If you’re replacing your old siding or installing new siding on a freshly built home, our siding calculator can help you calculate the total square footage of your home’s exterior walls. This will tell you how much siding material you need to buy if you’re going the DIY route and also give you a rough price estimate for hiring professionals, which we recommend for this home improvement project.
How to use our siding calculator
Finding the surface area of your home’s exterior is fairly simple and a prerequisite for any siding project. Surface area is measured in square footage and calculated by multiplying wall width by wall height. If that sounds tricky, don’t worry! Our calculator handles all the math for you. You just need to take some measurements.
Start by choosing one of your home’s exterior walls and measuring the entire distance in linear feet from its left side to its right side. Enter this number into the “width” section of our calculator. Then, measure the height of that same wall from the ground to the bottommost edge of your roof and enter that number into the “height” section of our calculator.
Repeat this process for every exterior wall on your home. Then, choose a siding material and hit calculate. Our calculator will immediately generate the total square footage of your home’s exterior walls, along with a rough price estimate for siding your home with your chosen material. This estimate will include material and labor costs.
Our tool even allows you to account for your home’s windows and doors, but be aware that these fixtures won’t affect pricing much. You don’t side a window or door, so a wall with one of these fixtures requires less material (and material costs) to side, but making necessary cuts in siding pieces to fit around them results in extra labor costs. This means that siding walls with windows or doors usually cost just about as much as siding walls without them.
Once you’ve calculated your home’s exterior surface area and found a rough price estimate for your siding project, you’re ready to meet with a professional contractor!
How much do different siding materials cost?
Different siding materials come at different costs. If the price estimate our calculator gave you for your chosen material is too high for your budget, this table can help you choose a more affordable material:
Siding costs per square foot
Material | Price range per sq. ft. |
Aluminum siding | $5.58–$11.23 |
Vinyl siding | $4.50–$9.27 |
Fiber cement siding | $3.32–$7.26 |
Plywood siding | $3.84–$7.74 |
Wood siding | $6.51–$12.58 |
Stucco siding | $6.84–$15.28 |
Steel siding | $8.41–$16.15 |
Brick veneer siding | $15.87–$33.00 |
Stone veneer siding | $32.62–$65.56 |
What your home’s exterior needs in addition to siding
A siding project requires more materials than just the planks or panels you see on the home once the project is finished. A sound siding system will also include these materials:
Housewrap: This is a thin layer of synthetic sheeting that lays directly on top of a home’s wooden sheathing to add weather resistance. Housewrap is completely covered by siding on a finished home, so you only see it on homes that are under construction.
Starter strips: Many siding materials are designed to interlock with each other, but they require starter strips along the bottom of the wall to provide the first interlocking segment.
J-trim: These are grooved pieces of siding that fit around a door or window. Their grooves allow siding planks to fit inside, creating a solid barrier against the elements. They also serve as a neat and stylish trim by hiding the rough edges of siding planks.
Corner posts: These pieces are installed on every inside corner and outside corner where two sections of wall meet. They’re grooved like J-trim to allow siding planks to fit inside them.
Be aware that not every siding material requires all of these additional pieces, and some require different pieces for proper installation. For example, stucco walls don’t have corner pieces or starter strips but instead require an underlying system of metal netting to hold the stucco in place.
DIY vs. professional siding installation
Some homeowners install their siding themselves to save some money on labor. However, siding is much more difficult to install than it may seem, and it’s easy to make critical mistakes along the way. This means that DIY siding installation can leave your home vulnerable to adverse weather, fires, and pests.
DIY installation will usually also void the manufacturer’s warranty on your siding materials, so you’ll have to foot the bill for any resulting damage. When all is said and done, you could end up spending more money to make repairs than you might have initially spent just hiring a pro for the work.
All of these factors make it highly advisable to hire licensed and insured siding contractors who know what they’re doing instead of trying to install siding with your own two hands.
How to hire a professional siding contractor
If you’re ready to start working with a siding contractor, use the widget below to get in touch with qualified pros in your area. We’ll help you find the best siding installers specializing in the materials and styles you’re looking for.
To find a price that fits your budget, we recommend getting quotes from several contractors and comparing them. If there is a tie, you should check reviews from previous customers to learn which company has the best track record.
Joe is a home improvement expert and content specialist for Fixr.com. He’s been writing home services content for over eight years, leveraging his research and composition skills to produce consumer-minded articles that demystify everything from moving to remodeling. His work has been sourced by various news sources and business journals, including Nasdaq.com and USA Today. When he isn’t writing about home improvement or climate issues, Joe can be found in bookstores and record shops.
Siding FAQ
To determine how much siding your home requires, you need to calculate the surface area of its exterior. You can do this by measuring the width and height of each wall, multiplying them together to find that wall’s total surface area, and adding the surface area of each wall together. This will tell you how much siding your home needs for complete coverage.
The average home needs about 1,500 to 2,500 square feet of siding to cover all of its exterior walls, fascias, soffits, and gables. However, U.S. homes vary greatly in size and number of stories, so you’ll only know exactly how much siding your home needs by calculating the surface area of your home’s exterior. You can use our siding calculator to accomplish this.
Every siding material has its own strengths and weaknesses. For example, vinyl siding is incredibly affordable but doesn’t last very long; steel siding is more durable but also more expensive, and wood siding is second-to-none in terms of curb appeal but is infamously high-maintenance. For this reason, the best siding for your home and budget will differ from that of someone else. Read our complete siding guide to learn which siding material will work best for you.
The labor costs to replace one square (100 square feet) of siding typically average between $336 and $612. Exact labor costs can vary depending on where you live and which siding material you get, and obviously, a greater number of squares will come with higher project costs.