Judge it by the wood, not the calendar. When water stops beading and starts soaking in, it is time. In North Texas a west-facing run always wants attention before a shaded side yard, so a single site-wide interval was never the right way to think about it.
Throw a cup of water at the fence. If it beads and runs off, the finish is still doing its job. If it darkens the wood and soaks in, the surface is open and it is time. That one test beats any interval you will read online, because it measures the thing that matters rather than time elapsed.
New cedar arrives wet and has to dry before it will hold anything. Sealing too early traps moisture the finish cannot displace, and it peels the following summer. This is the single most common finishing mistake we are called out to fix.
A stain is only as good as the surface under it. A grey, weathered fence needs cleaning and brightening before it will take a finish evenly, and skipping that step is why some recoats look blotchy within a year. Grey is surface weathering and recoverable; wood that has gone soft is not.
Yes. Grey is surface weathering, not rot, and a clean and brighten pass takes it back far enough to hold stain. Wood that has gone soft underfoot is a different problem and needs replacing.
A sealer protects without much colour; a stain adds colour and usually some protection. Most fences here benefit from something with pigment, because pigment is what slows UV damage.
Cedar will survive untreated and weather to grey. Staining is about appearance and slowing surface degradation, not about whether the fence stands up.
We walk the property, give you a straight price, and show you how it is built underneath.