Cedar has an inherent problem accepting and retaining paint. A friend has a home built during the 1880s. It is magnificent, but the exterior is entirely cedar. The last time it was painted was two years ago and the crew used SW Resilience. I'm not yet able to tell how well it will hold-up, but at least it covered the cedar. We talked to someone at FPE who said that they had no FPE-certified painters in our area, but, of course, recommended that as the best paint for her purposes. Sorry, just realized that you are referring to stain. She only has paint--white, black shutters, grey-blue veranda floor. This post was edited by kitchendetective on Sat, Jan 19, 13 at 11:00

It sounds like you are wanting knots etc to show, so you are using a semi transparent stain. The only way, you could go lighter would be if you used a solid color stain, and then none of the knots would be visible. Solid color stain is almost like using paint. I love the color that is on there now.

Marc Waddell was our builder and we used our neighbor in Weddington as our architect. She did it as a favor to us as she works at a big firm that does primarily commercial. I tried to link to Marc's site, but it is currently suspended so not sure what is going on there. Good luck. We have two neighbors who are trying to build and are finding a very expensive and tight market.

This is one of the cottages on Blackberry Farm in Walland, TN. It was posted under their design portfolio on their website, but no further information was listed about exterior details.