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highwood^® vs. Others

Whatever the application, you have a lot of choices for outdoor living materials. Each of those choices will have positive features that will meet your needs, but you should also understand the weaknesses of each alternative too. Let’s consider a few commonly used materials in outdoor products:

• Wood – of course scores highly in natural beauty (Mother Nature did an excellent job), however keeping that beauty and color isn’t easy and requires a commitment on your part to invest a lot of time, effort and dollars maintaining it. Understand the life of the product too – you may have to buy 2, 3, 4 products in wood to last the same time-span as 1 highwood^® version.
• PVC (vinyl) / foamed PVC – Ultra low maintenance is the biggest appeal here – just like highwood^® a soapy water scrub is all it takes. However, with shiny reflective white being 90% of the offering and the remaining 10% being very limited in color/realism, aesthetics are its main downfall. Plus, hollow profiles, dual-layer finishes and a lot of inferior recipes in the market make it treacherous for the consumer.
• Composites – Offer a more natural look than PVC due to the fact that wood fiber is in the “recipe”. Composites tried to deliver wood-like colors and, while many seem to achieve this on day one, beware of significant color fade (over just a few years) and their ability to suffer from water/stain damage. Composites may claim to be low maintenance; however manufacturers cannot claim to be ULTRA low maintenance (like PVC or Highwood).

Highwood is a “next generation” material. It takes the best elements of each of the above materials and combines them into a single new and UNIQUE solution for outdoor applications… the beauty of wood in solid synthetic pieces that are ULTRA low maintenance.