Using the Right Siding for a Michigan Cottage
- Lake Effect Exteriors
- 1 day ago
- 8 min read
There’s a certain look people picture when they think about a Michigan cottage.
It might be an older shake-sided cottage tucked into the woods, a family place on an inland lake, or a newer home overlooking Lake Michigan. The architecture can be completely different from one property to the next, but the best ones tend to have something in common: they feel like they belong where they are.
That’s an important distinction when choosing siding.
A cottage exterior doesn’t necessarily need more materials, more colors or more architectural details. In many cases, getting the proportions, siding profile and color palette right matters more than adding anything else.
If you’re updating a cottage or building a lake home in Northern Michigan, here are some of the siding styles and combinations we think work particularly well.
What Makes a Michigan Cottage Look Like a Cottage?
There isn’t really one official “Michigan cottage” architectural style.
Northern Michigan homes pull inspiration from traditional lake cottages, cabins, Shingle-style homes, coastal architecture and more contemporary lake-house design. Historic cottage architecture around places such as Walloon Lake has even drawn from early-20th-century Great Lakes and Northeastern coastal homes, including shingled exteriors and large porches.
That variety is part of what makes these homes interesting.
Some common exterior details include:
Horizontal lap siding
Shake siding
Board and batten
Natural wood accents
Larger porches
Gable details
Stone foundations or chimneys
Wider window and door trim
Simple, nature-inspired color palettes
You don’t need all of them. In fact, one of the easiest ways to lose the cottage feel is to try to use every exterior trend on the same house.
Shake, board and batten, stone, dark windows, contrasting trim and natural wood can all work beautifully. They just don’t all need to be fighting for attention at once.
Horizontal Lap Siding: The Simple Cottage Look
Traditional lap siding is probably the easiest starting point for a Michigan cottage.
It works on older homes, newer lake houses and just about everything in between.
For a classic cottage, we tend to like lap siding with a relatively simple trim package. From there, the personality can come from the color, porch, windows, landscaping or a smaller amount of accent siding.
That restraint is important.
A house surrounded by trees, sitting near the water or built on an interesting lot often already has plenty going on visually. The siding doesn’t always need to become the main attraction.
Lap siding in a warm white, muted blue, soft gray or earthy green can give the house a traditional cottage feel without making it look themed.
For a more contemporary lake house, a Brushed Smooth lap profile can give those same horizontal lines a cleaner appearance.
Shake Siding Feels at Home on Michigan Cottages
Shake siding and cottage architecture naturally work together.
There’s a reason you see shingled exteriors on so many traditional lake and coastal homes.
Shake adds texture and creates smaller shadow lines across the wall. It can be used across an entire home, but it can also be extremely effective when it’s limited to areas such as:
Front gables
Upper stories
Dormers
Porch walls
Entry features
One thing we pay attention to is scale.
A huge siding profile can look perfectly appropriate on a large contemporary house but overpower a smaller cottage.
That’s one reason narrower shake profiles interest us for older homes and cottage architecture.
LP® SmartSide® now offers an 8-inch nominal Brushed Smooth Shake with a 5- to 6-inch reveal, in addition to its wider 12-inch nominal shake profiles.
That smaller scale can be useful when you want the texture of shake without making the siding feel oversized for the house.
Lap Siding and Shake Is Hard to Get Wrong
If someone asked us for one siding combination that consistently works on a cottage, this would probably be it.
Lap siding on the main body of the home. Shake in the gables.
It gives you enough variation to make the architecture interesting without making the exterior busy.
You could do:
Warm white lap + white shake: Keep everything monochromatic and let the change in texture provide the detail.
Blue lap + lighter shake: A slightly different shade in the gable can emphasize the roofline without creating a hard contrast.
Deep green lap + natural wood: This can work especially well on a heavily wooded property.
Gray or blue lap + shake + white trim: A more traditional lake-house palette.
The exact combination matters less than making sure each material has a reason to be where it is.
Where Board and Batten Fits
Board and batten can absolutely work on a Michigan cottage.
We just wouldn’t automatically put it on every cottage because it happens to be popular.
On a newer lake house, vertical siding can emphasize a tall gable or help break up a larger elevation. It can also work well on garages, additions and secondary sections of the home.
Where it gets overdone is when every gable becomes board and batten simply because there’s a gable.
Sometimes a plain lap-sided wall is exactly what the house needs.
For cottages that lean more contemporary, we like the contrast between horizontal siding on the main portion of the home and one carefully chosen vertical section.
Natural Wood Tones Belong Up North
This is where LP® SmartSide® ExpertFinish® Naturals Collection™ becomes particularly interesting.
Natural wood has always made sense around cottages.
Cedar siding, timber details, stained porch posts and exposed beams visually connect a building to the woods and water around it.
The Naturals Collection gives homeowners another way to bring that appearance into an exterior. LP currently offers six Naturals colors designed around stained-wood tones, including Saffron Cedar, Weathered Walnut, Aged Amber, Smoky Slate, Washed White and Bonsai Black. They are offered in Cedar Texture and Brushed Smooth finishes.
For a Michigan cottage, we probably wouldn’t automatically cover every wall in a wood-look finish.
We think Naturals becomes more interesting when it is intentional.
For example:
Painted Siding + Naturals Gable
Use a traditional painted lap siding on the majority of the home and introduce a warmer Naturals finish in a prominent gable.
Naturals + Stone
A wood-inspired siding tone next to natural stone can work especially well on a Northern Michigan property.
Naturals + Dark Windows
For a more contemporary lake house, a warmer wood tone can keep black windows and clean architectural lines from making the house feel too cold.
Naturals Around a Porch or Entry
Sometimes one smaller section is enough to completely change the exterior.
Used correctly, natural wood tones can make a newer exterior feel more connected to its setting instead of simply looking new.
Cottage Siding Colors for Northern Michigan
Color behaves differently when a house is surrounded by woods and water than it does on a typical suburban lot.
That doesn’t mean there are special rules for an Up North house, but the surroundings should influence the decision.
Blues
Blue is an obvious fit around the water, but it doesn’t need to be a bright nautical blue.
Muted, deeper blues can work particularly well with stone, white trim and natural wood.
Greens
Green siding can nearly disappear into a heavily wooded property.
Sage colors create a softer cottage look, while deep greens can give a newer lake house a more dramatic exterior.
Warm Whites
White remains one of the easiest ways to create a classic cottage.
The key is often choosing a white that works with the roof, stone and wood rather than automatically choosing the brightest white available.
Grays
Gray works particularly well when the home already has warm materials that keep the exterior from feeling flat.
Gray siding with cedar, stone or another natural texture can create a very different result than gray siding by itself.
Natural Wood Tones
Wood tones can bring warmth into almost any of those palettes.
They’re especially effective when used as an accent rather than another competing color.
The Roof Should Be Part of the Siding Decision
One thing homeowners sometimes overlook is how much roof you actually see on many cottages.
Steeper gables, dormers and lower rooflines can make the roof a major part of the exterior.
That means we wouldn’t choose siding color without considering it.
A warm brown roof, for example, can push the siding palette in a completely different direction than a charcoal or black roof.
The same applies to existing stone.
If the house has a large stone chimney or foundation that isn’t changing, we usually treat that as one of the starting points for the exterior rather than picking the siding first and hoping everything works together afterward.
A Wooded Cottage and a Waterfront Cottage Don't Have to Look the Same
“Lake house siding” covers an enormous range of architecture.
A small cottage surrounded by pines outside Traverse City might call for something completely different than a larger waterfront home on Torch Lake.
And that’s okay.
For a wooded cottage
We tend to like:
Greens
Browns
Natural wood tones
Shake
Stone
Warm trim colors
For a traditional waterfront cottage
Think:
Lap siding
Shake gables
Whites
Blues
Soft grays
Traditional trim
For a contemporary lake home
Consider:
Brushed Smooth siding
Larger areas of uninterrupted siding
Select board-and-batten sections
Dark windows
Natural wood-inspired accents
Simpler trim
The point isn’t to fit the house into a category. It’s to recognize what kind of home you already have and push the design in that direction.
Don't Turn a Cottage Into a Farmhouse by Accident
This is something we think about quite a bit.
Board and batten, black windows, white siding and wood accents can look great.
But put all of those elements together in the same proportions used on a modern farmhouse and suddenly a lake cottage doesn’t really look like a lake cottage anymore.
That doesn’t mean those elements are off limits.
It just means proportion matters.
Maybe board and batten belongs on one gable instead of the whole house.
Maybe the windows don't need oversized black trim around them.
Maybe shake fits the architecture better than another vertical section.
Good exterior design is often as much about what you leave out as what you add.
Using LP SmartSide on a Michigan Cottage
One reason we like working with LP SmartSide on cottage and lake-home projects is the amount of design flexibility within one siding family.
LP offers lap siding, shake siding, panel and vertical siding, trim, multiple textures and its Naturals Collection of wood-inspired finishes.
That makes it possible to create a traditional cottage, a more rustic Northern Michigan exterior or a cleaner contemporary lake house without having to make the home look like three different siding products were chosen independently.
But we still don't think the siding manufacturer should dictate the design.
The house comes first.
Once we understand the architecture, setting and details worth emphasizing, then we can decide which siding profiles make sense.
What If Your Cottage Already Has Cedar Siding?
A lot of older Michigan cottages started with real wood.
If you're replacing existing cedar, there are additional things worth considering before changing siding profiles or materials.
The existing exposure, trim dimensions and original architectural details can all influence how the home looks after the renovation.
We've covered that topic separately in our guide to Replacing Cedar Siding on a Michigan Home: What Homeowners Should Know.
That article goes deeper into the replacement side of the decision.
This one is about what comes next:
What should the cottage actually look like?
Keep It Looking Like It Belongs Up North
The best Michigan cottages don't look like someone selected a collection of exterior trends from a catalog.
They feel connected to the property.
Sometimes that means shake siding and a big porch.
Sometimes it's simple horizontal siding, a stone chimney and a color that almost disappears into the trees.
And sometimes it's a completely modern lake house softened with warm wood tones.
There isn't one correct formula.
The goal is to understand what makes the home interesting and build the exterior around that.
Planning Siding for a Michigan Cottage or Lake Home?
If you're planning to update a cottage, lake house or Northern Michigan home, Lake Effect Exteriors can help you work through the siding profiles, colors and exterior details before the project starts.
Whether you're trying to preserve the character of an older cottage or give a newer lake house a more finished look, we'll help you put together an exterior that makes sense for the home and its surroundings.
