Hardie Siding Near Chicagoland
Cost

What James Hardie siding actually costs on a typical Chicago bungalow

We collected real numbers from homeowners across the North Side, Berwyn, and Oak Park. The range is wider than you'd think — and a lot of it has nothing to do with the siding itself.

By the Editorial Staff · Published · 9 min read

Pricing is the question we get more than any other. People want a number. We try to give them a range, with caveats, because cost on a real project varies more than anyone wants to admit. But here's a more grounded answer than the "$5 to $20 per square foot" you'll find online — built from quotes and final invoices that homeowners around Chicagoland have shared with us over the last year or so.

The typical Chicago bungalow

Let's start with what we mean by "typical bungalow." We're picturing a 1925-ish brick or partial-brick home, around 1,400 to 1,800 square feet of living space, with hardie going on roughly 1,000 to 1,400 square feet of exposed wall area (the dormers, the gable ends, and any second-story sections — most of the first story is brick that stays as-is). That's the bungalow geography across Lincoln Square, Albany Park, Portage Park, Jefferson Park, Berwyn, and into Oak Park.

The numbers we're seeing

For that kind of partial re-side — dormers, gables, second story over brick — the all-in cost on competitive bids in 2024 and 2025 has typically landed somewhere in the range of:

For a full re-side of a non-brick home — say a smaller two-flat or a frame bungalow that's getting hardie on all elevations — you're looking at higher totals, generally $35,000 to $65,000 for a 1,800-2,200 square foot home, with the same caveats about repairs and trim levels.

What actually drives the variance

This is the part most cost articles skip. The price per square foot quoted at the top of an estimate is almost meaningless on its own. What moves the number up or down is everything else.

Sheathing repair

Until the old siding is off, nobody knows what's under it. We've seen jobs come in at the estimate because there was nothing wrong, and we've seen jobs add $3,000 to $8,000 because there was significant rot at the eaves or behind a leaking dormer that nobody knew about. A good contractor builds a small contingency into the estimate or explicitly tells you it'll be billed time-and-materials if encountered. A less honest one quotes low to win the job and hits you with surprise change orders.

Trim upgrade

You can do hardie with minimal trim — basically wrap the openings and call it done — or you can do it with proper corner boards, frieze boards, water tables, and historically appropriate detail. The latter looks dramatically better on a bungalow, but it can add $3,000 to $8,000 to the job depending on how far you go. Most of the "wow, that looks like a different house" reactions come from trim, not the field siding.

ColorPlus vs primed

Factory-finished ColorPlus typically adds about 15 to 25 percent to the material cost compared to buying primed hardie and painting it on site. The trade-off is finish quality, the longer warranty on the finish, and the fact that you don't need to schedule a paint crew after the siding crew leaves. For most homeowners, the math favors ColorPlus.

Tear-off and dumpster

The dumpster, the disposal fees, and the labor to remove old siding are usually $2,000 to $4,500 on a bungalow, depending on what's coming off. Old aluminum is fast and cheap; old cedar that's been face-nailed to oak sheathing is slow and expensive. If you have asbestos siding (which still exists on a surprising number of pre-1970 homes around here), that's a different conversation — abatement specialists, separate disposal, often $5,000 to $10,000 just for that.

Permits and inspection

In Chicago proper, permits for a siding job typically run a few hundred dollars and require a licensed contractor. Some near-in suburbs are stricter — Oak Park and Evanston have additional review for historic neighborhoods, which can add a few hundred dollars and a couple weeks to the timeline. Make sure your estimate includes permits; some contractors quote without and then add them later.

House complexity

Tall gables, lots of windows, multiple dormers, intersecting rooflines, decorative brackets — all of these slow a crew down and increase material waste. A 1,500 square foot ranch with simple geometry is faster and cheaper per square foot than a 1,500 square foot Victorian with bays and turrets. The bungalow falls somewhere in the middle; a center-entrance bungalow with single dormer is straightforward, a chalet bungalow with multiple roof intersections is harder.

The price-per-square-foot number on the front of an estimate tells you almost nothing. Look at the line items underneath it. That's where the real cost differences live.

What we'd actually recommend doing on cost

Get three estimates. Not two, not four — three. They should all be from contractors who have actually walked your house, measured it, and looked at the existing condition. Phone quotes are useless on a project this size.

When you compare them, look at:

One more thing worth knowing: the lowest bid is usually low for a reason. Either they cut corners somewhere (often on trim, flashing, or repair allowances) or they're going to come back with change orders later. The highest bid isn't always the best, but the lowest is almost never the safest. The middle bid, from a contractor you have good rapport with, is statistically where most of our happy homeowners ended up.

The takeaway

For a typical Chicago bungalow getting partial hardie siding, budget somewhere between $22,000 and $32,000 for a competent job from a reputable contractor, with a 10-15 percent contingency on top for the surprises that always show up once tear-off starts. If you can't budget that range comfortably, you're going to be tempted by lower bids that won't end well — and at that point, you might be better served waiting another year and saving, or doing a smaller phased approach (front elevation first, sides later) than chasing the cheapest number.

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