Shiplap Wall in Florida: Pros, Cons, and What Holds Up Better (2026)

A shiplap wall is a wall covered with long boards that overlap at a stepped joint, leaving a thin shadow line between each board. It is also one of the most mislabeled wall finishes on the market: much of what is sold and pinned as shiplap today is a different joint wearing shiplap's name. And it is a finish designed in a colder, drier building tradition, now being installed across Florida's humid coast. This guide separates the real joint from the look-alikes, gives prices from a dated national source, and then covers what the idea galleries skip: what Florida air does to each shiplap material, room by room, and what holds up better where boards lose.

I run a South Florida studio that designs and installs large-format panel walls. My studio does not sell or install shiplap, and this guide does not pretend otherwise. That distance is useful here: I can tell you where shiplap is a good wall, where it is a maintenance subscription, and where a different finish does the same visual job with less risk – including the rooms where I would talk a client out of my own panels too. Where a number comes from a national guide or a manufacturer, I name it. Where a figure is my studio's own, I label it as such and note its limits.

What shiplap actually is – and the three look-alikes sold under its name

TL;DR: True shiplap boards carry a rabbet (a stepped cut along each long edge) so consecutive boards overlap, self-space and shed the eye along a shadow line. The famous nickel gap – the open space between boards – is a uniform 1/8 inch. Tongue-and-groove boards (interlocking boards, a tongue on one edge fitting a groove on the next) milled for a gap, and plain boards spaced with a coin, are look-alikes with different behavior.

Angi defines shiplap as wooden paneling with a rabbet, or groove, at the top and bottom of each plank, which lets the boards self-space, fit snugly together, and form a tight barrier; the name came from its original use as waterproof siding on ships, and The Spruce traces the same profile to exterior house siding. That history matters for Florida readers: shiplap was born as weather cladding, a skin meant to overlap and shed water outdoors, long before it became a farmhouse interior.

The joint produces the look. Boards run mostly horizontally, each course (one full row of boards) overlapping the one below, and the step in the profile leaves a narrow recessed line between boards. In the nickel gap version – the one in most photographs – that line is a uniform gap of 1/8 inch, named, per manufacturer UFP-Edge, for the idea that a nickel could slot into the space. UFP-Edge's rabbeted edges have a built-in stop, so the gap stays even down the whole wall. Traditional shiplap without the nickel-gap milling fits tight with no open gap at all, which is why two "shiplap" walls can look noticeably different in person.

Sizes need one warning. Boards are sold by nominal size (the name on the label), which is larger than the board you receive. A nominal 1x6 measures 3/4 inch thick by 5-1/2 inches wide in AZEK's published dimensions, and part of that width hides inside the overlap. Dealer FP-Supply puts the exposed face – the part you actually see – at 5 inches for a 1x6 and 6-3/4 inches for a 1x8. UFP-Edge sells its nickel-gap boards in 4, 6 and 8 inch widths in lengths up to 12 feet, with the 6 inch white board the most common; other mills list lengths to 16 feet. Buy by that exposed face when you count boards, or your order will come up short.

Three products share the shelf name, and they behave differently. First, true rabbet shiplap, as above. Second, tongue-and-groove boards (a tongue on one edge fitting a groove on the next) milled so a nickel gap shows when they are joined – a tighter, more interlocked wall that reads the same from across the room. Third, the DIY version: plain boards or plywood strips simply spaced a coin's width apart on the wall, with no joint at all. The spaced-board version has a gap that goes all the way through to the drywall, collects everything, and moves with nothing controlling it. When a quote or a product page says "shiplap," ask which of the three it is. The answer predicts the price, the install method and how the wall ages.

The honest pros: why the wall keeps winning rooms

TL;DR: Shiplap is a real material with real texture, it installs with ordinary carpentry, it covers tired drywall without a skim coat (a thin smoothing layer of plaster), and its horizontal lines make narrow rooms feel wider. In a dry, conditioned room, painted pine shiplap is a legitimate, good-looking wall.

It is a material, not a print. A painted wood board has depth at every joint and catches raking light (light that grazes across a surface and reveals its texture), so the wall keeps changing through the day. For farmhouse and coastal rooms – the looks this profile is known for – that shadow line is the whole point, and no flat finish reproduces it.

The carpentry is ordinary. Boards are nailed to framing or to a prepared wall, cuts are straight, and a competent installer or a careful homeowner with a miter saw (a power saw for angled cuts) can run a wall. There is no grout, no curing window, no wet trade. Section 7 below walks through what a correct install actually includes, because "ordinary" is not the same as "casual."

It forgives the wall behind it. A board layer bridges minor drywall sins – patches, slight waviness, old paint texture – that a flat panel or a fresh paint job would show. Boards still need a reasonably sound, dry wall behind them, and Section 8 of my guide to wall panels over existing walls gives the full rules for the surface underneath (the substrate), but shiplap hides cosmetic flaws better than most finishes.

It can be repainted in place. A painted shiplap wall takes a new color without the boards coming off – Angi lists interior shiplap painting at $2 to $6 per square foot when the color changes. That is a real advantage over any pre-finished sheet, mine included: a damaged pre-finished panel has to come out and be replaced as a whole sheet.

The price is knowable. Shiplap is a commodity with published national pricing, covered in the cost section below. You can check any quote against Angi's table in about two minutes.

The cons the gallery photos leave out

TL;DR: The same grooves that make the look are dust channels that need vacuuming, painting shiplap well is slow, wood joints open and close with the seasons, and the style is now so identified with one TV-era farmhouse moment that it can date a room on resale.

Dust moves into the grooves and stays. Angi's pros-and-cons summary says it plainly: the rabbets between boards are perfect catch-all crevices for dust. Its cleaning guide calls shiplap a dust magnet and prescribes the routine – a vacuum with a brush attachment worked along every groove, then a microfiber cloth – roughly one to two times a month, and up to once a week if needed. Horizontal boards collect more, because every groove is a shelf; vertical installation traps less dust in the grooves, Angi notes. On a single accent wall this is ten minutes. On a whole room, it is a standing chore, and allergy households should factor that in.

Painting it is fussy. The same Angi comparison notes that the grooves make painting tricky: too much paint pools in the joint, too little leaves bare patches. Painting is easier before the boards go up, and UFP-Edge's own instructions recommend painting the wall behind a dark color first, so that when a joint opens, it still reads as a shadow line, with no crack of pale drywall showing through.

Wood joints move. Wood absorbs and releases moisture as the air around it changes, swelling and shrinking mostly across the grain (across the width of the board), per the USDA Forest Products Laboratory's Wood Handbook as summarized by Wagner Meters. On a shiplap wall, that movement concentrates exactly at the feature you bought: the gap. UFP-Edge tells its own installers, in writing, that as wood dries, a slight joint may open up. In a stable, conditioned interior the movement is small. In a Florida house with the air conditioning off for a month, the movement is much larger, and the next section does that math.

The look has a date stamp. Shiplap's surge rode one renovation-TV era, and the profile is now the reference point for that moment: my own wall paneling guide repeats a trade description of slat panels as "this decade's shiplap." I install walls for a living, and plenty of Florida coastal rooms wear it well. But a finish this tied to one era raises a resale question that a plain stone or wood-look wall does not, and covering whole houses in it – every bedroom, every hallway – is the version most likely to date a listing.

Florida humidity: the math that decides this wall

TL;DR: The EPA asks for indoor humidity below 60 percent, ideally 30 to 50 percent. Miami and West Palm Beach outdoor air averages 82 percent in the morning and 61 percent in the afternoon across the year. Any lapse in cooling pushes a board wall toward the zone where mold grows and wood swells – and mold can grow hidden behind paneling.

Start with the target. The US EPA's mold guide states the rule in one line: keep indoor humidity below 60 percent if possible, ideally between 30 and 50 percent, because mold needs moisture to grow and moisture control is the key to mold control. The same guide warns that mold may be hidden on the back side of drywall, wallpaper or paneling – the exact cavity a board wall creates – and that water-damaged materials should be dried within 24 to 48 hours.

Now the local weather. The Florida Climate Center at Florida State University, publishing NOAA climate normals, gives Miami and West Palm Beach an annual average outdoor relative humidity (RH, the amount of water vapor in air relative to what it can hold at that temperature) of 82 percent in the morning and 61 percent in the afternoon; September mornings in Miami average 86 percent. Those are outdoor figures, and I am not presenting them as your indoor reading: a well-run air conditioner holds a Florida home near the EPA band all summer. The risk lives in the lapses. A house sitting empty between snowbird seasons with the AC off or set high, a condo after a storm outage, a guest room with the vent closed, a garage conversion – in all of these, the wall assembly drifts up toward outdoor moisture over a few weeks, and the materials on the wall either tolerate that drift or record it.

Wood records it. The Wood Handbook mechanism is simple. Wood moves toward equilibrium with the air around it. It takes up moisture until it holds as much as the damp air gives it, and releases moisture when the air dries – swelling in the first case, shrinking in the second, with most of the movement across the board's width. A shiplap wall is a row of board widths stacked together, so seasonal movement shows up as gaps that open in dry weeks and close in wet ones, paint lines that crack along joints, and, in bad cases, boards that cup (curl across their width) when one face stays damper than the other.

Fiberboard records it faster – and permanently. Standard MDF (medium-density fiberboard, wood fibers pressed with resin) is bonded with urea-formaldehyde (UF) resin, and a USDA Forest Products Laboratory study states the weakness directly: those resins are not water resistant, and swelling on moisture uptake opens the fiber structure further. My published humidity guide describes the same behavior from the panel side: standard MDF swells from humid air alone, edges first, and the swelling never fully reverses when the board dries. An MDF shiplap board in a steamy bathroom is the weakest version of this wall sold. The full material-by-material humidity treatment, including moisture-resistant MDF and plastic cores, is in wall panels in Florida humidity.

Two honest limits on this section. No study I could verify counts how many Florida shiplap walls grow mold, and I will not invent a failure rate. A conditioned, occupied Florida home that holds to the EPA humidity range makes most of this section moot for pine or cedar. That is why the material and room verdicts come next, rather than a blanket ban.

Shiplap by material: pine, cedar, MDF and PVC do not age the same

TL;DR: Pine is the default: cheap, paintable, and fine in conditioned rooms. Cedar heartwood (the darker inner wood) resists decay best among the woods. MDF is the smooth budget board that humidity punishes first. PVC (polyvinyl chloride, a synthetic plastic) shiplap keeps the lines and drops the moisture problem entirely, at a higher price and a less woody feel.

Read the cedar row carefully, because it is the most oversold. The Forest Products Laboratory's rating is for the heartwood (the darker inner wood) of named cedar species, described as resistant to decay and dimensionally stable (it holds its size as humidity changes). A commodity "cedar" board with pale sapwood edges does not inherit the whole rating. Ask what you are actually buying.

Read the MDF row with its one exception. Moisture-resistant MDF grades exist and slow the swelling; PacTrim's MDF shiplap instructions still limit the product to interior use and require 48 hours of conditioning in the room. The category as a whole stays out of wet zones in every manufacturer document I reviewed. "Moisture-resistant" only buys time – the board remains a dry-room board.

Read PVC without the usual sneer. A PVC shiplap board is the same profile and shadow line with the moisture chapter deleted. The trade is feel and optics up close: the surface reads smoother and less woody, and the cost sits at the top of the table. In a bathroom or a beach condo that sits empty in August, it is the version of this wall I would put my name on.

Bathrooms and wet rooms: where shiplap can go, and where it cannot

TL;DR: Wood and MDF shiplap stay out of full bathrooms – two wood-plank makers exclude them in writing. A half bath without a shower is fine. PVC shiplap is the board option for full-bath walls outside the shower itself. No shiplap of any material is verified for inside a shower enclosure.

The strongest evidence in this whole guide comes from manufacturers warning against their own products. TIMELINE Wood, which sells oak shiplap, lists its recommended environment as "not suitable for high humidity areas" and answers its own FAQ with a flat no for humid rooms, because the product is real wood. Wallplanks, a wood plank maker using a shiplap edge, states that its planks should not be installed in high humidity areas like saunas and full baths, and that humidity above 55 percent could raise the grain and expand the planks. It adds that a half bathroom is fine as long as there is no excessive steam. When sellers print limits like that, believe them over any gallery of a steamy master bath wrapped in pine.

The full-bath versus half-bath line is the practical rule. A powder room has a sink, a door that opens, and no shower steam: painted pine or MDF shiplap there sits in ordinary room air. A full bathroom has a daily steam cycle that pushes humidity past the EPA ceiling over and over, condenses on cooler walls, and feeds exactly the hidden-behind-paneling mold scenario the EPA describes. In that room, wood boards are the wrong skin. Angi's wet-area advice lands in the same place: for a wet area, cedar or PVC are the better choices for resistance to water damage.

Inside the shower, the answer is shorter: no. I found no manufacturer approval for any shiplap board – wood, MDF or PVC – as the surface inside a shower enclosure under direct, constant water. Purpose-built shower wall systems and tile are different products with their own waterproofing logic, and my comparison of shower wall panels vs tile covers them. A PVC shiplap wall behind a vanity is a sound choice; a PVC shiplap shower is an experiment.

One middle case deserves attention: the laundry room and the kitchen. Both spike humidity and splash water without being wet rooms. PVC shiplap, or well-sealed cedar, handles them; MDF behind a sink run puts the weakest board you own right in the splash zone. My bathroom-specific panel guidance, including wainscoting (paneling that covers only the lower part of a wall) and the two-zone way to read a bathroom wall, is in wainscoting in a bathroom.

How a shiplap wall is installed – and what a correct job includes

TL;DR: Boards acclimate in the room for days, horizontal runs nail directly to framing, vertical runs need furring strips (thin wood strips fixed to the wall as a nailing base) at 24 inches on center, nails go through the flange (the thin overlapping lip of the profile) and the face – never through the overlap – and the wall behind nickel gaps gets painted dark first.

UFP-Edge's printed instructions give the professional sequence, and any quote can be checked against it. First, acclimation (letting the boards sit in the room so their moisture content settles to the room's level): the boards rest in the installation room for several days before they go up; PacTrim requires 48 hours of conditioning for MDF, and TIMELINE asks at least 72 hours for its oak. Skipping this step means the board goes up at warehouse moisture and moves afterward, on your wall, at your joints.

Second, the fixing pattern depends on direction. Horizontal boards are nailed directly to the wall framing. Vertical boards need full-length furring strips (thin wood strips fixed to the wall to create a nailing base) at 24 inches on center, because the nails need wood behind them along the run. Fasteners are 15 or 16 gauge trim nails (gauge is the thickness scale – a lower number means a thicker nail) long enough for 1-1/4 to 1-1/2 inches of penetration into solid wood. MDF shiplap over drywall goes up with 18 gauge brads (thin finish nails) into studs or construction adhesive in beads at 16 inch spacing, per PacTrim. The pattern is one nail through the top flange (the thin overlapping lip of the profile) and a second through the face about 1 inch from the bottom edge. The instruction prints in capitals: never nail through the overlapping pieces, because a pinned overlap cannot move, and a board held that tight will cup or split instead.

Third, the finish details that separate a clean job from a loud one: start horizontal runs at the bottom and work up with the overlap pointing down; paint the wall behind nickel gaps a dark color before the boards go up; leave the boards' end joints staggered so seams do not line up in a zipper down the wall; and work out outlet and trim transitions while you lay out the run, before you start. A quote that prices the wall as pure square footage with no mention of acclimation, backing or trim is pricing the easy 80 percent of the job. The general anatomy of an install day – measuring, preparation, what is and is not included – is in the wall panel installation process.

DIY honesty, briefly: the spaced-plywood version from the idea blogs is a weekend project and is priced like one in Angi's plywood row. True shiplap with correct acclimation, furring where needed and pre-finishing is a slower job, and the cost section below prices both worlds.

What a shiplap wall costs in 2026

TL;DR: Angi's dedicated shiplap guide, updated October 6, 2026, puts interior shiplap at $2 to $7 per square foot installed, with an average project of $1,000 and most projects between $500 and $1,500. Figures are national. Prep, demolition and repainting sit outside the headline number.

Use one source and use it cleanly. Angi's shiplap cost guide gives interior installation at $2 to $7 per square foot and exterior work at $3.60 to $11. By project size, its 2026 table runs: 100 square feet at $300 to $800, 200 square feet at $500 to $1,550, 400 square feet at $800 to $2,800, and 800 square feet at $1,600 to $5,600. Labor for those projects is $35 to $100 per hour and is typically included in a professional's estimate. HomeAdvisor's 2025 edition of the same data corroborates the range, which is why I am comfortable printing it.

Two warnings belong right here in the cost section. First, Angi's own broader wall-paneling guide lists shiplap at $7 to $16 per square foot – a materially higher figure from the same publisher, on a page with a different scope that neither page reconciles. If a contractor quotes you the high table or a blog cites the low one, ask which guide and which scope. I use the dedicated shiplap guide here because it prices shiplap projects specifically. Second, the headline range prices the wall alone, and the whole job is bigger: Angi prices significant demolition or siding removal prep at $4 to $17 per square foot when it applies, and interior repainting later at $2 to $6 per square foot. Reclaimed boards carry a premium of $5 to $7 more per square foot over new material. A cheap quote that assumes a perfect wall and one that includes prep are not quoting the same project.

Against the alternatives: Angi's FAQ on its shiplap cost page prices tongue-and-groove walls at $2 to $6 more per square foot than shiplap. Angi's separate shiplap-or-beadboard comparison puts beadboard (grooved paneling with a small raised bead between the grooves) installation at about $1,325 on average against shiplap's $1,000. Plain drywall installation runs $1.50 to $3 per square foot – shiplap is a finish upgrade over drywall, priced like one. None of these figures is a Florida quote; Angi's numbers are national, no Florida-specific shiplap dataset exists that I could verify, and South Florida labor will move a real quote inside or outside the band. For the wider panel market this wall competes in, see how much wall panels cost.

What holds up better: the alternatives, room by room

TL;DR: Keep the shiplap look in PVC where air is wet. Choose tongue-and-groove for a tighter wood wall, beadboard (grooved boards with a small raised bead between the grooves) or board-and-batten (wide boards with narrow strips covering the joints) for wainscot height (paneling that covers only the lower part of a wall), shiplap-look tile in wet zones, and flat large-format panels where you want the calm of stone or veneer with the fewest grooves to clean.

PVC shiplap – same lines, different physics. Covered above: the profile survives, the moisture problem does not transfer. This is the answer when the look is non-negotiable and the room is wet, steamy or unconditioned.

Tongue-and-groove – the tighter wood wall. The interlocking joint closes the through-gap: Angi describes tongue-and-groove as fitting together more tightly and typically lacking the same indentation between boards, so the face reads smoother and the grooves are closed channels rather than open ones. Angi prices it $2 to $6 per square foot above shiplap. It is still wood in Florida air, with the same acclimation and conditioning rules. The joint improves. The material story stays exactly the same.

Beadboard and board-and-batten – the wainscot answer. Beadboard (boards or sheets with narrow vertical grooves and a small raised bead between them) and board-and-batten (wide boards with narrow strips covering the joints) both shine at lower-third height, where they protect the wall that chairs and bags hit and leave the upper wall to paint. Angi describes beadboard's traditional role exactly that way, as a protective layer in high-impact areas. At wainscot height there is simply less board on the wall to move, paint and dust. My hub guide to wall paneling compares both profiles against every other type.

Shiplap-look tile – the wet-room impersonator. Ceramic and porcelain tile is manufactured with plank formats and shadow-line relief that imitate shiplap, and tile's waterproof, mold-resistant surface is why it gets specified where real wood would warp and rot. The feel is colder and the install is a tile job, priced as one, but in a full bathroom it delivers the rhythm without the risk.

Flat large-format panels – the opposite philosophy. Where shiplap builds a wall out of lines, a large-format sheet builds it out of surface: one pre-finished sheet, in my studio's case a bamboo-composite sheet 48 by 108 inches and 5 mm thick (a composite core made with bamboo fiber, described fully in bamboo composite wall panels), carries a marble, travertine, stone or porcelain look, real-wood veneer, leather or velvet. The maintenance comparison is the honest headline: a flat sheet wipes down in minutes and has no grooves to vacuum, while shiplap's grooves are its charm and its chore. The limits run both ways and I print mine: the sheet is cladding (a finish layer over a wall), it carries no water or heat rating of its own, it belongs in conditioned rooms on a dry, sound, flat wall with cut edges sealed, and it does not go inside a shower. It also does not do shiplap's job visually – if you want board lines and farmhouse rhythm, a stone-look sheet gives you a different room entirely.

Prices, kept in their separate lanes as always: the shiplap figures above are Angi's national market data. My studio's published anchors, for its own panel projects only, are a stock design from $850, a design fitted to your wall usually $2,200 to $2,700, and full custom turnkey projects from $9,999 – every figure is preliminary, with the exact price confirmed after a specialist measures your wall. Those anchors apply only to my studio's panel work. They carry no shiplap price and no per-square-foot rate, and your room gets a real figure only after measurement.

The Florida decision, room by room

TL;DR: Conditioned living rooms and bedrooms: painted pine shiplap is fine. Full bathrooms: PVC or a different finish entirely. Empty-in-summer homes and unconditioned rooms: plastic or tile only. Kitchens and laundry rooms: PVC or sealed cedar, never MDF at the splash zone.

Living room, occupied and cooled year-round. This is the classic case, and shiplap's best Florida room. Painted pine, nickel gap, horizontal – with acclimation done properly and the AC actually running. Compare it against paint alone in wall panels vs paint before you commit a whole room.

Bedrooms and hallways. Same verdict as the living room, with the dust routine factored in: grooves over a bed headboard wall collect dust where you sleep, and vertical boards trap less. A wainscot-height run in a hallway is the low-risk version of the look.

Full bathroom. No wood, no MDF. PVC shiplap outside the shower, tile or a shower system inside it. Ventilation is not optional decoration here – the EPA's mold guidance for damp rooms starts with airflow.

Half bathroom. Painted pine or MDF is acceptable; there is no steam cycle to fight. Seal the board ends around the sink splash zone anyway.

Kitchen and laundry. PVC first, sealed cedar second, MDF nowhere near the sink or the washer connections. Grease plus grooves also means a cleaning commitment you should take on knowingly; my wall panel care and cleaning guide covers what grooves demand.

Second home, rental between tenants, garage or lanai (a covered outdoor porch) conversion. Any room that sits unconditioned in a Florida summer disqualifies wood and MDF by the math in Section 5. Use PVC shiplap, tile, or a flat panel rated by its maker for the space – and if the room is truly exterior, you are back to shiplap's original job as siding, with exterior materials and pricing to match.

If you take one sentence from this guide: shiplap is a good wall in a dry room and a slow problem in a wet one, and Florida sorts your rooms into those two kinds more honestly than any other state. Choose the material after you have sorted the room, and the wall will still look like the photograph in five years.

Frequently asked questions

Is shiplap waterproof?

No shiplap board is waterproof as a wall system. PVC boards do not absorb water (AZEK states this for its PVC), which makes them the wet-room option, but the joints between boards stay open lines; nothing seals them into a membrane. Wood and MDF shiplap absorb moisture and belong in dry rooms.

Can you put shiplap in a bathroom?

In a half bathroom without a shower, yes – painted pine or MDF lives in ordinary room air there. In a full bathroom, manufacturers of wood shiplap exclude the room in writing (TIMELINE excludes high-humidity areas entirely; Wallplanks excludes full baths and warns above 55 percent humidity). PVC shiplap is the board choice for full-bath walls outside the shower.

How much does a shiplap wall cost?

Angi's 2026 shiplap guide puts interior installation at $2 to $7 per square foot, with an average project of $1,000 and most projects between $500 and $1,500, nationally. A 200 square foot wall runs $500 to $1,550 in its table. Prep, demolition and later repainting are extra.

What is a nickel gap?

The uniform 1/8 inch space between nickel-gap shiplap boards, named for the idea that a nickel fits into it. Manufacturer UFP-Edge mills a stop into its rabbeted edges so the gap stays even. Traditional shiplap without nickel-gap milling butts tight with no open gap.

Does shiplap go out of style?

Shiplap is the signature finish of one renovation-TV era, and newer linear finishes now get measured against it – a trade description repeated in my wall paneling guide calls slat panels "this decade's shiplap." The finish itself is older than the trend – it began as ship and house siding – and reads as coastal rather than farmhouse in many Florida rooms. The resale risk concentrates in whole-house coverage; one well-chosen wall is a different bet.

Can shiplap be installed over drywall?

Yes, and manufacturer instructions cover it: MDF shiplap goes over drywall with construction adhesive in beads at 16 inch spacing or brads into studs (PacTrim), and wood boards over drywall still need nails reaching framing or furring. The drywall must be dry, sound and reasonably flat first.

How do you clean shiplap?

Vacuum the grooves with a brush attachment, then wipe with a microfiber cloth; a slightly damp sponge handles residue (Angi's cleaning guide). Plan on the routine roughly one to two times a month, up to weekly in dusty homes. Vertical boards collect less dust in their grooves.

What is the difference between shiplap and tongue-and-groove?

Shiplap overlaps at a rabbet (stepped) joint and typically shows an open shadow line or nickel gap. Tongue-and-groove interlocks a tongue into a groove for a tighter, closed face. Angi prices tongue-and-groove installation $2 to $6 per square foot above shiplap.