Cost to Side a House Calculator
Add up a whole-house siding job from the numbers you control — net wall area × your price per square foot, plus labor and add-ons, less any discount, times a contingency margin.
Siding a house of 1,336 sq ft at $7.00/sq ft plus labor is about $10,287.20 with 10% contingency. Enter your own prices — a planning estimate, not a bid.
1 Enter your numbers
Siding a whole house is a quantity times a unit price plus a handful of add-on lines — nothing more exotic. The honest way to estimate it is to fix the one number that is geometry (the net wall area you are covering) and let the prices be the ones on your own quote. This tool never invents a rate: you enter the $/sq ft, the labor, the add-ons and the discount, and it returns the arithmetic with a stated contingency margin. Treat the result as a planning figure with a ±10–15% band, because the true spread comes from the add-ons and the layout, not from the multiplication.
Full job, not just the field siding: a re-side also carries tear-off and disposal (see the removal and replacement tools), and trim, soffit, fascia, house wrap and corner posts are real dollars that hide in a “per square foot” headline number. Enter them as add-ons so the total reflects the whole contract.
Formula
total = (net_area × $/sq ft + labor + add_ons − discount) × (1 + contingency%)
The net area is your gross wall-plus-gable area minus the door, window and garage-door openings. The contingency is a margin on the whole subtotal, not just the material — it buffers the parts of a job that are systematically under-counted (extra corners, damaged sheathing found on tear-off, a trim run you missed).
Worked example
Take a net siding area of 1,336 sq ft at $7.00 per square foot, with labor already in that rate, no separate add-ons and no discount, and a 10% contingency:
subtotal = 1,336 × $7.00 = $9,352total = $9,352 × 1.10 = $10,287.20 ≈ $10,287
That $10,287 sits inside the labeled all-in band of roughly $4–13/sq ft (here $7.70/sq ft with the margin). Swap in fiber cement at $9/sq ft and the same house is about $13,226; vinyl at $5/sq ft is about $7,348. The lever is the price you enter, which is why we ask for it rather than guess.
What actually moves this number
- Add-ons dominate the surprise. Tear-off, disposal, house wrap, damaged-sheathing repair and trim can add 15–40% on a re-side. Enter them explicitly instead of hoping the $/sq ft absorbs them.
- Is labor in the rate or separate? If your quote lists a single installed $/sq ft, leave the labor field at 0. If material and labor are itemized, put labor in its own line so double counting cannot creep in.
- Contingency is a margin, not a fudge. Use ~10% for a clean, well-scoped job and 15% when the layout is complex or the wall condition is unknown until the old siding comes off.
- Common error: pricing gross area. Deduct the openings first — a house with a double garage and a dozen windows can shed 300+ sq ft, several hundred dollars.
Painting or restaining existing siding is a different job entirely — this tool covers new material and installation.
Reference table
| Material | Installed, all-in (labeled band) |
|---|---|
| Vinyl siding | $3–$8/sq ft |
| Engineered wood / LP SmartSide | $4–$9/sq ft |
| Aluminum siding | $4–$9/sq ft |
| Steel siding | $6–$12/sq ft |
| Wood / cedar siding | $5–$12/sq ft |
| Fiber cement / James Hardie | $6–$13/sq ft |
Labeled planning bands only — material plus labor, installed. Enter your own quoted price; confirm the figure with licensed, insured siding contractors.