Wood fence cost calculator

How much does a wood fence cost?

A 150-foot, 6-foot-tall wood privacy fence costs $4,220 to $5,720 installed at national-average labor rates, or roughly $33.13 per linear foot. Material alone accounts for about $12 per foot, with installed labor adding around $15 per foot before regional adjustment. The wood fence calculator above itemizes every one of those lines rather than returning a single per-foot number.

Across the whole material set, chain-link is the cheapest option upfront at $3,508 for the same fence. Measured over expected service life instead, chain-link comes out ahead at $156 per year. Wood runs $284 per year over its 15-20 years lifespan.

Posts sit 8 feet apart, so a 150-foot run needs 20 posts and about 40 bags of concrete. Post spacing is one of the quieter cost drivers between materials. Chain-link's 10-foot spacing means meaningfully fewer holes to dig than the 8-foot spacing every other material uses.

Is wood the right choice?

Best for: Homeowners who want maximum privacy for the lowest upfront cost and accept a maintenance schedule.

What works: Lowest upfront cost for a full-privacy fence; Can be painted or stained any color, and restained later; Individual pickets are cheap and easy to replace; Every fence contractor in the country installs it.

What does not: Needs sealing every 2-3 years or it greys and checks; Rots at the ground line, which is where most failures start; Warps and cups in humid climates; Shortest service life of the common privacy options.

Maintenance is the line people forget. Wood needs: stain or seal every 2-3 years. Over a 15-20 years service life, that is a recurring cost in either money or weekends, and it belongs in any honest comparison against a higher upfront price.

Wood fence cost by state

Labor is roughly half of an installed fence, so the same wood fence varies by more than 50% across the country. In Mississippi, the cheapest labor market in the US, the 150-foot fence above costs $4,374. In Hawaii, the most expensive, the identical fence costs $5,801.

Frost depth compounds that gap. A wood fence in Minnesota needs posts set 60 inches deep; the same fence in Florida needs no frost allowance at all. That difference alone is several hundred dollars of concrete and labor on a typical residential run. Select your state in the calculator above to apply both adjustments.

Wood privacy fence vs wood picket fence

The figures above price a solid 6-foot panel, which is what most people mean by a privacy fence. A 4-foot picket version of the same material costs about $3,682 across 150 feet, because spaced pickets leave roughly a third of the panel face open and shorter posts need less concrete. Run the calculator at 4 feet and treat that as the upper bound on a picket fence, since it prices a solid panel at that height.

Board on board is the third common style and the most expensive of the three. Overlapping every board so no gap opens as the lumber dries takes about 35% more material than a butted panel, bringing the same 150-foot fence to roughly $5,663. It is the style worth paying for in a humid or high-wind climate, where a flat panel opens sightlines within a couple of seasons as the boards shrink.

Whichever style you land on, the posts, gates, corners and permit are unchanged, which is why a style decision moves the total far less than a material or height decision does.

How we calculated these estimates

Every figure on this page comes from the same open formula the calculator above uses. We start from a 2026 national baseline for materials and installed labor, apply the state labor multiplier published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics for construction trades, then add the line items your inputs call for: gates, corners, removal, permits and a waste allowance. Nothing is hidden behind a lead form, and no contractor pays us to appear here. The result is a planning range, not a quote. The low figure assumes straightforward access and an efficient crew, and the high figure assumes obstacles, difficult access, or premium material grades.