Siding Replacement Cost: What It Costs to Side a House

Siding replacement is one of the few projects where the quote spread between two honest contractors can exceed 100 percent, because the word “siding” covers everything from $2 vinyl panels to hand-laid brick veneer. The way to get control of the number is to separate the wall area from the material choice from the repairs behind the old siding. Those are three different budgets, and only one of them is knowable before the wall is opened.

What siding replacement costs in 2026

Plan on $6 to $16 per square foot installed for the common residential materials, which is $600 to $1,600 per square in the units siding crews actually quote in. A square is 100 square feet of wall area.

For a typical house, that shakes out like this:

• Single-story ranch, about 1,300 sq ft of wall area: $8,000 to $20,000 installed
• Two-story colonial, about 2,200 sq ft of wall area: $13,000 to $35,000 installed
• Large two-story with gables and dormers, 2,800+ sq ft of wall: $18,000 to $50,000 installed

Material alone, before labor, runs roughly $150 to $400 per square for vinyl, $300 to $600 per square for engineered wood or fiber cement, and $600 to $1,200 per square for cedar. Labor is usually 50 to 60 percent of the installed total on vinyl and 40 to 50 percent on fiber cement, where the material carries more of the cost.

Regional labor rates move this a lot. Compare your market against the national baseline on the siding cost by state page before you decide whether a bid is high.

Siding materials compared

This is the table to argue with your contractor over. Installed ranges include labor, standard trim, and fasteners on a straightforward wall; they exclude tear-off, sheathing repair, and soffit or fascia work.

Two things get lost when people read this table. First, the maintenance column is a real cost, not a footnote: repainting cedar every six years at $2.50 to $5 per square foot means you spend the price difference between cedar and fiber cement several times over. Second, lifespan assumes correct installation. Fiber cement that was face-nailed too tight, or cedar installed without a rainscreen gap, does not reach the numbers above.

Insulated vinyl versus standard vinyl

Insulated vinyl has contoured EPS foam laminated to the back of each panel. It adds roughly $1.50 to $3 per square foot installed over standard vinyl, so about $3,000 to $6,000 on an average house.

What you actually get: a panel that is far more rigid and lies flatter against the wall, which is the visual difference people notice. You also get about R-2 to R-3.5 of continuous insulation, less thermal bridging through the studs, and noticeably better sound damping.

What you do not get: a transformed energy bill. R-3 of continuous insulation on a wall that already has R-13 in the cavity is a real improvement in whole-wall performance, but the payback in energy alone typically runs past 15 years. Buy insulated vinyl because the wall looks better and sounds quieter, and treat the energy savings as a bonus. If you want the flat look without the foam, heavier-gauge standard vinyl at 0.046 inch or above gets you most of the way there for less.

How siding is measured and quoted

Siding is sold and installed by the square, and the takeoff is straightforward enough that you should do it before the first estimator arrives.

Walk the perimeter and measure each wall’s width and height. Multiply for the rectangular field. Add gable ends as half the base times the height. Subtract only large openings — most estimators deduct windows and doors over about 30 square feet and ignore anything smaller, because the cuts around a small window waste more material than the hole saves. Then add a waste allowance: 10 percent for lap siding on a simple wall, 15 percent for shingles, staggered courses, or a wall full of angles.

The Siding Calculator does this arithmetic and converts wall area to squares and boxes, which is the number you can compare directly against a bid. If a contractor’s square count is more than about 10 percent above yours, ask him to walk the measurements with you. Sometimes he is right and you missed a bump-out. Sometimes he padded it.

One useful sanity check: total wall area on a two-story house usually lands between 0.9 and 1.3 times the home’s finished floor area. A 2,000 sq ft house quoted at 3,400 sq ft of siding deserves a question.

Tear-off, disposal, and what is behind the wall

Tear-off runs $0.50 to $1.50 per square foot, or roughly $1,000 to $3,500 on an average house, including dumpster and hauling. Vinyl comes off fast and light. Stucco, brick, and old asbestos-cement siding are a different category — asbestos-containing siding requires licensed abatement and commonly runs $3 to $8 per square foot on its own.

What is behind the siding is the single largest source of change orders on this project, and it is genuinely unknowable from the driveway. Three things turn up:

Rotted or delaminated sheathing. Replacement OSB or plywood runs $70 to $150 per 4x8 sheet installed. A wall under a leaking window might need two sheets; a wall that has been wet for a decade might need fifteen. Get a written per-sheet unit price in the contract before work starts, so the change order is arithmetic instead of a negotiation.

Missing or failed weather-resistive barrier. Houses built before the mid-1980s often have felt paper, or nothing. New housewrap adds $0.40 to $1.20 per square foot installed and is not optional. Taped seams and correct shingle-lapping over flashing are what make it work. This is the layer that actually keeps water out; the siding is a rain screen.

Flashing that was never there. Head flashing over windows and doors, kickout flashing where a roof edge meets a wall, and step flashing along rooflines. Budget $20 to $60 per opening and $75 to $200 per kickout. Missing kickout flashing is the most common cause of the rot the crew just found.

Assume a contingency of 10 to 15 percent of the contract for what is behind the wall. On older homes with any staining or soft spots, make it 20 percent.

The line items people forget

The siding field is the cheap part. The trim is where quotes diverge, so read these lines carefully:

• Corner posts and outside corners — $4 to $12 per linear foot installed in vinyl, $10 to $22 in fiber cement or PVC
• Window and door casing — $6 to $16 per linear foot installed depending on material and profile
• J-channel, starter strip, and undersill trim — usually bundled into vinyl pricing, but confirm it
• Soffit and fascia — $8 to $25 per linear foot installed; size the run with the Soffit & Fascia Calculator
• Gutter detach and reset — $2 to $5 per linear foot, or replace outright while the wall is open
• Painting field-cut fiber cement edges — small line, real requirement, frequently skipped

If you are replacing gutters anyway, do it during the siding job. The staging is already up, the fascia is exposed, and you will pay less than doing it as a separate mobilization. Size the run with the Gutter Calculator and get it into the same contract.

Reside or repair?

Full replacement is not always the right answer. Repair when the damage is localized and the rest of the wall is sound: a few cracked vinyl panels, one rotted cedar course, a section damaged by a falling limb. Panel repairs run $300 to $1,200 for a small area, and color-matching older vinyl is the main obstacle — sun fading means a new panel rarely matches, so pull replacements from a less visible elevation and put the new material there.

Replace when any of the following is true:

• Moisture staining or soft spots in more than one location
• Siding that has been painted repeatedly and is now failing at the paint, not the substrate
• Hardboard siding from the 1980s and 1990s that is swelling at the bottom edges
• More than about 25 percent of the wall would need patching anyway
• You are already opening the walls for windows or insulation work

Half measures on siding tend to age badly. A house with three patched elevations and one new one reads as deferred maintenance to every buyer who walks up to it.

The resale angle

Siding replacement is consistently treated in the remodeling trade as one of the stronger exterior projects for cost recouped at resale, alongside garage doors and entry doors. That is a durable pattern in how appraisers and agents price curb appeal, not a measured promise about your specific house or a number you should plug into a budget.

The mechanism is worth understanding. Buyers do not price siding at replacement cost. They price it at replacement cost plus the aggravation of managing the project, plus a discount for the unknown behind it. Failing siding on a listing routinely takes a hit larger than what the job would have cost the seller. New siding removes the negotiation entirely.

Run your own version with the Home Improvement ROI Calculator, using a local comparable rather than a national percentage. In a neighborhood where every house has fiber cement, matching it is close to mandatory. In a neighborhood of clean vinyl, spending fiber cement money buys you a nicer wall and not much resale premium.

How to compare siding quotes

Siding bids are hard to compare because contractors bundle differently on purpose. Force every bidder onto the same sheet:

1. Square footage of wall area, as they measured it. Not “the house.” The actual number. Compare it against your own takeoff.
2. Tear-off included or excluded, and how many existing layers they expect.
3. A written per-sheet unit price for sheathing replacement. This is the single most important line in the contract.
4. The weather-resistive barrier by name, and whether seams are taped and integrated with window flashing.
5. Product line and thickness, not just brand. “Vinyl” spans 0.040 to 0.055 inch. “Fiber cement” spans primed to factory-finished with a 15-year finish warranty.
6. Trim material and profile, listed as a separate line with linear footage.
7. Soffit, fascia, and gutter handling — included, detached and reset, or excluded.
8. Two warranties, in writing. Manufacturer material warranty and the contractor’s labor warranty, which is the one that matters in years one through five. Two years is thin; five to ten is a real commitment.
9. Disposal, permit, and cleanup — stated, not assumed.
10. Payment schedule. A deposit above about a third of the contract before material is on site is a warning sign.

When one bid is 30 percent below the others, it is almost never the same job. Find the missing line before you assume you found a bargain.

Mistakes that blow the budget

Siding over rot. The most expensive mistake in the trade. You pay for the new wall now and the structural repair in five years, after the new siding comes back off.

No unit price for sheathing. The classic change order on this project is $600 to $3,000 for sheathing and rot repair, and it lands after demolition when you have no leverage. Price it in advance.

Skipping the housewrap to save $1,500. The barrier is the water management system. The siding is not waterproof and was never meant to be.

Buying the thinnest panel. Builder-grade 0.040 inch vinyl ripples in heat, oil-cans across studs, and cracks in cold. The step up to 0.046 or 0.048 costs a few hundred dollars across a whole house.

Forgetting the extras. Shutters, vents, light block mounts, hose bib blocks, dryer vent hoods, and address numbers all need blocks or trim. That is $400 to $1,500 nobody quoted.

Leaving the gutters for later. Detaching and resetting old gutters, then replacing them next year, means paying twice for the same access.

Doing it in the wrong season. Vinyl expands and contracts significantly; panels installed at 20 degrees and nailed tight will buckle in July. Good installers leave the correct expansion gap regardless, but cold-weather installs give a rushed crew more chances to get it wrong.

Every figure here is a 2026 national range for planning. Real siding pricing swings hard by market: labor in a high-cost metro can be double a rural rate for identical work, coastal wind zones require fastening schedules that add material and time, and fiber cement pricing varies with freight distance from the plant. Wall complexity matters as much as size — dormers, bays, and multi-gable elevations can add 20 to 40 percent to labor on the same square footage. Get three on-site quotes from licensed, insured contractors who measure the house rather than estimating from the street. Your locally adopted building code governs the barrier, flashing, and fastening details, and it is the inspector’s sign-off, not this page, that says the wall was built right.