How to price siding jobs from the wall squares to the last piece of trim

Siding estimates often go wrong in one of two ways. The estimator multiplies wall squares by a single rate and forgets everything that is not a panel, or the price gets set by whatever number the homeowner says another company gave them. Squares matter, but on a re-side a large share of the labor can go into corners, openings, trim, tear-off and getting crews safely up the wall, and much of the risk hides behind the old cladding. This guide breaks a siding job into the units that drive its cost, shows how to time each one, and runs a hypothetical estimate through the formula behind our job price calculator. For the cost structure underneath it (labor burden, overhead per hour, margin), start with our guide on pricing service jobs.

What units drive a siding price?

• Squares of wall. Ply Gem's estimating guide defines a square as 10 feet by 10 feet, or 100 square feet. Measure every wall plane, gable triangles included. Panels, house wrap and much of the hanging labor scale with squares.
• Material and profile. Each product line has its own cost, coverage per carton and install speed. Insulated vinyl, fiber cement lap, shakes and board and batten each deserve their own production rate.
• Linear feet of accessories. Outside and inside corners, J-channel, starter strip, utility trim, frieze, soffit and fascia. A house broken up by bump-outs and short walls uses far more of these than a plain box with the same wall area.
• Openings. Every window and door means cutting around it, flashing it, trimming it and often wrapping its casing in coil. Count openings and price them as a line.
• Height and access. A one-story wall off a ladder, a two-story wall on pump jacks, a walkout basement wall, or a tall gable that needs scaffold or a rented lift. Setup time and equipment change with each.
• What comes off. Time tear-off separately for each old material you meet. Painted wood clapboard on an older house can bring lead-safe setup and slower removal, and old cement-type shingles stop the job until they are tested.
• What waits underneath. Soft sheathing, missing house wrap and failed flashing over windows show up only after tear-off, so they belong in the contract as unit prices.

How do you estimate siding labor?

Estimate in labor hours (one person for one hour) by phase, taken from your own job logs. Crew-days hide the detail, and a gut feel hides everything else. A breakdown that works for most re-siding jobs:

• Setup and protection. Unloading, covering plants and condensers, standing ladders and pump jacks, placing the dumpster.
• Tear-off. Hours per square by the old material, plus loading debris.
• Sheathing and wrap. Probing for soft spots, replacing bad sheets, wrapping, taping and flashing openings.
• Hanging panels. Hours per square by material and profile, with a separate rate for walls above the first story.
• Openings and trim. Hours per opening, plus hours per linear foot for coil wrapping, soffit and fascia.
• Cleanup. Magnet sweeps, haul-off and a walkaround with the owner.

Then adjust for what you can see at the estimate: upper stories, steep grade along a wall, decks and porch roofs that interrupt an elevation, and landscaping that keeps a ladder off the wall. Keep fiber cement on its own rates. OSHA's construction silica standard has a Table 1 entry for handheld saws cutting fiber-cement board outdoors, built around a saw with a dust collection system, so the cut station takes setup time on every job. Primed boards may also need painting and caulking that vinyl never does.

Count trips too. A re-side spreads across several days, so the drive, the morning load-out and the end-of-day cleanup repeat each day. A back-ordered color or a rain day adds another. Put the expected number of days in the estimate and price the time each one costs.

Materials: waste, markup and margin

Materials make up a large part of most siding jobs, so the difference between markup and margin is measured in real money. Enter materials at your supplier's price and let the margin formula carry them along with labor and overhead. If you would rather mark up materials on their own, work out what margin that markup produces before the quote goes out.

• Waste allowance. Cuts at gables, openings and corners, plus damaged pieces. Ply Gem calls its own accessory multipliers rules of thumb and says to adjust them for your crew's experience and the project's complexity. Keep waste records by profile and house shape, and round up to whole cartons.
• Accessories from the takeoff. Corners, channel, starter and trim coil come from measured linear feet, not from a percentage of the panel cost.
• Delivery and disposal. Supplier delivery fees and dumpster or hauling charges are direct costs. List them.
• Special orders. Ask your supplier about return terms on special-order colors before you order, and date every quote with how long it holds, so a late signature does not lock you into an old material price.

Worked example: a hypothetical vinyl re-side

Every figure below is hypothetical. The wall area, production rates, wage, overhead, material prices, fees and margin were chosen so the math is simple to check, and you should not copy any of them as a price. The job: a two-story house re-sided in vinyl after the old vinyl comes off, with the same cost formula the job price calculator uses (cost = labor hours × labor cost per hour + materials + labor hours × overhead per hour; price = cost ÷ (1 − target margin)).

The per-square row is the number homeowners ask for, and it describes only this house. Add a tall gable on scaffold, switch to fiber cement, or find painted clapboard under the vinyl on an older home, and the hours and direct costs move with it. If you publish a starting price per square, derive it from a bare-bones version of this table (no tear-off, few openings, one story) and say what raises it. Put your own hours, labor cost, materials, overhead and margin into the job price calculator to run the same math on the next house. If you work alone, check the result against the hourly rate calculator, which turns your pay goal, overhead and billable hours into a minimum hourly rate.

Quoting from photos and aerial reports vs a site visit

Remote measurements speed up the first answer. EagleView, for one, sells wall reports for siding bids. Its product page describes preliminary wall data with separate siding and masonry measurements, high resolution aerial images, elevation diagrams and a 3D wall diagram, and lists a fuller report that adds window, door and fascia measurements. Homeowner photos of each side of the house, plus a close-up of any damage and the label from a leftover carton, let you quote a budget range during the first conversation and price simple repairs without a drive.

The firm price still needs a visit. Photos will not tell you whether the sheathing is soft, what is under the current siding, what year the house was built, how the windows were flashed, whether the HOA restricts colors, or whether a ladder can reach the back wall past the deck. The visit is also where the sale happens: samples in hand, every decision maker at the table, options laid out. For laying out material tiers and add-ons so the owner picks an option instead of haggling, see good, better, best quotes.

Count estimate visits as overhead. The hours spent measuring houses that never sign are paid for by the houses that do, so qualify callers before you drive out (material, rough size, timeline, insurance or not) and follow up on every quote you send.

Pricing older homes: lead-safe work and suspect shingles

When a house was built before 1978 and your work will disturb painted surfaces, the EPA's lead RRP rule applies: a certified firm, a certified renovator, and lead-safe work practices. The rule's small-area exception for exterior minor repairs does not help on a tear-off, because 40 CFR 745.83 leaves out any job that demolishes painted surface areas. Lead-safe setup costs real time and material, and the exterior work practices in 40 CFR 745.85 spell out much of it: close doors and windows within 20 feet of the work, cover the ground with plastic sheeting at least 10 feet out from the wall (or far enough to catch falling debris, whichever is greater), and put up vertical containment or equivalent extra precautions when the work is within 10 feet of the property line, so check the distance to the neighbor on every tight lot. At the end, debris is bagged and a certified renovator visually inspects the work area, including windowsills and the ground. Add the pamphlet paperwork and the records. Price it as its own line, so the homeowner sees why two similar houses get different numbers, and write the year built on every estimate.

The EPA's asbestos page names roofing and siding shingles among the products that may contain asbestos. If the old cladding is cement-type shingle, quote testing first, then put abatement on its own line, or refer it to an abatement contractor, once results are back. A price that assumes the shingles are clean is a guess you will pay for if the test comes back positive.

How should you price storm and insurance siding jobs?

Storm work adds the homeowner's insurer to the deal. Treat what follows as general information; state rules differ, and a lawyer should review your contract.

• Price from your own estimate. Measure, take off materials and time the phases the same way you would for a cash job. Compare your scope with the carrier's line by line, and where yours is larger (a missed elevation, house wrap, flashing at openings), back it up with photos and measurements and give it to the homeowner. How much further a contractor may go on a claim depends on state law, so check yours before you talk scope with an adjuster.
• Be careful with matching. A storm-damaged wall on a discontinued color may have no exact match. How the carrier handles that depends on the policy and on state rules, so record the product line, profile and color from a removed panel or carton, describe the options in writing, and let the owner and carrier decide.
• Know the policy type. According to the NAIC, actual cash value coverage factors depreciation (age, wear and tear) into what it pays, and replacement cost coverage pays for repairs or replacement using materials of like kind and quality. The policy shapes what the owner receives, so set deposit and payment terms that do not rely on guessing the claim.
• Leave the deductible alone. The Texas Department of Insurance warns that a contractor in Texas may not offer to waive, rebate or absorb the policyholder's deductible. Other states have their own rules. Price the job, and let the owner pay their share.

Claim jobs also take longer to pay and more office time to run: photos, supplements, calls with adjusters. Put that time into your overhead for storm work, or into a separate admin line.

Minimums, repairs, repeat work and travel

Repairs need a minimum. Replacing one cracked panel still means loading the truck, driving, standing a ladder and often hunting down a matching color. Your minimum should pay for the trip and a short visit; price bigger repairs from your own time and materials. When no match exists, price each fix the homeowner could choose (a patch in the closest available color, swapping pieces between walls, or re-siding the whole elevation) and get the choice signed before you start.

Repeat work is real, but small. A re-sided house will not need you again for many years. The repeat revenue comes from storm repairs on houses you already sided, trim and caulk touch-ups, soffit and gutter add-ons, landlords with several rentals, and property managers who send repair tickets all year. Price those as a published repair rate with the minimum, and keep every installed house in your CRM with its measurements, product line and color name, so the next repair is priced from the actual product and wall size.

Travel adds up on multi-day jobs. Multiply the daily drive by the crew size and the number of days, add supply runs and dumpster swaps, and set a service area. Outside it, add a travel line. Booking installs on neighboring streets in the same week cuts the drive between jobs and lets one supply run serve both crews.

Warranty and callback costs

Siding callbacks tend to repeat: wavy or buckled panels, panels that slip out of a corner post, failed caulk joints on fiber cement, leaks at window heads, and soffit that lets go in a storm. When one comes in, compare what the crew did with the published installation method. The Polymeric Exterior Products Association's horizontal siding installation manual covers several of these directly: fasten in the center of the nailing slots, leave space between the fastener head and the panel, do not force panels up or down while fastening, and leave expansion gaps at corner posts and channels. In several places it also sends installers to the manufacturer's own instructions. Read each manufacturer's warranty for its installation requirements, because a warranty claim denied for installation can land on you.

Put your workmanship warranty in writing: what it covers, how many years it runs, and what it excludes (storm damage, impact, work by others). Log every callback against the original job with hours, materials and trips. Total the year, divide by the jobs you installed, and carry that reserve on each new estimate, as the worked example does. If one detail drives most of your callbacks, fix the method and price the fix into the job.

Siding pricing mistakes that eat margin

• One rate per square for everything. Corners, openings and trim get lost inside it.
• Treating openings as free. Each window and door is flashing, trim and cutting time.
• Guessing the sheathing. Write a price per sheet into the contract and count the bad sheets with the owner.
• Leaving out height. Pump jack and scaffold setup belong in the labor hours.
• No waste line, no rounding. Short material means another trip and a crew standing around.
• Mixing up markup and margin. The worked example shows what that costs on a siding-sized material bill.
• Promising a match on repairs. Older colors may be gone. Put the options in writing.
• Quotes with no expiration. Supplier prices move. Date every quote.

Every house you estimate leaves data behind: squares, openings, actual hours by phase, waste, sheathing sheets, callbacks. Tie those to each job and the next estimate gets sharper. Keeping that history on every job is the reason the companies we run moved onto a CRM written around their own work, the same kind of custom CRM we now build for contractors. For the marketing side of this trade, see our page for siding contractors; for licensing, insurance and equipment, read how to start a siding business; and for the roof above the walls, how to price roofing jobs uses the same method.

Frequently asked questions