Wrought Iron Fence Cost

This is the thing worth knowing before you shop, because the label is misleading almost everywhere. True wrought iron is solid, worked by hand, and largely no longer mass-produced. What the fencing industry sells as “wrought iron” today is hollow tubular steel with a galvanized base and a powder-coated finish.

That isn't a scam — tubular steel is a good product, lighter, cheaper, and easier to install — but it behaves differently. It's hollow, so it dents rather than bends; and because it's steel, rust remains its failure mode. Ask any quote which one it is.

The naming is just as loose. The same fence is sold as wrought iron, ornamental iron, ornamental steel, or simply an iron fence, and it's often written “rod iron” — a mishearing of “wrought iron” rather than a different product. None of those labels tells you whether the pickets are solid or hollow, so the question to ask is about the material, not the name.

Price your fence in the wrought iron fence calculator→ by type, height and ornamentation — ornate gates in particular cost well above the per-foot rate.

Beyond the base per-foot rate, the design itself is a real cost variable — and it's the one that separates a $30/ft quote from a $65/ft quote for fencing that looks superficially similar in a photograph:

The efficient move on most properties is ornament the visible run and keep the rest plain. Spear tops across the front elevation and flat-top panels down the side and rear reads as a single ornamental fence from the street while cutting a meaningful slice off the total.

If you already have an old iron fence, this is the decision that actually saves money — and it's missing from essentially every fence cost guide, because restoration isn't something a fence company is selling you.

Iron is unusual among fencing materials in that it is genuinely repairable. Wood rots and vinyl cracks, and both get replaced. Iron can be cut out, welded, and refinished section by section, and the underlying metal on a hundred-year-old fence is frequently sound beneath the rust.

• Strip and repaint — roughly $10–$25 per foot, versus $30–$65 to replace. This is the common case, and it buys another 10–15 years.
• Weld repairs — around $100–$300 per broken picket or joint, done alongside the refinishing.
• Resetting leaning posts — $150–$400 each, and the item most likely to actually need doing, since footings fail before the ironwork does.

The honest test is whether the pickets have lost section. Surface rust, even heavy scaling, is cosmetic and comes off. Metal that has thinned or perforated — usually at the bottom of pickets and where they meet the rail, because that's where water sits — is structural, and once it's widespread across a run, restoration costs converge on replacement. Tap along the base with a screwdriver: solid pickets ring, spent ones sound dull and give.

Pre-1978 ironwork frequently carries lead paint. Sandblasting or power-sanding it is a regulated activity in many jurisdictions — ask any contractor how they intend to handle containment and disposal before work starts.

Everything else about this fence lasts. The finish is what you manage. A modern powder-coated steel fence resists corrosion well until the coating is breached — a scratch from a mower, a chip from a stone, a scrape at the gate — after which rust starts at that point and creeps under the coating.

The practical routine: walk the fence once a year, touch up chips with matching paint immediately, and plan a full repaint every 8 to 10 years. In coastal or consistently wet climates, shorten both intervals — and consider whether aluminum→ is the better answer, since it removes this entire category of work.

• Coastal properties. Salt accelerates corrosion; aluminum is the sane choice.
• If you want privacy. It provides none by design.
• If you won't maintain it. Neglected chips become structural rust.
• Long runs on a budget. At $30–$65 per foot, enclosing a large yard gets expensive quickly.

• Tubular steel or genuine wrought iron — establish this first
• Gauge or wall thickness of the pickets and rails
• Galvanized before powder coating, or coated bare steel
• Finish warranty, and whether rust is covered
• Post size and footing depth — this fence is heavy
• Gates itemized separately; ornamental gates carry a real premium