Wood Fence Installation Cost: Price Per Linear Foot

Short answer: Wood fence installation cost commonly runs an illustrative 20 to 30 dollars per linear foot for a 6 foot pressure-treated privacy fence, 25 to 40 dollars for cedar, and 35 to 55 dollars for redwood, with a shorter picket style running 15 to 25 dollars. A 140 foot yard fence with one gate in standard pressure-treated pine prices near 3,400 dollars as a planning figure, before staining and site extras.

Wood fence installation cost is a genuinely wider spread than most outdoor projects, because wood is not one material but a whole family of species and grades, each with its own price, its own working properties, and its own maintenance schedule. Two 6 foot privacy fences of the identical length can price a thousand dollars or more apart depending only on whether the boards are pressure-treated pine or clear-grade redwood, before a single post is set differently between them. That spread is exactly why a wood fence estimate has to start with the species and the style rather than a single per foot number pulled from an unrelated job.

This cost brief prices wood fence installation the way lumberyards and fence contractors actually think about one: per linear foot, broken out by species, height, and board style, then layered with what gates, staining, and site conditions add. It is the direct cost companion to our fence material take-off, which works the post, rail, and picket quantities for this exact kind of fence in full, and to our fence post tutorial, which carries the concrete footing technique every post here relies on. Here the whole focus is money rather than quantities. Run your own fence through the companion below to turn a length, species, and style into an illustrative installed total as you read.

What drives wood fence installation cost

A wood fence estimate has more moving parts than a chain link one, and naming them up front keeps the rest of this brief organized. Species sets the base lumber price and the fence’s expected lifespan more than anything else, since pressure-treated pine, cedar, and redwood are priced on genuinely different scales. Height moves the board count and the post length together, the same way it does for any fence. Style, whether the fence is a solid privacy panel, a spaced picket run, or a board-on-board design with overlapping boards on both faces, changes how much lumber covers each linear foot independent of height or species.

Beyond those three, gates, site access, an old fence that needs removing first, and whether staining is included all layer cost on top of the bare per foot rate without changing what that rate itself represents. Every section below prices one of these levers, and the companion at the end lets you combine them on your own fence rather than averaging across all of them at once.

Wood fence cost by species

Species is the single biggest lever in a wood fence estimate, and the reason is straightforward: the three common residential species are genuinely different products with different growing conditions, different natural durability, and different market prices, not the same wood at three price points. Pressure-treated pine is a fast-growing, widely farmed softwood that is chemically treated under pressure to resist rot and insect damage in ground and weather contact, and it is reliably the least expensive of the three, an illustrative 20 to 30 dollars per linear foot installed at 6 feet in a standard privacy style.

Cedar is naturally resistant to rot and insects without chemical treatment, thanks to oils in the wood itself, and it is a slower-growing, more regionally concentrated species, both of which push its price up, an illustrative 25 to 40 dollars per linear foot at the same height and style. Redwood sits at the top of the common range, an illustrative 35 to 55 dollars per linear foot or more depending on the grade, prized for its color, its natural durability, and increasingly limited by supply, since old-growth redwood is far more restricted than it once was and most residential redwood today is a younger, still-durable but pricier second-growth product.

Wood fence cost by height

Height moves a wood fence estimate on two fronts at once, which is why it interacts with species rather than simply adding a fixed amount regardless of what species is chosen. First, taller fences need more board surface, since a 6 foot privacy panel is roughly twice the board area of a 3 foot picket run over the same linear foot, and lumber is priced by the board foot, so that difference shows up directly. Second, taller fences need longer posts buried to a comparably deeper footing, since post length is above-ground height plus burial depth as our fence material take-off works out in detail, and a longer post is both a bigger piece of lumber and a bigger hole to dig and fill with concrete.

As an illustrative planning set in pressure-treated pine, a 3 to 4 foot picket fence might run 15 to 20 dollars per linear foot, a 4 to 5 foot fence 18 to 24 dollars, and a full 6 foot privacy fence 20 to 30 dollars, with the same proportional steps applying to cedar and redwood at their own higher bands. The jump from a picket height to a full privacy height is usually the largest single step in the whole height range, both because the board area roughly doubles and because a 6 foot fence more often triggers the deeper, wider footing that a taller run’s wind load and unbalanced weight call for.

Wood fence cost by style

Beyond species and height, the board style itself changes how much lumber covers a linear foot independent of either. A standard privacy fence hangs single boards edge to edge or slightly overlapped on one face, which is the baseline this brief prices from. A board-on-board fence doubles up, hanging a second layer of boards over the gaps of the first on the same face, which closes every sightline completely but roughly doubles the picket count and the fastener count for the same linear foot, adding an illustrative 20 to 35 percent to the bare fence cost. A shadowbox fence alternates boards on opposite faces of the rails rather than overlapping them on one face, using a similar or only slightly higher board count to board-on-board while giving both sides of the fence a finished, symmetric look, a detail neighbors sharing a fence line often specifically ask for.

A spaced picket fence, the opposite direction, leaves a deliberate gap between individual pickets rather than covering the run solid, which is both a shorter height in typical use and a lower board count per foot even at the same height, since the gaps themselves are free. Style and height are independent choices in practice: a tall picket fence and a short board-on-board fence both exist, and each combination has its own board count, so price the specific combination you actually want rather than assuming style is a footnote on top of the height number.

Post spacing and how it moves the price

Post spacing on a wood fence commonly runs 6 to 8 feet on center, tighter than chain link’s 8 to 10 foot spacing, because the rails between wood posts have to span the gap without sagging under the weight of the pickets they carry, and wood rails sag more readily than a chain link top rail or tension wire does. Our fence material take-off works through why the post count is sections plus one per run rather than length divided by spacing, and that same undercount error inflates a cost estimate exactly as it deflates a materials list, since every missed post is a missed footing, a missed length of post lumber, and a missed share of labor.

Tightening spacing from 8 feet to 6 feet on the same total run adds roughly a third more posts, and since each post carries its own footing, its own length of lumber, and its own dig-and-set labor, that spacing choice moves the total more than most buyers expect from what looks like a minor style preference. Spacing is chosen for structural reasons, taller and heavier board styles want tighter spacing, so treat it as a specification decision made with whoever builds the fence rather than a place to negotiate savings, since undersized spacing on a tall solid fence is a leaning fence within a season or two, not a lasting cost cut.

Concrete footing cost per post

Every wood fence post sets in a concrete footing sized by the same cylinder-minus-post arithmetic our fence post tutorial carries through step by step: the hole is a cylinder, the post displaces a small share of it, and concrete fills what remains. A typical 4x4 line post footing on a 6 foot fence commonly holds an illustrative 1.5 to 2 cubic feet of concrete, near 3 bags of standard 80 pound mix, while a gate post’s larger 6x6 section in a deeper, wider hole holds considerably more, an illustrative 4 to 5 cubic feet, near 7 to 8 bags.

On a fence with, say, 18 line posts and 2 gate posts, that works out to roughly 54 bags for the line posts and 15 for the gate posts, near 69 bags total before any margin, a real cost line our bags of concrete manual helps convert to a bag count from any hole size and depth you actually plan to dig. Confirm the yield printed on whatever product you buy, since fast-setting mixes intended for post work commonly publish their own figure that differs from a standard mix.

Rail and picket cost, per section

Once posts are counted, the rails and pickets that fill each section are the more purely arithmetic part of the estimate, and they scale with the fenced length rather than the post count. A standard 6 foot privacy fence commonly uses 3 rails per section, and rail lumber is bought as one stick per rail per section rather than by the linear foot, which our fence material take-off shows already embeds most of the cut waste into the count. Pickets come from the fenced length divided by the pitch, the picket’s actual width plus the gap you leave, and a common 5.5 inch board with a tight or slightly gapped joint on a privacy fence yields roughly 2 pickets per linear foot.

Priced rather than counted, rails and pickets together commonly make up the largest single material share of a standard wood fence’s bill, more than the posts and more than the concrete, simply because there are so many more of them across a typical run. That is also why board-on-board and shadowbox styles cost meaningfully more per foot even at the identical height and post spacing: the post and rail count barely changes, but the picket count roughly doubles, and pickets are where most of the lumber actually goes.

Gate cost for a wood fence

A gate is the item that moves a wood fence total the most for its own modest footprint, exactly as it does on a chain link job. A single walk gate matching the fence style, commonly 3 to 4 feet of opening, adds an illustrative 200 to 450 dollars installed on top of the run it interrupts, covering a matching picketed frame, hinges sized to the leaf’s weight, and a latch. A double gate wide enough for equipment or a vehicle, commonly 8 to 12 feet of total opening, runs considerably more, an illustrative 500 to 1,200 dollars or beyond, since a wide wood leaf needs internal diagonal bracing to resist racking and sagging that a narrow walk gate does not.

As our fence material take-off works through in detail, a gate hangs its entire weight off one post as a cantilever and works that load back and forth with every swing, a genuinely different demand from a line post resisting only wind, and the usual response is a larger post section in a bigger, deeper concrete footing. That upgrade is real material and labor cost that a bare per foot fence rate never carries, which is why every gate belongs in a quote as its own line rather than blended into an average.

Staining and sealing cost, now and later

A new wood fence is not a finished, maintenance-free purchase, and staining or sealing is the recurring line most buyers underweight when comparing wood to a material that skips it entirely. Applying a stain or sealer to a new fence commonly runs an illustrative 2 to 4 dollars per linear foot for materials and labor together, though the true surface area, both faces of every picket plus edges, is meaningfully larger than the linear footage alone would suggest, which is why pricing it per linear foot of fence rather than per square foot of actual wood surface is a simplification rather than an exact figure.

Timing matters more with wood than with most finishes: pressure-treated lumber is typically shipped still carrying manufacturing moisture and commonly needs several months to a year to dry out enough to accept a stain or sealer properly, while kiln-dried cedar can often be finished sooner. And the cost is not a one-time event. A stain or sealer commonly needs reapplying every 2 to 4 years to keep protecting the wood from sun and moisture cycling, so a realistic lifecycle comparison has to include that recurring cost, not just the number on the original installation quote, when weighing wood against a fence material that never needs refinishing at all.

Wood fence cost versus other materials

Wood sits in the middle of the common residential fence material range rather than at either end. It typically costs more than standard galvanized chain link at a comparable height, our chain link fence cost brief prices that comparison directly, an illustrative half to two thirds of a wood privacy fence’s per foot rate for the chain link equivalent, mostly because chain link needs fewer, more widely spaced posts and no individual pickets to hang. Wood typically costs less than a comparable vinyl or composite privacy fence, which trades a higher material price for skipping the recurring staining cost this section just covered.

The honest way to weigh the comparison is over the fence’s full life rather than the installation invoice alone. Wood wins on up-front price against vinyl or composite and loses on maintenance; it loses on up-front price against chain link and wins decisively on privacy and appearance. Which comparison matters more depends on how long you plan to own the property, how much the maintenance schedule actually bothers you, and how much privacy the yard genuinely needs, none of which a single per foot number can settle on its own.

Site access, slope, and demolition of an old fence

A flat, obstruction-free yard is the fastest site to build a wood fence on, since post holes dig quickly and every board hangs plumb without extra bracing to hold a section steady on uneven ground. Sloped ground adds labor rather than material, through the choice between racking the fence to follow the grade continuously, which adds only a small amount of extra lumber from the longer slope-measured run, and stepping it to keep every panel level, which leaves the board count essentially unchanged but pushes post length up and takes more careful layout to finish the triangular gap under each stepped panel.

Where an old fence is coming out first, demolition and disposal is its own line, commonly an illustrative 3 to 8 dollars per linear foot, covering pulling the old boards and rails, breaking the old posts free of whatever concrete anchors them, and hauling the debris away. That cost climbs with the volume of old concrete to break out and with how far the disposal has to travel, and a quote that is silent on removal is not automatically the cheaper bid, it is an incomplete one until that figure is added back in.

Labor’s share of a wood fence

Labor is frequently the largest single share of an installed wood fence, the same pattern our retaining wall cost brief documents for a different structure entirely. Digging and setting every post plumb, hanging and leveling rails, and then individually placing, spacing, and fastening every picket is genuinely time-consuming skilled work, and unlike chain link’s fabric that unrolls the whole fence at once, a wood fence is built one board at a time. That is exactly why board-on-board and shadowbox styles cost more in labor as well as material: every additional board is another piece to measure, cut if needed, and fasten.

Because labor dominates, regional wage rates move an installed wood fence quote more than the species choice does in many markets, and the parts of the job a homeowner can supply, digging holes, hauling the old fence away, even doing the whole build on a standard-height, flat-lot fence, are where the real savings live. When comparing bids, ask what each one assumes about site conditions and who is doing which part of the labor, since two quotes for the identical species and length can differ substantially on labor alone.

DIY versus hiring a pro

Whether to build a wood fence yourself comes down to scale, style, and site more than to the species chosen. A standard-height picket or privacy fence on a mostly flat, reasonably accessible lot is a realistic project for a capable DIYer with basic tools and the willingness to dig by hand or rent an auger, and buying just the lumber, hardware, and concrete can be a fraction of a full installed quote, since labor is the share you are converting into your own time. The math tightens as the run gets long, since even simple techniques take real hours multiplied across dozens of posts and hundreds of pickets.

The case for hiring out strengthens with board-on-board or shadowbox styles, which take more skill to hang evenly on both faces, with a sloped or rocky site that takes more judgment to build square and level on, and simply with not having the weekends to spare. A gate, especially a wide double gate, is also where amateur builds most often disappoint, since a sagging gate is usually a bracing or hinge sizing mistake rather than a wood quality problem. Match the decision to the specific fence in front of you rather than to a blanket rule about wood fences in general.

A worked example: a 140 foot yard fence with one gate

Pull the levers together on one example. A backyard needs 140 feet of new fence, 6 feet tall, a standard privacy style, pressure-treated pine, on an easy flat site, with one 4 foot walk gate. At 8 feet on center spacing, that layout takes roughly 18 posts including the two at the gate opening, following the sections-plus-one logic our fence material take-off works out in full.

Bare fence at an illustrative 24 dollars per linear foot for 140 feet prices near 3,360 dollars, bundling posts, rails, pickets, hardware, concrete, and labor. The walk gate adds an illustrative 300 dollars for its frame, hardware, and the two upgraded gate posts, bringing the total to about 3,660 dollars as an all-in illustrative planning figure, before staining or any site difficulty adjustment.

Change one input and watch the total move. Swap the species to cedar at the same height and style and the bare fence line rises to roughly 4,620 dollars before the gate. Switch to board-on-board in the same pressure-treated pine and expect an illustrative 20 to 35 percent premium on the bare fence line alone, since the picket count roughly doubles. Add a stain at an illustrative 3 dollars per linear foot across the run and that is another 420 dollars, a cost that then recurs every 2 to 4 years for as long as the fence stands.

How to compare wood fence quotes fairly

Comparing two wood fence bids fairly starts with confirming both are pricing the same species, height, and style, since a lower bid in pressure-treated pine is not actually cheaper than a higher bid in cedar, it is a different product entirely. Confirm both quotes state the post spacing, since wider spacing means fewer, cheaper posts and may or may not meet the structural needs of the style chosen. Confirm whether staining is included in the number or priced as a separate add-on, and if included, ask what product and how many coats, since a bare mention of staining without those details can mean almost anything.

Ask directly whether concrete, old fence removal, and a difficult-site allowance are included or excluded, and ask what happens if digging runs into rock or heavy roots. And confirm every gate is itemized with its own upgraded posts rather than folded into a blended per foot average, since that is the single most common place a wood fence quote hides scope rather than removing it.

Ways to keep wood fence cost down

A handful of choices trim a wood fence budget without compromising the parts that hold the fence up. Choosing pressure-treated pine over cedar or redwood is the single largest lever, and accepting standard board spacing over board-on-board or shadowbox is the next largest, since both act directly on the picket count that this brief’s cost breakdown shows carries the largest material share. Minimizing gates, and sizing the ones you keep to the smallest opening the use actually requires, avoids the largest single per-item cost on the job.

On the labor side, a flat, easily accessed site with the old fence already cleared is cheaper to build on than a sloped, rocky, or obstructed one, so handling demolition or brush clearing yourself ahead of the crew’s arrival can trim real hours from the bid. What is not worth cutting is post spacing on a tall or heavy style, or footing depth and diameter on gate posts, since an undersized footing there is the fast route to a leaning post and a fence that needs rework within a season or two, the same false economy our fence post tutorial warns against for any post in the ground.

Common mistakes when budgeting a wood fence

A few errors recur across wood fence estimates. First, comparing a bid in one species against a bid in another as though they were interchangeable, when species alone can be a third or more of the price gap between two quotes. Second, forgetting that staining is a recurring cost, not a one-time line, and then being surprised by the maintenance bill two or three years in.

Third, pricing gates from the blended per foot rate rather than as their own line, which understates the total every time a layout includes one. Fourth, choosing tight spacing or a heavy board style on price alone without confirming the structural reason behind the spec, then discovering the fence sags or the rails bow because the actual specification did not match what was quoted. Fifth, ignoring site conditions when requesting quotes, so a sloped or rocky lot turns into a change order instead of a line item priced in from the start.

Property lines and the calls before you install

Two checks belong on every wood fence job and neither is a pricing question. Call the utility locate service that covers your area before any post hole is dug, which in the United States is reached by dialing 811 and is commonly free, and wait for the marks to appear before a digging tool touches the ground, since buried gas, power, water, and communications lines give no visible warning of their location.

Separately, confirm the actual property line from a survey rather than an old fence, a hedge line, or where the lawn has always been mowed, and check local rules on maximum height, which is frequently lower for a front yard than a back one, setback from the line, which side must show its finished face, whether a permit applies, and any homeowners association conditions on height, style, or finish color. None of this changes a dollar figure in this brief, and all of it can change or delay the project, so make both calls before a quote is finalized rather than after materials are already on site.

Your wood fence cost checklist

Work through this before accepting a bid, and the number you sign off on will hold up once the crew arrives.

• Confirmed the exact species, height, and board style, since all three move the rate independently and are not interchangeable in a comparison.
• Confirmed the post spacing the bid assumes, and whether it matches the structural needs of the style chosen.
• Priced every gate as its own line item, including its upgraded posts and footing, rather than folded into a blended per foot rate.
• Asked whether staining or sealing is included, and if so, what product, how many coats, and confirmed it is budgeted as a recurring cost, not a one-time one.
• Confirmed whether concrete, old fence removal and disposal, and a difficult-site allowance are included or excluded.
• Flagged any known slope, rocky soil, or dense roots when requesting quotes, and asked what happens if digging runs into something unexpected.
• Called the utility locate service and waited for the marks, and confirmed the property line, height limit, setback, and permit position with the local authority.

The companion below runs the species, height, style, and gate count you choose into an illustrative installed total, so your own fence has a number to check a real bid against.

The bottom line

Wood fence installation cost is set first by species, then by height and style, and finally by gates, staining, and the site. As an illustrative planning range, a 6 foot privacy fence runs 20 to 30 dollars per linear foot in pressure-treated pine, 25 to 40 dollars in cedar, and 35 to 55 dollars in redwood, with a shorter picket style running less across every species and board-on-board or shadowbox adding 20 to 35 percent for the doubled picket count. Every gate adds its own several-hundred-dollar line regardless of the rest of the fence, and staining is a recurring cost every 2 to 4 years rather than a one-time add. Price your own fence with the companion below, lean on our fence material take-off and fence post tutorial for the quantities and the footing technique behind the number, and get more than one written, itemized local quote before you budget, since regional lumber prices and labor rates move a real bid more than any table here can.

Read this brief as cost education, not a quote or an engineering opinion. Every dollar figure here, per linear foot, per species, per gate, and per project, is an illustrative planning range, and your region, your lumber grade, your site conditions, and the season will each move a real bid, sometimes significantly. Confirm height limits, setbacks, and permit requirements with your local building authority, establish the property line from a survey rather than an existing fence, contact the utility locate service and wait for the marks before any digging begins, and build a budget only on written, itemized quotes for your fence in your area.