiring examples that illustrate how you can pair TruLog’s lap and board and batten siding with materials like stone and natural wood.
1. Breaking the Rules — The Right Way!
This first home takes the rules of color combinations — specifically, the advice to match undertones — and breaks them. The siding is a mixture of TruLog steel board and batten in Dark Charcoal and warm natural wood, which creates a sharp contrast between undertones. Technically, gray is a neutral tone — but it often reads as cool.
What makes this look work so well is that it has a very intentional design. Rather than using wood accents haphazardly, the homeowners created an accent wall around the garage doors, then tied the look together with more natural wood around the entryway and front porch.
2. Mixing Materials With a Light Touch
This cozy coastal cottage uses a light touch when it comes to mixing materials — but the contrasts still make a big visual impact. TruLog steel board and batten siding in Matte White creates a fresh and clean base in keeping with the lakeside vibes of this community. The homeowners then dressed up the look with matching natural wood elements: trim, porch beams, beamwork decorating the gables, and even a matching front door and porch swing.
3. Updating the Rustic Look
Barndominiums look amazing with the right rustic accents — and this barndo is the perfect example of how you can create a look that perfectly balances rustic elements with fresh, clean vibes. TruLog’s steel board and batten siding in Matte White is what creates the fresh and clean look — a popular choice borrowed from the modern farmhouse style, which often relies on white board and batten siding as an updated take on traditional barn siding.
The rustic side of things comes from wooden barn doors, porch beams, and wooden porch ceilings. Notice that the homeowners didn’t go overboard when blending natural wood with white board and batten siding. Elsewhere, the home features white trim around windows and doors, which is a smart choice that prevents the darker wood tones from weighing the look down.
4. Creating a Layered Look
The genius behind this home is that it uses board and batten siding, stone siding, and a carefully considered color palette to create a beautifully layered look. With the blacks and dark grays in this design, it runs the risk of feeling too heavy or squat — but TruLog’s steel board and batten siding in white elevates the look, adds the right amount of contrast, and lends the gables a greater sense of height.
The next layer comes in shades of gray: Dark gray stone siding and a matching roof. Together, these work well to unite the color palette, both top to bottom and along the color spectrum. Black doors and trim tie everything together nicely — and the natural wood elements of the front porch create a small but obvious focal point against neutral shades.
5. Mixing Siding Styles and Natural Wood
This home mixes two different siding styles: TruLog’s steel board and batten siding and TruLog’s steel lap siding, both in Matte White. If you look closely, you’ll discover the brilliance behind how these homeowners mixed both siding styles.
For example, the front of the garage features lap siding up to the top of the lower gable — but the upper gable uses board and batten siding, which is a subtle difference that helps set it apart from the smaller gable.
That’s the theme you’ll see as you examine the rest of this home’s exterior. Some walls or bump-outs feature lap siding while others use board and batten — and it’s all designed to create subtle separation that enhances the home’s beautiful geometry.
On top of that, the design mixes in just enough natural wood accents — the garage doors and front porch — to keep the color palette from being bland. The wood shades pop against the white siding, providing both contrast and visual interest.
6. Mixing Siding Styles to Create a Nature-Inspired Look
If you want a nature-inspired look, it doesn’t always have to revolve around green siding or extensive landscaping. This home pulls it off by mixing siding styles and accents that each bring an element of nature to the table. TruLog’s lap siding in Dark Walnut creates a beautiful foundation that adds warmth and the look of real wood to the mix.
Next comes the stone siding. It’s light enough to make a great contrast against the lap siding — and just as importantly, the shades of brown have the same undertones as the lap siding, which works wonders to create a cohesive look.
Last of all, there are real wood beams and other elements — the front door and the garage door — that add a bit of variety in both shades and texture. While subtle, the woodwork is what gives this home a distinct Craftsman vibe while also adhering to the nature-inspired theme.
Create Amazing Mixed Siding Designs With TruLog Steel Siding
Mixing siding styles requires a selection of different types of siding, like lap or board and batten; complementary accents such as stone, brick, or wood-look siding; and a carefully considered color palette that strikes the right balance in terms of colors that pair well together while creating eye-catching contrasts.
TruLog has the selection you need. Our steel siding comes in lap, board and batten, and log styles — and each style is available in a wide variety of colors, including shades that replicate the look of real wood. On top of that, you’ll enjoy the fact that our steel siding requires very little in the way of maintenance, all while delivering incredible durability and longevity.
To learn more about our siding, download our free catalog.
