How much does a porch cost ?

The addition of a porch to your home is a popular home improvement choice for many people. It adds curb appeal and can provide additional living space and make life much easier in bad weather when you can just dump everything when you arrive home without messing up the hallway or other rooms.

Planning your porch.

If you’re thinking of building a porch then you should first consider its function: what you want to use it for or achieve by building it. Do you want it to be purely functional and quite basic or a space to spend time and possibly dine outside? Location is also important, as being situated off the kitchen or living room will probably be based on the porch’s intended function. Catching the sun may well also be a consideration when deciding on where to locate your porch. Think about any amenities you’ll want to include, maybe a fireplace, swing, hammock, ceiling fans and furniture. Is it to be an open porch or screened, and the type of construction material to be used, wood or composite or a combination, and even brick can be used for part of the porch construction. All these factors affect porch costs.

An idea of porch costs.

Let’s take an example of a typical 16' x 20' porch to be built. The job will possibly need to involve different contractors such as a carpenter, electrician, and builder to lay the concrete foundations depending on the proposed site. A covered and enclosed porch such as this will probably cost around $30,000 so that’s $100 per square foot as a guide. A homeowner could expect to recover around 80-85% of that when selling their home in the future.

Breakdown of porch costs.

Concrete footings, assuming 4x4 piers are used, with 6 to 9 of them for the porch mentioned above, would probably run around $4.20 per square foot.

Construction of flooring joist system, using pressure-treated yellow pine wood, should cost around $1.65 per square foot plus costs of labor to install it (approx 8 hours).

Roofing shingles should run around $3.75 per square foot plus labor to fix them (approx 16 hours).

Screening to enclose the porch will cost from $2.70 - $3 per square foot as part of the porch build, and a bead board ceiling around $1.00 per square foot. Any electrical wiring work for low voltage lamps or similar will depend on the design, but electricians normally charge between $65 and $85 per hour.

Obviously there are certain enhancements such as installing a ceiling fan, access steps, railings and such like that could add to the overall porch costs, and these will depend on the exact design you choose. The size of the porch will also greatly affect the overall cost as the bigger it is the lower the porch costs per square foot.

Costs for screening a porch.

If you already have an existing porch but are thinking about screening and enclosing it, then here is an example of a 200 square foot porch and the costs involved.

Basic materials for the job could range from $360 - $460 depending on the type and quality chosen. Labor costs will vary depending on your geographical location, and even time of year, but you should budget around $365 to $490 for labor for the installation. That means you should be allowing $3 to $4 per square foot for the whole screening process.

A porch can be an excellent way to give your home a new lease of life and allow you to enjoy time outside in comfort. Once you have some ideas about how you would like your porch to look and what you’d like to use it for, get some quotes from local contractors to get a better idea of porch costs per square foot and what will be involved in building your porch.


To get a better idea of costs, here are some porch estimates from professionals.

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