Get an installed price range to re-side your home by exterior wall square footage and material (vinyl, fiber cement, engineered wood, or metal). Pick your scope, see a low, mid, and high ballpark in seconds.
Ballpark only, not a quote. Get 3 local bids before you budget. This estimate multiplies your wall area by published installed-cost ranges, it is not a measured estimate and not Kelly WM pricing.
Re-siding is priced on two things above everything else: how many square feet of exterior wall you are covering and which material goes on. This tool turns your wall area into a low, mid, and high installed price for the material you pick, then layers in tear-off and the upgrades that quietly move the number. It is built to set expectations before you call contractors, not to replace a measured bid.
The single biggest mistake in a DIY siding estimate is using the home's square footage. A 2,000 square foot two-story home does not have 2,000 square feet of wall, it usually has far more, because wall area is driven by your perimeter and your wall height, not your floor plan. A long, sprawling ranch can have more wall to cover than a compact two-story with the same floor area.
A quick way to estimate it: add up the length of every outside wall to get your perimeter, multiply by wall height (figure about 10 feet per story), then add roughly 10 percent for the triangle of wall under gable roof ends. That is the math behind the "estimate it for me" mode above. Contractors do not eyeball it, they measure each elevation and subtract large windows and doors, but for budgeting this gets you in the right zip code.
Two homes with identical wall area can get very different bids. Here is where the money goes beyond the panels themselves:
For most re-siding projects the real fork is vinyl versus fiber cement, and they are honestly different products, not just cheap versus expensive.
Vinyl is the value champion. It is light, installs fast, never needs painting, and shrugs off moisture. The tradeoffs: it can crack under a hard cold-weather impact, color is baked in so a future change means re-siding, and lower-end profiles can look flat up close. Insulated vinyl narrows the gap by adding a foam backer for rigidity and a small efficiency bump.
Fiber cement (the James Hardie category) is the durability and curb-appeal champion. It resists fire, rot, insects, and impact, holds paint for 10 to 15 years, and reads as a premium upgrade that tends to return strong resale value. The tradeoffs are cost and labor: the boards are heavy and brittle, must be cut with special blades and dust control, and a crew hangs far less per day, so the installed price per square foot can run roughly double vinyl. Engineered wood (LP SmartSide and similar) splits the difference, lighter and easier to cut than fiber cement with a warm wood-grain look, at a middle price.
Rule of thumb: choose vinyl when budget leads and the look is fine, choose fiber cement when you are staying long term or curb appeal and resale matter, and look hard at engineered wood or insulated vinyl when you want a step up without the full fiber-cement labor bill.
If your home is in a high-wind or coastal zone (much of Florida qualifies), siding is not just a look, it is part of the building envelope. Local codes set wind-load and fastening requirements, and coastal homes face salt-air corrosion that can shorten the life of unprotected metal fasteners and trim. Some products carry specific wind ratings and approvals for these zones. None of that is priced into a generic calculator, so verify wind-rating and permit requirements with your local building department and ask each bidder how they meet them. It can change both the product you are allowed to use and the labor to fasten it.
The Pro version drops this calculator onto your own site in your colors, lets you set your local price ranges by material, and emails you every homeowner who runs an estimate as a qualified lead. Want it on your siding site? Get a free mockup and a free strategy call.
Get early access, book a free call →Siding gets priced by the square foot of wall, installed, material and labor together, and that is how this runs. Enter your wall area directly, or let the tool estimate it. In estimate mode it takes your ground floor footprint, assumes a roughly 1.3 to 1 rectangle to derive a perimeter, multiplies by 10 feet of wall per story and your story count, then adds 10 percent for gable ends. From there it stacks per square foot ranges: your material, tear off and disposal if the old siding is coming down, house wrap or insulation board or replacing rotted sheathing, and trim, soffit and fascia. The low rates produce the low total, the high rates the high total, and most likely is the midpoint between the two.
Those per square foot ranges come from published homeowner-facing cost guides, the same ones you find when you search what siding costs, last reviewed in June 2026. They are wide on purpose, because material grade, home complexity, and local labor rates vary a great deal. They are not our prices, and the output is not a bid.
What the tool cannot see is your house. The area estimator is geometry built on an assumption, so wings, dormers, tall gable ends, or a wall that is mostly glass will move the real figure, and it does not deduct windows and doors unless you subtract them yourself in the known square footage mode. It does not know your local labor rate, whether a steep or three story elevation needs staging or a lift, what rot turns up once the old siding is off, permit fees, HOA color approval, or coastal wind rating requirements. Those land on a written bid after somebody measures. Get three itemized local bids and compare the line items rather than the totals. There are more than 50 free tools published at kellywm.com/tools, no email wall, and if you want this one on your own siding site with your own rates and the lead landing in your inbox, a custom calculator like it starts at $600.
It is the midpoint between the low and the high, which is arithmetic rather than a prediction about your house. Treat the whole range as your planning window, and expect complexity, hard access, and premium material grades to push you toward the top of it. The only number worth putting in a budget is a written bid from a contractor who has measured the walls.
Close enough to plan with, not close enough to order material. It assumes a simple rectangular footprint, 10 feet of wall per story, and a 10 percent allowance for gables. A plain two story box lands near reality. A house with wings, dormers, or a lot of window area can be off by a wide margin, so use the known square footage option whenever you can measure.