Driveway Gates Costs UK 2026 — Price to Supply & Fit Wooden & Metal Gates

Quick Answer: What Do Driveway Gates Cost in 2026?

For a typical domestic driveway, a supplied-and-fitted pair of manual gates lands somewhere between £700 and £2,500. Stock softwood five-bar gates on timber posts sit at the bottom of that range; bespoke hardwood or made-to-measure wrought iron on brick piers sit at the top, and large or ornate sets go well beyond it. Add automation later as a roughly £1,500–£4,000 upgrade depending on the kit and groundwork.

The gate is rarely the most variable cost — posts, piers and ground conditions are. A £400 pair of gates can become a £1,800 job once you factor in concreting new posts, ironmongery and a day's labour. The sections below break it all down.

Gate Materials and What They Cost

Material is the single biggest decision the customer makes, and it sets the tone for durability, maintenance and price. Here's how the main options compare.

Softwood (Treated Pine / Spruce)

The default for budget timber gates. Pressure-treated softwood five-bar and framed gates are cheap, widely stocked and easy to hang. The trade-off is lifespan: even treated, softwood will need repainting or re-staining every few years and typically lasts 10–15 years before joints and rails start to fail. Good for customers who want a traditional look on a tight budget.

• Stock softwood pair (off the shelf): £200–£600
• Maintenance: re-treat or repaint every 2–4 years

Hardwood (Oak, Iroko, Sapele)

The premium timber choice and where joiners earn their margin. Iroko and oak are dense, stable and resist rot far better than softwood — a well-made hardwood pair can last 25 years or more with minimal upkeep, especially if oiled rather than painted. Bespoke hardwood gates are made to measure for the opening and can be braced and morticed to carry their own weight without sagging.

• Bespoke hardwood pair: £800–£2,500+
• Maintenance: annual oiling keeps the finish; oak silvers if left bare

Mild Steel and Wrought Iron

For metal gates, "wrought iron" in modern usage almost always means fabricated mild steel — true wrought iron is rare and expensive. Mild steel gates are welded to a design, then galvanised and/or powder-coated for corrosion resistance. They're strong, secure and can be made in any style from plain bar infill to ornate scrollwork. The key durability factor is the finish: hot-dip galvanising before powder coating is what stops rust bleeding through in five years.

• Metal / wrought-iron-style pair: £300–£1,500+ depending on size and design
• Maintenance: touch up coating chips; galvanised + powder-coated is near maintenance-free

Aluminium

Increasingly popular for contemporary driveways. Aluminium won't rust, is light enough to make automation easy, and powder-coats in any RAL colour. It costs more than basic steel for an equivalent size but undercuts good hardwood and avoids the maintenance entirely. A strong choice for modern slatted or vertical-board designs and a sensible recommendation where the customer is automation-curious.

Styles and Opening Types

Style affects price through complexity and material content, and the opening type often matters more than the customer realises — it's dictated by the drive, not just taste.

Common Timber Styles

• Five-bar: the classic farm/field gate look. Simple, light, cheapest to make and hang.
• Ledged and braced: vertical boards with diagonal bracing — solid, private, good for screening.
• Framed, ledged and braced: a proper morticed outer frame plus boards and braces. Heavier, stronger and the right build for a wide bespoke pair.
• Palisade: spaced vertical pales, period-appropriate for Victorian and Edwardian frontages.

Swing vs Sliding

Most driveway gates are double-leaf swing gates — two leaves meeting in the middle, each hung on its own post or pier. Swing gates are the cheapest and simplest to fit but need clear swing room and a reasonably level, flat opening. A single-leaf swing gate suits narrower openings.

Sliding (cantilever) gates run sideways on a track or cantilever bottom rail and are the answer when swing gates won't work: sloped drives where a swinging leaf would ground on the rising tarmac, short drives where a swung-open leaf would block parking, or where cars need to park right up to the gate line. Sliding gates cost more — they need a longer gate (the leaf has to overlap the opening), a running surface or cantilever counterweight, and more groundwork — but they solve clearance problems nothing else can.

Posts, Piers and the Structural Bit

This is where quotes most often go wrong. Gates hang off something, and that something has to take the cantilever load of a heavy leaf swinging out — especially metal and bespoke hardwood pairs. Underestimate the posts and you'll be back fixing sagging gates within a season.

• Timber posts: typically 150mm or 200mm square hardwood or treated softwood, set in concrete to a depth of at least one third of their height. Cheapest option, suits timber gates.
• Steel posts: box-section steel concreted in, used for heavier metal gates and where automation is planned. Strong and slim.
• Brick or stone piers: the premium look. Either built fresh (a bricklaying sub-job in its own right) or already existing. Gates bolt to a steel frame built into the pier. Existing sound piers save a lot; new piers add £500–£1,500+ per pair to the job.

Always survey what the gates are hanging from. "Fit to existing piers" and "build new posts" are completely different jobs, and assuming the customer has sound fixings is the fastest way to lose a day's labour you didn't price.

Ironmongery, Clearance and Levels

The metalwork that hangs and holds the gates is a real cost line, not an afterthought. Cheap hinges on a heavy pair will droop and bind within months.

• Hinges: band-and-gudgeon or adjustable lift-off hinges sized to the gate weight. Heavy hardwood and steel need substantial hinges.
• Latch / lock: automatic catch, throw-over loop, or a lockable centre latch for security.
• Drop bolts (slide bolts): a drop bolt holds the first leaf firm into a ground socket so the second leaf can latch against it. Essential on a double-leaf pair.
• Holdbacks: keep open leaves pinned back out of the wind.

Budget £60–£250 for ironmongery on a domestic pair, more for galvanised heavy-duty sets. Ground clearance matters too: leave enough gap under the gate to clear a sloping or uneven drive through the full swing, and check levels across the opening — a drive that rises toward the house will foul a swing gate long before it's fully open. Where levels are bad, that's often the trigger to recommend sliding gates.

What Drives the Price

Two jobs that look identical to a homeowner can be hundreds of pounds apart for the trade. The main cost drivers:

• Size and width: wider openings need more material and heavier posts; very wide drives may push you toward sliding or a leaf-and-a-half setup.
• Material: softwood < mild steel < aluminium < bespoke hardwood, roughly.
• Bespoke vs stock: made-to-measure carries design and fabrication time; stock sizes are cheap but rarely fit the opening exactly.
• Posts vs existing piers: reusing sound piers is the single biggest saving; building new piers is the single biggest add-on.
• Sliding vs swing: sliding adds gate length, track or cantilever hardware and groundwork.
• Ground conditions: rock, made ground, services or a sloping drive all add digging and concreting time.
• Finish: painting, staining, oiling or powder-coating — and whether you do it or supply it pre-finished.
• Automation-ready prep: running a duct and conduit for a future opener at fit-out is cheap; retrofitting it later is not. Flag it even if the customer defers automation.

Labour, Day Rates and How Long It Takes

Fitting a pair of driveway gates is a one-to-two day job for most domestic installs. Hanging stock gates on existing sound piers can be a half-day; digging out and concreting new posts, hanging, fitting ironmongery and finishing a bespoke hardwood pair runs to two days for one or two trades.

• Installer / joiner day rate: £200–£350 per person depending on region and skill
• Stock gates on existing fixings: half a day
• New timber posts + hang + ironmongery: 1 day
• Bespoke pair on new brick piers (allow for bricklaying): 2 days+

Concrete cure time matters — if you set posts or piers on day one, the gates often can't take full load until the concrete has gone off, so a proper job may span two visits even if the labour is only a day and a half.

Planning Permission

Most replacement gates are permitted development, but there are limits worth knowing so you can flag them at survey. As a general rule, gates, walls or fences next to a highway used by vehicles (or the footpath of such a highway) need planning permission if they're over 1 metre high; elsewhere the limit is 2 metres. Listed buildings, conservation areas and properties with an Article 4 direction have tighter rules. It's the homeowner's responsibility to confirm, but a trade who raises it looks far more professional than one who doesn't — and it protects you if the gates later have to come down.

Worked Examples

Example 1 — Stock softwood five-bar pair on timber posts

• Pair of off-the-shelf softwood five-bar gates: £350
• Two treated timber posts + concrete: £120
• Ironmongery (hinges, latch, drop bolt): £90
• Labour (1 day, one fitter): £280
• Total supplied and fitted: ~£840

Example 2 — Bespoke hardwood pair on brick piers

• Made-to-measure iroko framed, ledged and braced pair: £1,700
• Steel hanging frames built into existing sound piers: £220
• Heavy-duty galvanised ironmongery: £200
• Labour (2 days, two trades): £900
• Total supplied and fitted: ~£3,020

Build new piers instead of reusing existing ones and you'd add roughly £700–£1,500 to that second example, plus the bricklaying time. This is exactly why surveying the fixings before you quote is non-negotiable.

Automation as an Optional Upgrade

Plenty of customers ask about electric gates while you're quoting the gates themselves. Keep it simple at this stage: price the manual gates and groundwork properly, then quote automation as a separate optional upgrade of roughly £1,500–£4,000 depending on the opener type (underground, ram or sliding motor), the controls (intercom, keypad, fobs) and the electrical groundwork. The one thing worth doing at fit-out even if the customer defers is laying ducting for the cabling — it's cheap now and expensive to retrofit. Automation is involved enough to deserve its own conversation and its own quote.

Quick Reference: Driveway Gate Prices UK 2026

Knowing Which Marketing Wins the Jobs

Gate and joinery work tends to come from a mix of sources — local search, word of mouth, a Facebook before-and-after, a job sign left at the last install. When the enquiries arrive, it pays to know which channel actually produced the paid jobs rather than just the calls. Tracking the source of each won gate job, and the margin it returned, is how you decide where to spend your next marketing pound. That's the kind of thing a tool like Trade2Base is built to make easy.