How long does a facade last

A facade number is never just a number; it is a lifespan with a maintenance cycle folded inside. Brick’s 60 to 100 years contains a repointing around every 30. Render’s 25 to 40 contains a recoat near 15. Timber’s 30 to 60 contains a paint cycle of 5 to 7. Skip the inner cycle and the outer number quietly stops applying.

What each facade type lasts

Facade	Typical lifespan	The cycle inside it	What usually ends it
Brick	60–100 years	repointing ~every 30, clean ~every 10	mortar degradation, spalling, efflorescence
Render	25–40 years	recoat ~every 15	cracking, delamination, biological growth
Timber cladding	30–60 years	refinish ~5 / repaint ~7	rot, UV degradation, insect damage
Metal cladding	40–60 years	none	corrosion, coating failure, impact damage
External wall insulation (EWI)	25–40 years	render-coat repaint ~every 8–10 (warranty condition)	delamination, water ingress at junctions

The ranges come from the durability handbooks and trade field data behind the planning model. The structural wall behind all of these is on a different clock entirely; the facade is the weather skin, and it is the skin that cycles. That is the same covering-versus-structure logic as the roof, applied vertically.

The cycle is the lifespan

For brick, the mortar is sacrificial on purpose: softer than the brick so the joints weather instead of the faces. Repointing on time is what makes 60 to 100 real, because failed joints let water in where frost and salts attack the brick itself, the part that cannot be renewed. For render and timber, the surface coat is the membrane; cracks and failed paint are not cosmetic complaints but open doors, and components age on a two-inflection curve that a missed cycle steepens. A facade that skipped a cycle has moved further along its curve than the calendar says.

Reading the signs

Each material announces the end differently. Brick: powdering mortar you can rake out with a key, white efflorescence blooms, spalled faces after hard winters. Render: cracks you can fit a coin edge into, hollow-sounding patches when tapped, green growth tracking the damp. Timber: soft spots at the bottom edge, finish peeling at end grain, dark staining at joints. On any of them, damp showing on the inside wall means the skin has already been letting water through for a while, and the consequential damage is accruing in the wall, not the finish.

When to start planning

Astrid’s house in Malmö has a rendered facade from 1994, thirty-two years old against a 25-to-40 range, with fine cracking on the weather side and a patch that sounds hollow. That is past the recoat’s reach: the question this year is re-render versus another season of patching, and the annual-cost arithmetic answers it, because patches on delaminating render buy single years. She prices the re-render for next summer as a planned job. The version of this story that goes wrong waits for a slab of render to let go in a February storm.

What this means before you call anyone

Ask which part of the facade’s cycle you are in before pricing anything, because “the facade needs work” quotes three different jobs: the inner-cycle maintenance, the skin renewal, or damage repair behind the skin. You can test renewal-versus-repair for a render with the free repair-or-replace calculator. The plan in appkeep carries the inner cycles and the renewal year as separate lines, so the repoint, the recoat, and the eventual re-render each arrive as scheduled decisions instead of one alarming quote.