How long does a wood fence last?

Typical service life: about 20 years

The baseline chart carries a single 20-year figure for wood fencing — a flat estimate for the category, not a range for the fence in your yard. It also averages two clocks running at different speeds. Pickets and rails weather in place, graying and splitting but staying up for decades; the posts stand in wet soil, and rot at the soil line is usually what finishes the fence while the boards above it are still sound. Untreated cedar and redwood sit below the figure in humid country; ground-contact-rated posts in free-draining gravel sit above it.

Tier 3 · baseline chart (undated) Range from InterNACHI — Standard Estimated Life Expectancy Chart for Homes, checked 2026-08-27.

Wood is the one fence material whose number really is a climate number. In dry western air a treated fence can pass the chart's 20 years on its original posts; in the humid Southeast, with warm soil and termite pressure most of the year, posts can be soft at ten. What moves it is less rainfall than how long the soil at the post stays wet — a fence line at the bottom of a slope ages faster than the same fence on the ridge above it.

What shortens it

• Ground contact at the post — a post is a board standing in wet soil, and rot at the soil line ends most wood fences while the pickets above are still serviceable
• Above-ground-rated lumber used where ground-contact retention belongs; the two boards look identical and carry different end tags and different retentions
• Concrete collars poured to sit proud of the post, holding water against the wood instead of shedding it
• Sprinkler heads that soak the same stretch of fence several times a week, year after year
• Vines, leaf litter and soil banked against the boards, keeping the bottom of the fence wet long after the rain stops
• Cut ends, notches and bored holes left untreated, opening the inner wood the preservative never fully reached