Running Length Pricing: Cost Per Linear Foot Metal Roofing

Tape measures don’t lie, and in Nassau County right now, metal roofing runs anywhere from about $6 to $18 per linear foot of panel edge, depending on whether you’re installing exposed-fastener steel on a simple gable or standing seam aluminum with continuous clips and marine-grade coating. I’m going to walk you through exactly how that cost per linear foot is built-metal type, profile, panel width, trim, and labor-so you can stop guessing and start checking whether any quote you see actually adds up.

What Metal Roofing Really Costs Per Linear Foot in Nassau County

For most residential jobs I price around here, you’ll see exposed-fastener steel come in around $6 to $9 per linear foot for material and labor, standing seam steel closer to $10 to $14, and standing seam aluminum or zinc-especially with specialty coatings-pushing $15 to $18. But here’s the thing: not every contractor defines “cost per linear foot” the same way. Some quote just the field panels, some roll trim and accessories into the number, and some forget to mention waste or the ten bucks per foot you’ll spend on ridge cap when they’re giving you that headline price.

Two Ways Contractors Use Cost Per Linear Foot

The cleanest way is to quote field panels separately from trim and accessories-“panels are $X per foot, trim is $Y per foot.” That way you know exactly what each part costs. The other way is an all-in price per linear foot that bakes everything together, which is easier to talk about but harder to check unless you know what’s included. Before you compare any bids, you need to ask: Does that $11/ft cover only the panels, or does it include eaves, rakes, ridges, valleys, fasteners, and flashing? If the contractor can’t answer in one sentence, the number probably doesn’t mean what you think it means.

Around Hempstead, Merrick, Garden City, and the Five Towns, I see a lot of long ranch homes with straightforward gable roofs-those are the easiest to price per linear foot because the eaves run long and straight, panel count is predictable, and trim is minimal. Out along the South Shore, especially closer to the water, I’m pricing thicker gauges and Kynar coatings more often, which bumps the per-foot cost but keeps salt air from eating the roof in five years.

Here’s what almost no one tells you about “cost per linear foot” numbers: a low-looking price doesn’t mean a thing until you know what footage it’s applied to and what’s baked into that number. I’ve watched homeowners choose a $9/ft bid over an $11/ft bid, only to realize the cheaper quote didn’t include ridge cap, didn’t account for waste on the hips, and underestimated the actual panel footage by fifteen percent-so the final invoice landed higher than the “expensive” quote would have.

Step One – Let Your Tape Measure Tell You the Panel Footage

On a 60-foot-long ranch in Levittown with a simple gable roof, you’ve got two eaves-front and back-each running 60 feet, plus two rakes on each end. If the rakes are, say, 20 feet from eave to ridge along the slope, that’s four rake edges at 20 feet apiece. Right there, before you’ve climbed onto the roof, you know you’re looking at 120 linear feet of eave and 80 linear feet of rake, and those are the numbers you’ll multiply your cost per linear foot against when pricing panels and trim.

Eave length you measured × cost per linear foot = first-pass panel dollars for that run. Write that number down for every straight edge you can see from the driveway, because once you total them you’ll have a rough idea of what the metal itself should cost before waste, accessories, and labor get added in.

How Panel Width Changes Your Linear Foot Count

This trips people up constantly. Imagine you need to cover 40 feet of roof width-the dimension running perpendicular to the eaves. If you use 16-inch-wide panels, you’ll need thirty panels (40 feet ÷ 1.33 feet per panel). Each of those thirty panels runs the full length from eave to ridge, so if that distance is 20 feet, you’re buying 30 × 20 = 600 linear feet of panel. But if you use 12-inch-wide panels instead, you need forty panels for the same 40 feet of width, so now you’re buying 40 × 20 = 800 linear feet. Same roof, two hundred more feet of panel, just because the profile is narrower-and that’s two hundred extra feet at whatever your cost per linear foot is.

If you stand in your driveway and count the straight runs of roof edge you can see, you’re halfway to a real estimate. Front eave, back eave, left rake, right rake-measure each one, jot it down, and ignore anything fancy like dormers or valleys for now. Once you’ve got those main lengths on paper, you can multiply them by any cost-per-foot number a contractor gives you and instantly know if the quote is in the right ballpark or if someone’s padding numbers.

Always write down the actual measured lengths before you trust any cost-per-foot quote.

Metal Type, Profile, and Panel Width: Three Big Levers Behind $/Ft

Most of your metal panel cost per linear foot comes from three decisions: what metal you’re buying (steel, aluminum, copper, zinc), what profile you’re installing (exposed-fastener, snap-lock standing seam, mechanical-seam standing seam), and how wide those panels are. Everything else-color, warranty length, where you buy it-matters less than those three levers when you’re trying to understand why one quote says $8/ft and another says $14.

One chilly March afternoon in Levittown, I sat at a kitchen table with a homeowner who had three quotes for a standing seam roof, each one listing a different “cost per linear foot” for panels. I spread the drawings out, grabbed my tape, and measured the actual eave and rake lengths right there on his floor plan. The first quote said $9/ft for 24-inch-wide panels, the second said $11/ft for 16-inch panels, and the third was $10/ft for 18-inch panels but didn’t include any trim. Once I showed him how panel width changed the total footage he’d need-narrower panels meant more linear feet to cover the same area-and how the $9 quote left out ridge cap, valleys, and rake trim, he could see that the “cheapest” number was actually going to cost him about two thousand more than the $11 bid when everything got added in.

During a hot July in Bellmore, I helped a small contractor who kept losing bids because he was pricing panels by the square-the way shingles are sold-but his competitors were talking in linear feet. Homeowners heard “$950 per square” and “$12 per linear foot” and had no idea which was better. I spent an evening in his truck outside a job site, taking his supplier’s coil and panel pricing and converting it into clean cost-per-linear-foot numbers for PBR panels, standing seam, and corrugated profiles, so he could explain them clearly without undercutting himself. Once he could say, “This profile runs $8.50/ft installed, that one’s $11/ft,” he stopped losing jobs to contractors who were just better at speaking the language homeowners expected.

Let’s put some real dollars on those levers. If you’re comparing 29-gauge exposed-fastener steel at around $6/ft to 24-gauge snap-lock standing seam aluminum at $13/ft, you’re looking at more than double the cost per linear foot-but you’re also getting a thicker, lighter metal that won’t rust, a concealed fastener system that lasts decades longer, and a profile that handles thermal movement better. On that 60-foot Levittown ranch, switching from the cheaper steel to the standing seam aluminum adds roughly $7 per foot across both eaves, or about $840 just for those two runs before you touch the rakes or ridge.

Adding Trim, Waste, and Panel Length Premiums to Your Per-Foot Math

Once we’ve nailed down the panel itself, the next thing that quietly adds dollars per foot is the trim. Eave trim (sometimes called drip edge), rake trim, ridge cap, valley flashing, end walls, sidewalls-every transition and edge needs its own piece of formed metal, and each one is priced per linear foot just like the panels. Ridge cap alone usually runs $4 to $8 per linear foot depending on profile and metal type, so if your ridge is 60 feet long, that’s $240 to $480 sitting on top of whatever the field panels cost.

Waste is the part nobody likes to talk about but everybody pays for. On a perfect rectangular gable with no hips, no valleys, and panels that happen to land exactly at the ridge with zero cutoff, you might order only five or ten percent extra. But throw in a couple of dormers, an off-angle hip, or just the reality that panels come in certain lengths and you’ll have scraps, and you’re looking at fifteen to twenty percent waste. If your tape says you need 800 linear feet of panel, you’ll probably order closer to 920 or 960 feet, and that extra footage gets multiplied by the same cost per linear foot-so waste effectively bumps your per-foot price when you divide total cost by the roof area.

One windy November in Oceanside, I re-roofed a long waterfront contemporary where the owner wanted continuous panels running from ridge all the way to the eave-no horizontal seams, “no matter what it costs.” The roof was steep and the run was over 30 feet, which meant we couldn’t use standard factory lengths; we either had to order custom-length panels with a shipping and handling premium, or bring in a portable roll-former to make the panels on site. I walked him through the numbers: factory panels in that length added about $1.50 per linear foot for freight and special handling, and on-site roll-forming added about $2 per foot for the equipment rental and extra labor. He loved the clean look enough to spend the extra few thousand dollars along the canal, but at least he knew exactly where those dollars were going and could decide if that aesthetic was worth it before we ordered anything.

Rolling Trim, Waste, and Premiums Into a True Per-Foot Figure

If you want to compare bids fairly, take the quoted panel cost per linear foot, add the trim cost per linear foot for each edge type weighted by how many feet you have of each, then factor in the waste percentage by dividing the total material cost by 0.85 or 0.90 instead of by 1.0-that gives you a truer “all-in material” number per foot. Then add labor, which typically runs $3 to $6 per linear foot depending on profile complexity and roof access, and you’ll land pretty close to what a complete installed price per linear foot actually looks like.

Any per-foot number that doesn’t mention trim and waste should be treated with caution.

How Do You Use $/Ft Numbers to Compare Bids Without Getting Burned?

Here’s the trick most homeowners and even some small contractors miss: you can’t just line up three bids, circle the lowest cost per linear foot, and call it done. One contractor might be quoting $9/ft for panels only, another $11/ft for panels plus eave and rake trim, and the third $13/ft for everything including ridge, valleys, fasteners, and underlayment. They all sound different, but until you break them apart and see what each dollar covers, you have no idea which one is actually cheaper-or which one is so low it’ll turn into change orders halfway through the job.

The simplest way to normalize those bids is to make a three-column worksheet for each one. Column one: total linear feet of panels (measure your eaves, rakes, and multiply by panel count if needed). Column two: the quoted cost per linear foot and exactly what it includes-write “panels only,” “panels + trim,” or “all-in installed.” Column three: multiply column one by column two and write the calculated total for that line item. Do that for panels, for each type of trim, for labor if it’s broken out, and for waste allowance. Once you’ve got all three bids laid out the same way, the real winner becomes obvious, and it’s almost never the one with the lowest headline per-foot number.

On coastal properties-from Long Beach up through Merrick-salt air and wind-driven rain mean I’m spec’ing Kynar 500 or similar high-performance coatings, and sometimes going up to 24-gauge or even 22-gauge steel instead of the standard 26 or 29. Those upgrades add anywhere from fifty cents to two dollars per linear foot, but they’re the difference between a roof that lasts forty years and one that starts showing rust stains in eight. If a quote for a Long Beach house comes in at $10/ft and doesn’t mention coating or gauge, I know that number is either outdated or about to climb once the contractor realizes where the job is.

So here’s your takeaway: in Nassau County, expect somewhere between $6 and $18 per linear foot for metal roofing depending on metal type, profile, panel width, trim inclusion, and labor. Grab your tape measure, walk around your house, write down the lengths of every main roof edge you can see, and use those numbers to sanity-check any quote that crosses your desk. If a contractor says “$10 per foot” but can’t tell you in one breath whether that includes ridge cap and waste, you’re not comparing apples to apples yet-and around here, on long ranches in Levittown or waterfront contemporaries in Oceanside, the difference between a vague per-foot number and a real one can swing your project budget by several thousand dollars before the first panel ever goes up.

For any job TWI Roofing prices in Nassau County, I start with a tape measure and a notepad, not a calculator. I walk the property, write down every straight run of roof edge, count the transitions, note the pitch, and sketch the layout on graph paper so panel widths and seam locations make sense. Only then do I pull out my cost-per-foot numbers-because those numbers are meaningless until you know exactly how many feet you’re multiplying them against and what each foot has to accomplish on your particular roof. That’s the difference between a ballpark you can trust and a headline price that turns into sticker shock when the invoice shows up.