The short answer on cost
In the Raleigh-Durham market, a typical chain-link installation runs about $1,700–$3,000 for an average residential job. Wood costs more, sometimes a lot more, once you factor in posts, rails, pickets, stain, and the extra labor hours it takes to build a solid privacy fence instead of stretching mesh between posts. There's no verified Triangle-specific per-foot wood price we can point to, but nationally, installed wood privacy fencing tends to run in the neighborhood of $20–$50 per linear foot depending on wood species and picket style. For a typical suburban backyard perimeter, that gap alone can put wood at two to four times the cost of chain-link for the same footprint.
That gap is the whole story for a lot of homeowners. The rest of this guide is about deciding whether it's a gap worth paying for.
Why wood costs so much more than chain-link
- Materials: Chain-link needs posts, top rail, and mesh fabric. Wood needs posts, rails, and individual pickets — often 3-4x the piece count per linear foot.
- Labor: Setting pickets one at a time (or panel by panel) takes longer than unrolling and stretching mesh.
- Finishing: Wood needs to be sealed or stained to hold up, and that's an ongoing cost chain-link simply doesn't have.
- Wood species: Pressure-treated pine is the cheapest common option and handles the Triangle's humid summers reasonably well when properly treated; cedar costs more but resists rot and insects better over time.
Chain-link's ongoing costs are close to zero — no staining, minimal repair beyond a bent post here and there. That maintenance gap widens the real lifetime cost difference beyond the install-day quote.
Dogs, kids, and pools: matching the fence to the use case
Dogs
Chain-link is fine for most dogs if the height is adequate and the dog isn't a digger or a climber. Small, food-motivated escape artists and dogs prone to fence-fighting with neighbors do better behind a solid wood fence that blocks sightlines. If your dog reacts to everything that walks by, wood's opacity does real behavioral work that chain-link can't.
Kids
Both materials work for basic yard containment. Wood adds a privacy and "out of sight, out of mind" benefit some parents want; chain-link lets you keep visual contact with the street or a neighboring yard, which some parents prefer for supervision.
Pools
This is where the choice gets a code question, not just a taste question. North Carolina's pool barrier rule sets a minimum barrier height and a maximum gap standard: the top of the barrier must be at least 48 inches above grade, and where the barrier has diagonal members, openings can't exceed 1.75 inches