Siding Replacement Cost Calculator

Siding replacement on a 1,500 square foot single storey house in Atlanta models at about $15,411, with a range of $11,035 to $19,787. That figure is priced against 1,827 square feet of wall, not 1,500 square feet of floor, and working out which is which is what this calculator does first. Storeys, plan shape and gable ends decide how much wall a house has. On a pre-1978 house the federal lead safe rule adds about $1,678 more, roughly eleven per cent, and hardly any quote shows it.

Estimate the cost for your home

Estimated cost to replace the siding

$16,581

typical · range $12,163 to $20,999 · 1,827 sq ft of wall · 6 days on site

Labour priced at national wages. Enter a ZIP code to price it for your area. 50% of this figure comes from modelled material, equipment and haulage prices — each line shows its own uncertainty.

Priced from osha.gov Aug 2026bls.gov Aug 2026how every line is sourced

ZIP code

The one input that changes the answer for you.

The shape of the house

These four answers, and nothing else, decide how many square feet of wall you are buying. No cost guide asks any of them.

Floor area (sq ft)

Heated living space, all storeys together.

Storeys above ground

The same floor area over two storeys is more wall, not less.

Plan shape

The commonest house footprint. About 3% more perimeter than a square of the same floor area.

Roof shape

The two gable ends are wall, and they are the wall nobody counts. On a 1,500 sq ft ranch they add over 200 sq ft of siding — and they are the part that needs staging even on a single-storey house.

Windows

Each one is trim, flashing and a slow hour.

Exterior doors

Big enough to save material; a window is not.

New siding material

The default in most of the country: light, nailed loose so it can move, and the fastest of the seven to hang. It is also the one that shows every wave in the wall behind it.

Strip it off, or side over it

The fork that changes the most lines at once. Going over the old siding drops the tear-off, the skip, the water-resistive barrier and any sheathing repair, and it also means nobody ever looks at the wall.

Strip the old siding offThe only route that lets anybody look at the sheathing, and the only one that can put a water-resistive barrier where it belongs. It is also what triggers the lead-safe work rules on a pre-1978 house.Install over the existing sidingCheaper on the day: no strip-out, no skip, no sheathing repairs. It also means nobody sees the wall, the new siding sits on whatever is under it, and any rot carries on under two layers instead of one. On this route the answer to «what is on the wall today» stops changing the figure, and that is correct rather than a gap: nothing is being stripped, so nothing about the old cladding is being paid for. It has not stopped being true about the wall.

What is on the wall today

The fastest of the three to strip: it unzips from the top course down and the nails come with it. It is also the one that fills the least skip, because a square foot of it is under a twentieth of an inch of solid material.

Layers to come off

Aluminium over the original wood is two, and it is charged as two.

Share of sheathing you expect to be rotten (%)

Board only. What is behind the sheathing, a rotted stud or sill plate, is quoted as a variation once the wall is open and is not in this figure.

The rest of the job

The first one is the only moment in twenty years when the other four are cheap to do, because the wall is already open and the trim is already off.

The house was built before 1978Switches on the lead-safe containment and the certified crew hours priced in the panel above. It is a legal requirement on paid work, not an upsell.Replace the soffit and fascia tooOn by default, because the gutters hang off the fascia and they are coming down anyway. Vented soffit is also the intake half of the roof ventilation.Add a ventilated rainscreen gapBattens or a drainage mat behind the siding, so what gets past the face can drain and dry. The finished wall looks identical either way, which is why it is the first line a competitive quote drops.Add continuous rigid insulationWhether it is optional at all depends on the energy code your state has adopted. It also lengthens every fastener on the wall, which the breakdown charges for.The house has shutters14 windows is 28 leaves to unscrew, keep in order and rehang, and the wall they go back on has moved out by the thickness of the new material.

Everything above grade. If the wall you are worried about is the one below it, the money is in the excavation rather than in the cladding, and the figure you want is on the basement waterproofing cost calculator.

1 / 7

The figure above is already calculated. Each step just makes it more yours, and you can stop at any of them.

Your 1,500 sq ft house has 1,827 sq ft of wall

Siding is sold and hung by the square foot of wall, and nobody knows how many they have. Here is every step of the conversion, on your answers, so you can check it against a measurement instead of trusting it.

Floor area you live inThe number people type, and the number no siding quote is measured in.: 1,500 sq ft
Divided by 1 storey, the footprintTwo storeys halve the ground the house covers and the perimeter shrinks with it.: 1,500 sq ft
At 1.6:1, the sidesPlan shape changes perimeter at identical floor area, and perimeter is what gets clad.: 30.6 × 49 ft
PerimeterIt also sets trim, soffit, ground cover and how many wall penetrations there are.: 159.2 linear ft
× 10 ft of wall height, the rectangular wallTen feet on the ground floor and nine on each one above: siding starts below the floor and ends at the soffit.: 1,592 sq ft
Plus the two gable endsThe wall nobody counts, and the reason a single-storey house still needs staging.: 234 sq ft
Gross wall areaThis is the number meant by "3,000 square feet of siding". It is not the floor area and it never was.: 1,827 sq ft
Less 16 openings, the wall actually cladEvery labour hour on this page is charged on this figure, never on the material ordered.: 1,575 sq ft
Material ordered, with 10% cutting wasteGross wall less only the large openings, then waste. A window is too small to save any material once every board crossing it is cut.: 1,963 sq ft

At this size the crew is modelled at 128 hours on the façade, which is 6 days of staging rental in the breakdown below. Change the material and watch that move: the platform stands there while the work happens, not while the panel goes up.

A pre-1978 house would add $1,817 to this job

Stripping old siding disturbs paint. EPA publishes that lead-based paint was banned for home use in 1978 and that roughly three quarters of US homes built before then still contain some, and its Lead Renovation, Repair and Painting Program requires anyone paid to disturb that paint to be certified in lead-safe work practices. On an exterior job that means covering the ground around the whole house, containing the debris and cleaning to verification.

Here that is 1,592 sq ft of ground sheeting laid out and taken up again every working day, plus the certified crew hours to do it, which adds about 11% to the job. It is routine legal work, not a specialist intervention, which is exactly why it belongs in a budget rather than in a footnote. It is also the line that is missing when one quote comes in far under the others.

EPA also states that in general the rule does not apply to homeowners doing this kind of project in their own pre-1978 home. That is a real exemption and worth knowing before assuming a contractor’s quote is padded. Lead abatement is different work under a different certification and is not priced here at any figure.

Cost breakdown by line item
Line item	Qty	Cost	Source
Staging: pump jacks, ladder jacks or scaffold, and fall protectionmodelled crew hours ÷ (3 people × 8 h), minimum 2 days	6day	$330–$1,560	estimated±65%
Labourer: set, move and strike the staging4 h + 0.04 h per linear ft of perimeter per storey (modelled)	11hour	$484–$520	sourced
Labourer: strip the old siding, trim and fasteners4 h + the per-sq-ft rate of the existing cladding × layers, on a tear-off (modelled)	14hour	$616–$662	sourced
Skip: delivered, filled and removedwall sq ft × layers ÷ 3,000 (vinyl/aluminium), ÷ 2,000 (wood) or ÷ 1,600 (cement board), minimum 1; 1 where the new siding goes over the old	1each	$390–$780	estimated±33%
Replacement sheathing where the wall is rottenwall sq ft × the share of sheathing replaced, on a tear-off only	79sq ft	$51–$126	estimated±42%
Carpenter: cut out, replace and re-nail the damaged sheathing0.035 h per sq ft of sheathing replaced (modelled)	3hour	$170–$182	sourced
Water-resistive barrier, seam tape and flashing tapewall sq ft × 1.1 for laps, on a tear-off only	1,732sq ft	$242–$762	estimated±52%
Carpenter: hang the barrier and tape the openings0.006 h per sq ft + 0.25 h per opening, on a tear-off (modelled)	14hour	$792–$850	sourced
Vinyl lap siding, panels and startergross wall sq ft less large openings × 1.10 for cutting waste, where the material is vinyl	1,963sq ft	$2,061–$5,104	estimated±42%
Carpenter: set out, cut and hang the sidingnet wall sq ft × hours per sq ft for the chosen material (modelled)	45hour	$2,544–$2,734	sourced
Vinyl starter strip, corner posts, J-channel and undersill trim2 × perimeter + 4 corners × wall height, where the trim family is vinyl accessory	358linear ft	$215–$680	estimated±52%
J-channel and window trim around openings, vinyl16 linear ft per window + 20 per door, where the trim family is vinyl accessory	264linear ft	$145–$422	estimated±49%
Carpenter: fit trim, corners, accessories and penetration blocks3 h + 0.035 h per linear ft of trim + 0.35 h per penetration (modelled)	29hour	$1,640–$1,762	sourced
Head flashing, drip cap and kick-out flashing at openings and roof lines1 per opening, plus 2 for the roof-to-wall junctions	18each	$126–$720	estimated±70%
Sheet metal worker: bend and fit the flashings2 h + 0.2 h per flashing (modelled)	6hour	$346–$372	sourced
Mounting blocks and hooded vents at lights, taps, meters and dryer outlets1 per 30 ft of perimeter, plus 4 (modelled)	10each	$50–$340	estimated±74%
Carpenter: take off and rehang lights, numbers, dish, line covers and shutters2 h + 0.3 h per penetration + 0.2 h per window where there are shutters (modelled)	5hour	$283–$304	sourced
Soffit panel and fascia coverperimeter in linear ft, where soffit and fascia are included	159linear ft	$413–$1,336	estimated±53%
Sheet metal worker: strip, fit and wrap soffit and fascia0.055 h per linear ft of eave and rake (modelled)	9hour	$519–$558	sourced
Sheet metal worker: take the gutters down and rehang them0.028 h per linear ft of gutter: 2 × the long side on a gable roof, the whole perimeter on a hip (modelled)	3hour	$173–$186	sourced
Fasteners, sealant and consumablesnet wall sq ft	1,575sq ft	$221–$662	estimated±50%
Labourer: ground protection, magnet sweep and final clear-up4 h + 0.002 h per sq ft of wall (modelled)	8hour	$352–$378	sourced
Total		$12,163–$20,999	±27%

Where these numbers come from

Labour rates by area: BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025, for carpenters, construction labourers, sheet metal workers and painters in your metropolitan area. Retrieved 2026-08-20. Benefit load from BLS Employer Costs for Employee Compensation. BLS publishes no siding installer occupation, so carpenters are used and the substitution is stated on every line that relies on it.
The footprint-to-wall conversion, and what in it is ours: The arithmetic is not sourced and does not pretend to be: floor area divided by storeys, a plan ratio, a wall height, and a gable triangle at an assumed 6:12 pitch. What is ours and declared is every constant inside it, and each one is written out on the siding replacement dataset page rather than buried: ten feet of ground-floor wall, nine feet per storey above, fifteen square feet per window, twenty-one per door, a sixteen-inch eave overhang and the twenty-square-foot line below which an opening saves no material at all. A measured wall beats all of it, and if you have one, use it.
The pre-1978 lead-safe rule: EPA, Lead Renovation, Repair and Painting Program is the rule that makes lead-safe work practices a legal requirement for anyone paid to disturb paint in a pre-1978 home, and 40 CFR 745 subpart E, Residential Property Renovation is the regulation text itself. EPA also publishes EPA, Renovate Right, the pamphlet a contractor has to hand you before work starts. Both retrieved 2026-08-22. It is priced here as two ordinary lines because it is ordinary work; lead abatement is a different job under a different certification and is in the exclusions at no figure.
Why there is staging on a single-storey house: OSHA 29 CFR 1926.501, Duty to have fall protection says that each employee on a walking or working surface with an unprotected side or edge six feet or more above a lower level shall be protected from falling, and OSHA, Fall Protection collects the guidance around it. Retrieved 2026-08-22. The standard does not order anybody to erect staging; it sets what has to be true once somebody is up there. Our ten-foot wall and our gable peak are what put them there, and those are our assumptions, not OSHA’s.
Whether continuous insulation is optional where you live: It depends on the energy code your state has adopted, and states adopt different editions at different times. DOE Building Energy Codes Program, State Energy Codes and DOE Building Energy Codes Program, State Energy Code Methodology are the federal register of which state is on which code. Retrieved 2026-08-22. It is a lookup, not advice, and your local building department is the authority on what your permit will require.
Above grade and below grade: which page you want: This page prices the façade above grade, where the money is staging, tear-off, trim and carpenter hours. The basement waterproofing cost calculator prices the wall below grade, where most of the money is the excavation needed to reach it. Same house, two surfaces, no overlap in either direction. Siding stops a few inches above the ground for a reason, and that reason is where the other page starts.
Insurance: one fact, and no guesses: We do not model what a policy pays and we will not characterise how policies behave, because we have no source for it. The single national fact worth stating comes from FEMA, Flood Insurance, and it is about flood rather than about siding: most homeowners insurance does not cover flood damage. Retrieved 2026-08-22. Everything else is written in your own policy and is a question for your insurer and your agent.
Material prices: Modelled estimates, not sourced prices. No public, machine-readable source of US residential material prices exists, and we would rather say so than pretend otherwise. Each line carries its own uncertainty band. How we estimate them.

Contractor overhead and profit applied at 33–43% over direct cost. Data last reviewed 2026-08-22.

What this figure does not include

What your homeowners insurance covers: It is the most asked question on this subject and we will not guess at it. What your policy covers is set by your own documents and your own insurer, and by the deductible and the depreciation terms written into them — read them, and ask your insurer. Nothing on this page is modelled on an insurance outcome, and no figure here should be read as one. We removed a sentence from this entry on 2026-08-22 that characterised how policies generally behave: we had no source for it, and a general claim about what insurance does is not ours to make.
Asbestos cement siding: The flat cement shingle on many houses built between the 1920s and the 1970s may contain asbestos, and it is exactly the siding people most often want replaced. It is not budgeted here at any figure. It has to be tested first and removed under separate licensed rules, and putting a low number against that work would be worse than putting none.
Lead abatement: The lead-safe work practices required on a pre-1978 house ARE priced on this page, because they are routine legal work by a certified renovator. Abatement — deliberately removing or permanently enclosing lead paint — is a different job under a different certification with a different scope, and it is not in any total here.
Permit fees: Many jurisdictions require a permit for a full re-side, and some require inspection of the water-resistive barrier before the siding goes on. Fees vary by jurisdiction with no national source and are excluded rather than averaged into a number that would be wrong everywhere.
Windows, doors and the openings themselves: This page trims and flashes the openings that are already there. Replacing the windows is separate work, and if it is going to happen it should happen during the re-side, while the wall is open and the trim is off — doing it afterwards means cutting into a finished wall.
Below-grade foundation walls: Everything here is above grade. The split between the two pages is clean and worth stating out loud: /basement-waterproofing-cost prices the wall BELOW grade, where most of the money is the excavation needed to reach it; this page prices the façade ABOVE grade, where the money is staging, tear-off, trim and carpenter hours. Same house, two surfaces, no overlap in either direction. Siding stops a few inches above the ground for a reason, and that reason is where the other page starts.
Structural repair behind the sheathing: Replacing rotten sheathing is priced here, board only. Replacing studs, a rotted sill plate or a rim joist is not: that is structural work found after the wall is open, it is quoted as a variation, and it is the commonest reason a siding job comes in over its quote. This entry and the sheathing line used to disagree about that — the sheathing line claimed to include the framing repair. The exclusion won, and the sheathing band came down to what board alone costs.
Gutter replacement: Taking the gutters down and rehanging them is in here, because it happens on every job. Replacing them is not. If they are fifteen years old and sectional, ask before the work starts whether they are expected to survive coming down.
Brick, stone and stucco: Masonry veneer, manufactured stone and stucco are not siding in the sense this calculator uses. They are wet trades on a different schedule with different failure modes, and none of the rates here would produce a number worth reading for them.
Refinishing cycles on wood: Cedar and site-finished siding are painted or stained once here, at installation. Everything after that is a cost of ownership on a cycle of years, and it is not in any installation figure on this page.

Questions people actually ask

Does homeowners insurance cover siding replacement?

We will not guess at this, and a calculator that did would be making up the most consequential number on the page. What your policy covers is written in your own documents, in your deductible and in your depreciation terms, and only your insurer can tell you how they apply to your wall. Nothing in this calculator is modelled on an insurance outcome and no figure here should be read as one. The one national fact worth stating comes from FEMA, and it is about flood rather than siding: most homeowners insurance does not cover flood damage. Beyond that, read the policy and ask the insurer before you assume anything about who pays.

How expensive is it to replace the siding on a house?

For a 1,500 square foot single-storey house in Atlanta, stripping one layer of vinyl or aluminium and hanging new vinyl, this model gives about $15,411, with a range of $11,035 to $19,787. That is $8.44 per square foot of the 1,827 square feet of wall it works out. Material is what moves it most: the identical house is about $22,899 in primed fibre cement painted on site, $24,153 in factory-finished fibre cement, and $36,650 in cedar, because cedar takes 202 crew hours against vinyl’s 128 and rents nine days of staging against six. Most of the difference is hours, not goods, which is why the same job is not the same price in two metropolitan areas.

How much does it cost to side a 1500 sq ft house?

About $15,411 in Atlanta and about $16,581 at national wages, with a range of $11,035 to $19,787 on the Atlanta figure, for vinyl over a stripped wall. But 1,500 square feet is floor area and siding is sold by wall area, so the first thing this calculator does is convert one into the other: 1,500 square feet on one storey with a gable roof is 1,827 square feet of wall, of which 234 is the two gable ends. Spread the same 1,500 square feet over two storeys and the wall grows to 2,256 square feet and the job to about $16,950. Put a hip roof on it instead and the gables vanish, the wall drops to 1,592 square feet and the figure falls to about $14,422.

How much is 3,000 square feet of siding?

Close to 3,000 square feet of wall is a 2,500 square foot house on two storeys: this model works that out at 2,957 square feet of wall and prices it at about $21,127 in Atlanta in vinyl, with a range of $15,172 to $27,082, or $22,744 at national wages. The same 2,957 square feet is about $32,738 in primed fibre cement, $33,157 in engineered wood, $36,583 in steel and $55,439 in cedar. Per square foot of wall that is $7.15 for vinyl and $18.75 for cedar. Note that the rate falls as the wall grows: the same vinyl is $8.44 a square foot on the 1,500 square foot house, because staging, skips, flashing and clean-up do not shrink with the wall.

Is it worth replacing siding on a house?

That is a judgement about your house rather than a number, but the model can show you what each route buys and gives up. Going over the existing siding instead of stripping it saves about $2,152 on the default job, $13,259 against $15,411, and five lines disappear with it: the tear-off, the skip, the sheathing repair, and both halves of the water-resistive barrier. What you are buying with that saving is a wall nobody looks at, no barrier where a barrier belongs, and any rot carrying on under two layers instead of one. In the other direction, a ventilated rainscreen adds about $2,429 and is the cheapest thing here that extends the life of everything else. Cedar is the only material whose cost does not end on handover, and its refinishing cycle is excluded from every figure on this page.

Taken from Google’s “people also ask” results for this search on 22 August 2026, not invented.

The first of these are the jobs closest to this one — the ones that turn up in the same quote, or instead of it.

Stucco repair cost
Asks first whether the wall is traditional render or synthetic EIFS, because they look identical from the street and only one of them lets trapped water out.
Window repair cost
A fogged double-glazed window is repaired by changing the glass unit, not the window. Prices seven faults against replacing, and says where repair stops winning.
Gutter replacement cost
Gutters are sold by the linear foot of eave, not by the square foot of house, so this works out your eave length and sizes the downspouts to the roof draining into them.
Spray foam insulation cost
Foam is sold by the board-foot, so a price per square foot is not a price. Prices your surface at every depth, both foams at the same R, and the code barrier nobody quotes.
The full siding replacement cost dataset
Every unit price, every quantity rule and the reasoning behind each estimate, as a plain table.
How we calculate
The formula, the sources, and an honest account of which parts of the model are weak.