Siding Cost: What It Really Takes to Side a House
Siding cost is quoted per square foot of wall surface, or per "square" of 100 square feet, and four things set where your job lands: the material, how much wall you actually have, how far off the ground that wall is, and what the crew finds when the old siding comes off. Material choice is the loudest of the four, with vinyl the cheapest durable option and brick or stone veneer several times its price. Labor is roughly half a siding job, and labor is priced locally, which is why a national average number tells you very little about your own house.
The number under all of it is wall area. Every bid you receive is built on it, every material comparison scales with it, and it is the one figure you can work out yourself before anyone visits.
Need your wall area first? Run your numbers through our free Siding Calculator to get square feet and squares before you collect a single bid. Know that number independently, then check theirs against it.
Updated August 2026
A note on numbers. This page gives measurements, material specifications, quote line items, and the questions that make three bids comparable, not dollar figures. Siding is priced locally, material pricing moves with commodity markets, and both go stale quickly. Collect three written bids against one measured scope, using the comparison checklist near the end.
Siding Cost by Material: The Comparison That Matters
This is the table to save. The cost column ranks the materials against each other installed, on a straightforward two-story home with standard tear-off. Where two materials share a rank, the spread inside each one is wider than the gap between them.
| Material | Relative installed cost | Lifespan | Maintenance | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Vinyl | Cheapest | 20 to 40 yrs | Very low, wash annually | Most common material in the country. Quality varies hugely by panel thickness (.040 builder grade versus .046 and up). Fades over decades and cannot be repainted well. |
| Insulated vinyl | A step above vinyl | 25 to 40 yrs | Very low | Foam-backed panel adds roughly R-2 to R-4 and stiffens the panel so it looks flatter and dents less. A meaningful upgrade for a small premium. |
| Engineered wood | Lower middle | 20 to 30 yrs | Repaint every 8 to 12 yrs | The LP SmartSide category. Lighter and faster to cut than fiber cement, real wood texture, good value. Every cut edge has to be sealed properly. |
| Aluminum | Lower middle | 30 to 40 yrs | Low, but dents stay | Rustproof and light, common on mid-century homes. Hail and ladders dent it, and dented panels cannot be popped back out. |
| Fiber cement | Upper middle, roughly double vinyl | 30 to 50 yrs | Repaint every 10 to 15 yrs | The James Hardie category. Fire resistant, pest proof, holds paint well. Heavy, needs specialized cutting and more labor, so installer skill matters more than usual. |
| Steel | Upper middle | 40 to 50 yrs | Low | Excellent in hail country and fire zones. Heavier gauge than aluminum, pricier, and fewer installers carry it in some markets. |
| Stucco (three-coat) | Upper middle | 50 to 80 yrs | Medium, crack repair and repaint | Regional. Standard in the Southwest, riskier in wet climates without a proper drainage plane. Hairline cracking is normal, not a defect. |
| Natural wood (cedar, pine) | Upper middle to high | 20 to 40 yrs with upkeep | High, stain or paint every 3 to 7 yrs | The best looking material on this list and the most demanding. Neglect it for five years and you are replacing boards, not refinishing them. |
| Brick veneer | High | 75 to 100+ yrs | Very low, repoint at 30 to 50 yrs | Not structural. It is a single wythe hung off the house with ties and an air gap, and it needs a proper ledge or shelf angle to sit on. |
| Stone veneer (manufactured) | Highest | 50+ yrs | Low | Usually used as an accent on 20 to 30 percent of the elevation rather than the whole house, because full-house coverage gets steep fast. |
| Vertical board and batten | Matches the base material, plus 10 to 25 percent | Matches the base material | Matches the base material | A style, not a material. Available in vinyl, engineered wood, and fiber cement. The premium is furring and batten labor, not the panel. |
Understanding the "square" unit
Contractors often quote in squares. One square equals 100 square feet of wall. That single fact resolves most of the confusion in comparing home siding estimates.
If a bid says 24 squares, it is telling you the contractor measured 2,400 square feet of wall. Divide any bid total by that square footage and you have a per-square-foot number you can lay next to any other bid. Do the conversion on every estimate you receive, because a contractor quoting per square and a contractor quoting per square foot are not giving you comparable numbers until you do.
The more useful check is the square footage itself. If three bidders hand you three different wall areas for the same house, only one of them measured, and the other two guessed from the street.
How to Measure Your House for Siding
Every quote is built on wall area. Here is how to calculate it yourself so you can check theirs.
Step 1: Wall area equals perimeter times wall height.
Walk the outside of the house with a tape or a measuring wheel and add up every wall length to get the perimeter. Then multiply by the height from the bottom of the siding to the soffit. A single story is usually 9 to 10 feet including the floor system and band joist. Two stories is usually 18 to 20 feet.
Step 2: Add the gable triangles.
A gable is a triangle, so its area is one half of the base times the height:
Gable area = 0.5 x width x rise
For a 30 foot wide gable end on a 6/12 pitch roof, the rise is half the width times the pitch ratio: 15 x 0.5 = 7.5 feet. So the gable is 0.5 x 30 x 7.5 = 112.5 square feet. Do that for every gable and dormer.
Step 3: Subtract only the large openings.
Deduct garage doors, sliding glass doors, and any window bigger than about 30 square feet. Do not deduct standard windows and doors, and do not be surprised when your contractor does not either. Cutting panels around openings creates offcuts that mostly become waste, so the material you would save by deducting is material you would have thrown away. Most contractors quote gross wall area for exactly this reason.
Step 4: Add waste.
Add 10 percent on a simple rectangular house and 15 percent on anything with dormers, bays, angles, or a lot of cutouts. Board and batten and diagonal work want 15 percent minimum.
Feed those numbers into the Siding Calculator for squares and panel counts, and use the square footage calculator if you would rather build the wall area up one wall at a time.
The Line Items Beyond the Siding Itself
The siding material and its installation is usually 50 to 65 percent of the bid. The rest is this list, and this list is where two quotes for "the same job" quietly diverge.
| Line item | How it is measured | What moves it |
|---|---|---|
| Tear-off and disposal | Per square foot of wall | Two layers of old siding, a long dumpster haul, or asbestos testing all push it up |
| House wrap or weather-resistive barrier | Per square foot of wall | A drainage-plane or rainscreen product costs more than plain wrap and performs better |
| Rigid foam insulation | Per square foot, optional | Adds R-value and thickness, which forces new window extension jambs and deeper trim |
| Trim and corner posts | Per house, or per linear foot | Fiber cement and wood trim cost far more than vinyl corner posts and J-channel |
| Fascia and soffit | Per linear foot of eave | The most commonly excluded line in the whole trade. See the note below. |
| Flashing | Per house, or per opening | Head flashing at openings and kickout flashing at roof-to-wall junctions. Never let this be vague. |
| Caulking and sealants | Per house | Joints, penetrations, and transitions. Product grade matters more than quantity. |
| Paint, if not pre-finished | Per square foot | Applies to raw fiber cement, engineered wood, and natural wood. Factory finish costs more up front and less over the life of the wall. |
| Permit | Flat fee | Required in most jurisdictions for a full re-side |
Two items on that list cause more bid confusion than everything else combined: fascia and soffit, and trim. Get both spelled out in writing, in the same words, on all three bids.
What Tear-Off Reveals: The Change-Order Risk
Here is the honest part of a siding job. Nobody, including a good contractor, knows what is behind your walls until the old siding comes off. Budget for that rather than being ambushed by it.
Rotted sheathing. The most common find, usually under windows, at roof-to-wall junctions where kickout flashing was never installed, and at the base of the wall. A typical find is somewhere between a single sheet and a few hundred square feet. Rot that reaches the framing is a bigger repair and a different trade.
Missing or failed house wrap. On homes built before the mid-1980s there is often nothing behind the siding but felt paper, or nothing at all. That is not an emergency, it is simply an add if the plan did not already include new wrap.
Pest damage. Carpenter ants, termites, and woodpecker holes. Treatment plus repair, and the treatment has to come first.
Old asbestos-containing siding. This is the one to take seriously. Asbestos cement siding, often flat 12x24 shingles with a wavy or notched bottom edge, was common on homes built or re-sided before about 1980. It is not dangerous sitting on the wall. It becomes dangerous when it is broken, cut, or ripped off.
If your home predates 1980 and you do not know what your siding is, get it tested before demolition starts, not after. Bulk sample testing at a certified lab is inexpensive relative to the job and takes a few days. If it comes back positive, abatement has to be done by a licensed contractor and the material has to go to a permitted facility, which adds a meaningful percentage to the whole project. Some homeowners choose to leave sound asbestos siding in place and side over it, which is legal in many jurisdictions and worth asking your local building department about before you plan anything else.
A realistic contingency: set aside 10 to 15 percent of your siding budget for what tear-off finds. On most homes you spend part of it. On some you spend none. On a house that has been leaking behind a window for a decade, you spend all of it and you are glad you had it.
The Cost Drivers That Change Your Number
Number of stories
A single story goes up from ladders and low staging. Two stories needs real scaffolding or lifts, slows every trip up and down, and adds safety requirements. Expect roughly 15 to 30 percent more per square foot on the second story, and more again on a third.
Wall complexity and cutouts
A plain rectangular ranch is the cheapest house in America to side. Every dormer, bay window, turret, gable return, and change in wall plane adds cutting, fitting, flashing, and waste. A complex Victorian elevation can run 40 to 60 percent more per square foot than a simple two-story colonial with identical square footage.
Trim detail
Wide trim, layered casings, corbels, and frieze boards are labor and material both. Swapping standard vinyl corner posts for a house-full of 5/4 by 6 fiber cement trim is one of the larger single upgrades available on a siding job, and it is usually priced as its own line.
Whether soffit and fascia are included
This is the single most common reason two bids differ substantially and look otherwise identical. Soffit and fascia wrap is frequently quoted as a separate line, or excluded silently. It is priced per linear foot of eave, so a long, complicated roofline costs far more to wrap than a simple one, regardless of how much wall you have.
Ask every bidder the same question in the same words: does this price include new soffit, fascia wrap, and gutters, or not?
Regional labor
The same fiber cement job varies dramatically between a low-cost inland market and a coastal metro. Material prices vary far less between regions than labor does, which is why the material comparison table above travels well and a total does not.
Coordinating with a roof
If your roof is within a few years of replacement, doing both at once saves on staging, dumpsters, and the flashing where the two meet. Our roof replacement cost guide covers what that side of the job involves.
Siding Replacement Cost: Partial vs Full
Partial replacement is cheaper and it is often the wrong call. Here is why.
Color matching is close to impossible on anything that has been up more than five years. Vinyl fades, painted wood chalks, and fiber cement weathers. A new panel in the "same" color reads as a patch from the curb, especially on a sun-facing wall.
Profiles get discontinued. Vinyl manufacturers rotate their lines every few years. The exact panel width, lock profile, and texture on a 15 year old house is usually no longer made, and a near-match sits at a different depth and casts a different shadow line.
When partial makes sense: damage confined to one elevation that is not visible from the street, a wall that is about to be covered by an addition or a porch, a section where you still have leftover original material in the garage, or a rental where weather-tightness matters more than appearance.
When to just do the whole house: damage on more than about 30 percent of the wall area, siding at or past its life expectancy, or any elevation visible from the street. At that point the labor efficiency of one full job usually beats two partial jobs done years apart, and you get a warranty on the whole envelope instead of on a patch.
A middle option worth knowing: replace one full elevation, corner to corner, rather than patching in the middle of a wall. A whole-wall change reads as a deliberate design choice. A patch reads as a repair.
Timing: When to Schedule a Siding Job
Siding installs best in moderate weather, roughly 50 to 80 degrees.
Deep cold is a real problem for vinyl. Vinyl becomes brittle below about 40 degrees and can crack when cut or nailed. Installers who work in winter warm the panels and use sharper blades, but the risk is real and it shows up as cracks around fasteners a year later.
Heat matters too, because vinyl moves. A 12 foot vinyl panel expands and contracts as much as half an inch across a normal temperature swing. That is why vinyl is hung, not fastened tight: nails go in the center of the slot, driven to leave about 1/32 inch of play, and panels are cut short at the ends to leave a gap in the channel. A panel installed tight on a cold day will buckle and wave in July, and that wavy look is the most common visible sign of a bad vinyl install.
If your installer is nailing vinyl tight and butting panels hard into the J-channel, stop and ask. It cannot be corrected later without pulling it off.
Fiber cement, wood, and engineered wood all want dry conditions for caulking and painting. Late spring and early fall are the sweet spots in most of the country, which is also when good crews are booked out four to eight weeks.
Scheduling tip: get bids in late winter for a spring install. Crews price more sharply when their calendar is open.
Worked Example: Measuring a 2,000 Sq Ft Two-Story Home
The house: 2,000 square feet of living space over two floors, so roughly a 40 by 25 foot footprint. Attached garage with a 16 foot door. Simple gable roof at 6/12 pitch. Vinyl siding being replaced after 28 years.
Step 1: wall area.
Perimeter = (40 + 25) x 2 = 130 linear feet Wall height, two stories including the band joist = 18 feet Wall area = 130 x 18 = 2,340 sq ft
Step 2: gables. Two gable ends, each 25 feet wide, 6/12 pitch.
Rise = 12.5 x 0.5 = 6.25 ft Each gable = 0.5 x 25 x 6.25 = 78 sq ft Two gables = 156 sq ft
Running total: 2,340 + 156 = 2,496 sq ft
Step 3: deduct large openings. Garage door (16 x 7 = 112 sq ft) and a sliding patio door (6 x 7 = 42 sq ft). Standard windows are not deducted.
2,496 - 154 = 2,342 sq ft of wall
Step 4: add 10 percent waste for ordering: 2,576 sq ft, or 26 squares.
Step 5: turn that into a scope sheet. Hand every bidder the same page:
| Scope line | What you specify | What you are checking in the bid |
|---|---|---|
| Measured wall area | 2,342 sq ft net, 26 squares ordered | Does their measurement match yours within a few percent |
| Tear-off | Full tear-off to sheathing, contractor hauls | Whether disposal is included or billed after |
| Sheathing repair | Stated per-sheet or per-square-foot rate, agreed up front | A blank here becomes a change order at their price |
| Weather barrier | Named product, taped seams, over the full wall | "House wrap" with no product name is not a spec |
| Siding | Material, brand, profile, exposure, color, finish | Pre-finished or field-painted changes the whole schedule |
| Trim | Material and dimension at corners, windows, doors, frieze | The line that separates two otherwise identical bids |
| Flashing | Head flashing at every opening, kickout at every roof-to-wall | Ask for kickout flashing by name |
| Soffit and fascia | Included or excluded, stated in writing | The most commonly hidden exclusion in siding |
| Gutters | Removed and reinstalled, or replaced | Old gutters often do not survive removal |
| Permit | Contractor pulls it | A full re-side without a permit is a resale problem |
| Warranty | Manufacturer on material, contractor on labor, in years | Labor warranty length is the real differentiator |
Reading the material comparison for this house: fiber cement costs roughly double vinyl and lasts roughly 50 percent longer, with a repaint every 10 to 15 years in between. Purely on cost per year of service, vinyl usually wins. Fiber cement wins on appearance, fire resistance, hail resistance, and resale in neighborhoods where it is the norm. Both are correct answers to different questions, and the question is what you should decide before you read a single bid.
If you are weighing new siding against painting what you have, our exterior house painting cost guide gives you the other side of that decision. Painting sound wood or fiber cement siding costs a small fraction of replacing it and buys 8 to 12 years.
How to Compare Home Siding Estimates
Four questions make three bids actually comparable.
- What wall square footage did you measure? If three bidders give you three different numbers, the one closest to your own calculation is the one who measured.
- Is soffit, fascia, and gutter work included? Yes or no, in writing, on all three.
- What is the plan and the agreed rate if you find rotted sheathing? You want a stated per-square-foot or per-sheet repair rate agreed before the job starts, not discovered on day three.
- What house wrap and flashing details are included? Specifically kickout flashing at every roof-to-wall junction. Ask for it by name and watch whether the bidder knows the term.
A bid well under the others is not a bargain, it is a different scope, and one of those four questions will show you which one. The usual answers: no tear-off, no permit, cheap wrap, and soffit and fascia quietly excluded.
Frequently Asked Questions
What does it take to side a 2,000 square foot house?
A two-story 2,000 square foot home has roughly 2,300 to 2,500 square feet of wall once gables are added and the garage door is deducted. That is the number every bid gets built on. A single-story 2,000 square foot ranch actually has more wall area than the two-story version, because the footprint is larger, but it usually costs less per square foot to install because everything is reachable from a ladder.
What is the cheapest siding for a house?
Standard vinyl is the cheapest durable option, and it is not a bad one. Builder-grade .040 thickness panel sits at the bottom of the range. Stepping up to .046 or thicker gives you a stiffer panel that hangs flatter and holds up better to hail and ladders, and that upgrade is one of the smallest premiums available on any siding job relative to what it buys you.
How is siding cost per square foot calculated?
Take your total wall area, which is perimeter times wall height plus gable triangles, minus large openings like garage doors. Divide the total bid by that number. Contractors often quote in squares of 100 square feet instead, so a 24 square job means 2,400 square feet of wall, and dividing the bid by 2,400 converts it into the same unit every other bidder is using.
Does new siding increase home value?
It helps, mostly through curb appeal and by removing a visible deferred-maintenance item that makes buyers nervous. Recovery on resale is generally partial rather than complete, and it is strongest when the old siding was visibly failing. Siding that matches the neighborhood norm recovers better than an upgrade that stands out from every other house on the street.
Can you put new siding over old siding?
Sometimes, and it is usually not the better choice. Siding over old vinyl or wood hides rot rather than fixing it, adds thickness that complicates trim and windows, and skips the chance to install proper house wrap and flashing. The main legitimate case for it is leaving sound asbestos siding undisturbed. Otherwise, tear-off is a small share of the total and it is worth every bit of it.
How long does a siding job take?
A straightforward single-story home is 3 to 5 working days. A two-story home with normal complexity is 7 to 14 days. Fiber cement takes longer than vinyl because the material is heavier, cuts slower, and needs caulking and often painting. Weather delays are normal and should be written into the schedule rather than treated as a surprise.
Do I need a permit to replace siding?
Most jurisdictions require one for a full re-side, because the work involves the weather barrier and flashing that the building code covers. Your contractor should pull it, not you. A bid with no permit line on a full-house job is a bid worth questioning, because the permit is also what gets an inspector to look at the flashing.
What is the most durable siding material?
Brick veneer and stone veneer last the longest at 75 to 100 years or more, with essentially no maintenance beyond repointing. Among the mainstream materials, steel and fiber cement lead at 40 to 50 years. The real answer depends on your climate: steel wins in hail country, fiber cement wins in fire-prone areas, and vinyl does fine almost everywhere as long as the install left proper expansion gaps.
