What it is called, by market
One concept, four markets. Where a name means something else locally, the card says so rather than leaving you to find out on site.
United Statesyours
Close, not identicalsiding
"Siding" in North America usually implies boards or panels. "Cladding" is understood there but is not the everyday trade word.
Canada
Close, not identicalsiding
As the United States, siding means boards or panels; cladding is understood but is not the everyday trade word for the whole family.
United Kingdom
Close, not identicalcladding
also weatherboarding
Cladding is BROADER than siding: it covers brick slips, rainscreen panels and metal systems as well as boards.
Australia
Close, not identicalcladding
also weatherboard
As the UK. "Weatherboard" specifically means overlapping timber boards, not the whole family.
The governing standard, by market
United Kingdom
BS 8414
Fire performance of external cladding systems, tested as a complete system rather than by material.
Australia
NCC Volume One
External wall requirements including combustibility provisions.
Calculators for this
Each works in either measurement system, and the terminology on the page follows whichever market you have selected.
Frequently asked questions
- Is cladding the same as siding?
- Not quite, and the difference is breadth rather than product. Siding, in American and Canadian usage, normally means boards or panels applied to a wall — vinyl, fibre cement, timber, engineered wood. Cladding, in British and Australian usage, covers all of that and also brick slips, rainscreen panel systems, metal and composite panels, and stone facings. So every siding is cladding, and a good deal of cladding is not siding. Reading a British specification calling for cladding as though it meant lap boards will miss the system it is actually describing, and the quantities, the fixings and the support behind it are all different.
- Why does cladding come up in fire regulation?
- Because the outer skin of a tall building is a path fire can travel up the outside, and because the SYSTEM rather than the material determines whether it does. Regulation in several markets tightened substantially after fatal fires, and the approach that emerged is to test a complete assembly — the panel, its core, the insulation behind it, the cavity and the cavity barriers — rather than to certify a material in isolation, because a panel that performs acceptably alone can behave very differently over a ventilated cavity with combustible insulation behind it. The practical consequence when reading across markets is that a product approved in one jurisdiction is not thereby approved in another: what was approved was a system, not a board.
- What is a rainscreen, and is it a kind of cladding?
- Yes, and it is a strategy rather than a material. A rainscreen cladding is hung clear of the wall on rails or brackets with a ventilated and drained cavity behind it, and the outer skin is deliberately NOT relied on to be watertight — it takes most of the weather, and whatever gets past it drains down the cavity and out at the base. The actual weather line is an air and water barrier on the wall behind. That is a different arrangement from a face-sealed system, where the outer surface and its joints are the barrier, and it is why the cavity, its depth, its ventilation openings and its cavity barriers are the parts a rainscreen specification spends its words on.