How long does a deck last?

Treated-lumber decks get 20 years in the Family column of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) planning table for multifamily properties, a standard for capital planning and not a measured lifespan of one home's deck (structured on the ASTM E2018-08 outline, no issue date, read 2026-10-17, national, multifamily, n not published by the source).

Source: HUD CNA e-Tool EUL table, read 17 October 2026.

InstaBids is a written-bid marketplace for home jobs: you, or your AI assistant, describe it once; contractors bid in writing on that scope; you choose who gets your number.

Among US owner-occupied homes, a weighted 4.4% had “Added porch, deck, patio, or terrace” among their jobs in the two years before their 2023 interview (Census AHS 2023, read 2026-10-17, n = 28,192, SE 0.1 points). InstaBids worked that share out from the U.S. Census Bureau's public microdata for the 2023 American Housing Survey (AHS), the source of the original data. The questionnaire asked owners “was anything else built onto the outside of your home, such as a porch, deck, patio, or terrace?” and an earlier instruction in it reads “please do not include any part of the MAJOR disaster work already reported”. MAJOR disaster work therefore sits outside this share of homes that added a porch, deck, patio or terrace in that window, the four taken together, never a deck's lifespan. On whether such an addition counts as living space, the AHS definitions read “These types of additions add to living space only if they are covered or protected from the elements.”

Researched by the InstaBids editorial team. Last checked: 17 October 2026 Updated 2026-10-17

In our own counts, n is the number of surveyed households behind a share and SE is its standard error, a measure of sampling error, in percentage points.