We're about to turn our red brick 1950's single story house into a modern contemporary 2 storey home and we want to add some timber (or timber look) cladding to break up the render. We're in Sydney and most of the cladding would be west facing. I don't mind the maintenance too much, and it needs to be durable. What would you recommend?

We have just started cladding our double height extension with a product called millboard. It comes in all different colours and best of all it's made from cement fibre board although it looks just like wood. We explored so many 'fake' wood cladding and this was by far the best. Originally we wanted blackened timber but we were concerned about on going maintenance so we were really chuffed to find Millboard. It is essentially a deck board but I spoke to Millboard and they said they knew a lot of people were starting to use it as cladding. We are using the fascia trim boards as vertical cladding which is much thinner than the decking boards. They are 16mm deep and 127 wide. Hope that helps!

Good afternoon Lucy are you looking at the 2nd storey clad in the picture you have posted. as this looks similar to a cedar clad detail. see link to one of our builds attached although its more of a brown/orange tint rather than yellow. Cedar Clad failing that you could use a timber product like Accoya and stain it which ever colour you like Hope thats of some help Tom Roscoes Building Company

Not heard of Millboard previously so I looked it up and it seems to be intended for decking. Cedar is good for external cladding, or you could also consider Larch, but both will need some protection and maintenance of course, although I knew a builder who liked using Nordic Larch for cladding extensions and he said it needed very little to protect it from the elements, Andy