A six-foot wood privacy fence runs $25 to $50 per linear foot installed, and the national average across 41,420 completed wood fence jobs sits at $54. The number that decides where you land in that spread is not the wood species — it is how the pickets are hung. Stockade, shadowbox and board-on-board are three different answers to the same problem, they cost different amounts, and only one of them is still fully private two summers from now.
The Base Rate, Before Style Enters the Picture
Every figure below is an installed cost — material plus labor — per linear foot, at the six-foot height that almost every privacy fence is built to. These are national estimates rather than quotes, and a bid in your area can land outside them on site conditions alone.
Ergeon, which publishes medians from its own completed jobs rather than survey responses, puts the national wood fence average at $54 per linear foot as of July 2026, with a $44 to $67 range across 41,420 installs. That average is regional more than anything: Southern markets come in around $44 per foot and West Coast jobs around $67, which is a labor-rate gap, not a materials gap.
| Material | Installed cost per linear foot | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Pressure-treated pine | $25–$40 | Cheapest per foot, wettest lumber, most movement |
| Cedar | $30–$50 | Stable, rot-resistant, the common upgrade |
| Vinyl / PVC | $40–$85 | No staining bill, no shrinkage, higher entry price |
| Composite | $55–$85 | Highest material cost, lowest maintenance |
| Bamboo | $20–$30 | Cheap screening, short service life |
- Gates are priced separately: a walk gate averages $399 (typical range $245–$568), a double or driveway gate averages $735 ($483–$1,007).
- Most residential privacy runs are 150 to 200 linear feet, which puts a typical finished project between $3,000 and $8,000. The Angi 2026 figure for average spend is $4,300.
- Tearing out an old fence first adds roughly $3 to $10 per linear foot, because posts have to come out of concrete rather than just be cut down.
Why a Stockade Fence Stops Being Private
A stockade fence hangs its pickets edge to edge with no overlap, which is the cheapest way to get a solid wall of wood and the reason it is the default quote. The catch is that pressure-treated pine leaves the yard soaking wet. It is sold shortly after treatment, and it can weigh close to double what the same board weighs dry.
Wood shrinks across its width as it gives that moisture up. A one-by cedar picket commonly loses up to a quarter inch of width; pressure-treated pine installed straight off the pallet can do worse, and installers report butted-tight boards opening to half-inch gaps within a week or two of going up. Nobody did anything wrong. The fence was measured and fastened at one moisture content and it now lives at another.
That is the whole reason the other two styles exist. Shadowbox alternates pickets on opposite sides of the rail so that each gap is backed by a board behind it, and board-on-board overlaps each picket over its neighbour by an inch or so. Both are built with the shrinkage already assumed. A stockade fence is built hoping it does not happen, and it always happens.
If you are set on stockade anyway, the fix costs nothing at install time: hang the pickets butted tight rather than spaced, and let drying open them to a quarter inch instead of starting at a quarter inch and ending at three-quarters.
What the Style Premium Actually Costs
The number repeated across most fencing pages is that a board-on-board fence needs about 30% more pickets than a stockade fence of the same length. That part is true — the overlap has to come from somewhere.
The part almost nobody finishes is what 30% more pickets does to the bill, and the answer is: much less than 30%. Labor is 40% to 60% of a fence job before a single picket is bought. Of the materials that remain, pickets share the budget with posts, rails, concrete and hardware, and none of those change when you switch styles — a board-on-board fence uses exactly the same post count, the same holes and the same concrete as the stockade version. Run the arithmetic and a 30% picket increase lands at roughly 8% to 12% on the installed total.
Shadowbox is the one that surprises people. It uses a similar quantity of boards to board-on-board, so its material premium is comparable, but the alternating layout takes longer to set out and the visible edges need cleaner cuts. On most quotes it arrives at or slightly above board-on-board, not below it, and the extra is labor rather than lumber.
| Style | Picket use vs. stockade | Effect on installed total | Privacy after it dries |
|---|---|---|---|
| Stockade (butted) | Baseline | Baseline | Gaps of 1/4" to 1/2" open up |
| Shadowbox | ~30% more | +10% to +15%, mostly labor | Full screening at a straight-on angle only |
| Board-on-board | ~30% more | +8% to +12%, mostly material | Full screening, holds as boards shrink |
- Shadowbox is not fully private from an angle — you can see through it walking past. It is chosen for airflow on windy sites and because it looks identical from both sides.
- Board-on-board is the only one of the three that is still solid after two dry seasons, which is why it is the style worth paying the premium for if privacy is the actual goal.
- A neighbour splitting the bill usually cares which side gets the rails. Shadowbox sidesteps that argument entirely; board-on-board does not.
Height Moves the Number More Than Style Does
Six feet is the standard build height and the one every per-foot figure above assumes. Going to eight changes the price more than any style decision will. On a 150-foot run, a six-foot fence works out near $4,700 and an eight-foot fence near $6,300 — as much as 35% on top, because the taller fence needs longer posts set deeper, an extra horizontal rail, and taller pickets that are priced per foot of height.
Height is also where the permit sits. Most jurisdictions let a six-foot fence go up in a back yard with no permit at all, and cap front-yard fences around four feet. Above six feet you are usually into a permit and sometimes a variance, which is weeks of calendar time rather than a line item.
One trap worth knowing before you order materials: many codes measure total height from the lowest adjacent grade, not from where the post enters the ground. An eight-foot fence running along a dip can measure ten feet to an inspector and fail on a technicality that is expensive to unwind once the concrete is set.
Try It: Price a Privacy Fence by Style
The calculator below applies the style and height multipliers from this article to a per-foot material rate, so you can see what the board-on-board upgrade actually adds to your own footage rather than to a generic 150-foot yard. It is a planning estimate — get three local quotes before you commit to a number.
Privacy Fence Cost Calculator
Estimate only. Excludes permits, surveys, slope and unusual access.
Why the Published Ranges Disagree So Badly
If you search this topic for ten minutes you will find shadowbox quoted at $10 to $15 per linear foot installed in treated lumber, and you will also find wood privacy fencing at $44 to $67. Both are labelled 2026 and both are labelled installed. They cannot both be describing a finished fence in a yard.
The low figures are almost always material-only totals, panel prices from a big-box shelf, or jobs where the homeowner set the posts. The high figures come from full-service contractors who pull the permit, locate the utilities, dig and set every post in concrete and haul the old fence away. When a range starts below about $20 per foot for a six-foot privacy fence, assume labor is missing from it until the page says otherwise.
The practical test when reading any quote or any cost page: does it state a height, a picket style and whether posts are set in concrete? A figure without those three is not comparable to one that has them, and most of the spread you see online is those three variables moving around underneath a single headline number.
If You’re Setting the Posts Yourself
Post work is where a DIY fence is won or lost — it is most of the labor, and it is the part that cannot be corrected later once the concrete cures. These are the commodity supplies worth having on site before you start rather than halfway through.
- Post hole diggers and augers — The rental yard’s powered auger is faster, but a clamshell digger is what you will actually use to clean out the bottom of the hole and to square up the ones the auger wanders on.
- Post levels — A strap-on post level frees both hands while you brace and pour. Plumb posts are the single difference between a fence that looks built and one that looks assembled.
- Mason line and string reels — Run a string line the full length before any hole is dug. Fences drift, and the drift is invisible from inside the yard until every picket is on.
- Fence stain and sealer — Pressure-treated pickets need to dry out before they will take a finish — usually several weeks to a few months. Buy this when the fence is ready for it, not on the same trip as the lumber.
Stop and hire out anything over six feet, anything on a real slope, and anything where the line is disputed or unsurveyed. Tall fences carry permit and engineering requirements, sloped runs need stepped or racked panels that are unforgiving to lay out by eye, and a fence built a foot over the property line is the most expensive mistake on this page to undo.
If you take one number away from this, make it the 8% to 12%. The board-on-board premium gets quoted as 30% because that is the picket count, and the picket count is the part that is easy to measure — but posts, concrete, rails, hardware and every hour of labor are identical between the two fences, so the premium arrives on your bill far smaller than the internet says. On a 150-foot cedar run it is a few hundred dollars to get a fence that is still solid after the wood has finished moving. Costs above are national estimates, not quotes, and will vary by region, lot conditions and contractor.
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