HardiePlank makes a cedar shingle-looking product that will save you the maintenance of cedar shingles.

I really like the look of stone. Personally, I prefer all stone as compared to a brick and stone combo.

I really like the exterior of your inspiration home - our recent new build was similar in style. We used nichiha shake siding, similar to hardie, but comes in wider widths. They are also a concrete based product. We used hardie board and batten, stone and brick in addition to the shakes. We painted the shakes and the b&b. We've only been in our home for 8 months so I can't give you any long term results, but we anticipate and hope for a long lasting paint job.

That sounds like a lot of mixed materials on the house....you may want to eliminate one or more of them. Your inspiration house above is all stone and shakes or shake look a likes.

I really like the exterior of your inspiration home - our recent new build was similar in style. We used nichiha shake siding, similar to hardie, but comes in wider widths. They are also a concrete based product. We used hardie board and batten, stone and brick in addition to the shakes. We painted the shakes and the b&b. We've only been in our home for 8 months so I can't give you any long term results, but we anticipate and hope for a long lasting paint job.

Thanks for thE feedback. The front elevation is a brick layer in the bottom half followed by cedar shakes and stone. We are just not sure about cedar versus something else such as more brick, or hardi shakes?

The use of many different materials requires greater skill from the designer to be successful. What may look interesting in rendered drawings is often busy and awkward in reality. And there is the practical issue of how dissimilar materials are joined and made weather tight. This is a much more difficult issue when one material is above another and they are of different thicknesses or distances from the framing. I believe these details are so difficult that it is best to try to avoid them as designers and builders have done for centuries.

Cutting a house horizontally in half with different materials is a look best left to the production McMansions of the boom. If you are going to choose different materials to accent the build, you should choose elements to clad in it completely. And NEVER do "just the front" of the house in stone or brick with a cheaper material elsewhere. If you are going to use stone or brick, clad the entire box of the structure in that material. The expense of doing correctly like that is why most people choose one of a facade's bumpouts to use that material on and save the less expensive material for the main box. That is what your inpiration photo shows. The stone goes from bottom to top and is on the whole element to be accented, not cutting it in half.

Would appreciate having the paint colors, TY.