Siding Calculator

Re-cladding a house in vinyl, fiber cement, wood, or stucco hinges on ordering the right quantity of material the first time. Order short and the job stalls; order long and you have eaten into the budget for no reason.

The math starts at the walls. Measure each one's length and height, multiply for its area, then subtract the openings where windows and doors sit. Adding those net figures together gives the surface that actually needs covering. The calculator does this from the house perimeter (or length plus width, doubled) times the wall height and number of stories, then deducts a standard 15 sq ft per window and 21 sq ft per door and adds a fixed 10% for cuts and overlaps. It measures rectangular walls only, so add gable triangles yourself. It reports the result in squares of 100 sq ft; divide by the coverage printed on your product's box or bundle for a count to buy. The cost line uses fixed rates per square foot, material plus labor: $4 + $3 for vinyl, $8 + $5 for fiber cement, $7 + $5 for wood and $9 + $6 for stucco.

Irregular walls and gables reward a second round of measuring before you commit. Skipping the waste allowance is what most often leaves a project a few panels short at the worst possible moment. And keep in mind that the square-footage figure covers field material only: J-channels, corner posts, and trim are separate line items that belong in their own part of the budget.