How long does siding last?
It depends on what is on the wall, and the spread runs from a few decades to a century and a half. Set each material's service life beside the warranty term printed under it and the pattern is not the one the brochures imply: the longest-lived claddings carry the thinnest paper, and the longest term here — a lifetime vinyl warranty — is the one that shrinks fastest once the house changes hands. Every number below is tied to the document it came from, with the tier of that document shown.
Updated
Every material on one 250-year axis
Soft band: typical service-life range. Solid bar: the published warranty term. The difference between their right-hand ends is the story.
The numbers, with their sources
| Material | Service life | Warranty term | Source tier |
|---|---|---|---|
| Vinyl siding | 50+ yrs | “Lifetime” limited, non-prorated, prorated, transferable | Tier 2 · trade / standards literature |
| Fiber cement siding | 100+ yrs | 30-year limited, non-prorated, transferable, conditional | Tier 3 · baseline chart (undated) |
| Engineered wood siding | 100+ yrs | 50-year limited, prorated, transferable, conditional | Tier 3 · baseline chart (undated) |
| Wood siding | 100+ yrs | — | Tier 2 · trade / standards literature |
| Aluminum siding | 25+ yrs | — | Tier 3 · baseline chart (undated) |
| Brick veneer | 150+ yrs | 100-year limited, transferable, conditional | Tier 2 · trade / standards literature |
| Stucco | 50–100 yrs | — | Tier 3 · baseline chart (2007) |
| Manufactured stone veneer | 100+ yrs | 50-year limited, transferable, conditional | Tier 3 · baseline chart (undated) |
Three things are worth reading off the grid. First, the paper does not track the material. Brick and stucco are the two longest-lived claddings here and the two with the least useful coverage — Acme puts 100 years in writing on the brick and excludes the mortar that actually ages a brick wall, while stucco has no product warranty at all, because the wall is mixed on site rather than sold in a box. Second, watch what a sale does. CertainTeed's "lifetime" vinyl term becomes a prorated 50-year schedule paying 10 cents on the dollar after year fourteen; Eldorado's 50-year stone term becomes 15 years; LP's and James Hardie's both stop after one transfer. The second owner is standing under a different warranty than the first, on the same wall. Third, four of these eight materials rest on the same undated "100+" line of one baseline chart — including engineered wood, a product category younger than the number attached to it. Those bars wear the tier-3 badge for a reason.