How Many Pickets Do You Need for 100 Feet of Fence

The short answer: at a common 5.5 inch picket with no gap, 100 feet of fence needs about 219 pickets before waste, and roughly 241 once a 10 percent waste factor is applied. The exact number depends entirely on your picket width and the gap between boards, so here is the formula behind it.

The formula

Picket count comes from dividing the usable run, in inches, by the picket pitch:

pitch = picket width + gap
pickets = usable run (inches) / pitch

For a privacy fence, the gap is usually zero, so pitch is just the board width. For a classic picket fence with visible gaps, add the gap to the width before dividing. Board-on-board is the odd one out: because each board overlaps the next, the effective pitch is smaller than the board’s own width, which means more pickets per foot than a butted privacy fence covering the same run.

Worked example

100 feet of fence is 1,200 inches. At a 5.5 inch picket with no gap:

1,200 / 5.5 = 218.2 -> round up to 219 pickets

Add a 10 percent waste factor for cut ends and the occasional warped board:

219 x 1.10 = 240.9 -> round up to 241 pickets

Switch to a 3.5 inch picket and the same 100 foot run needs roughly 343 pickets before waste, since a narrower board covers less run per piece. A wider 7.25 inch board needs fewer, around 166. Width matters more than most people expect.

Gates change the count

A gate opening does not get pickets, so its width is subtracted from the total fence length before this formula runs. A single 4 foot walk gate on a 100 foot fence leaves 96 feet, or 1,152 inches, of actual picket run, not the full 100 feet.

Get an exact count for your fence

The fence picket calculator runs this exact formula for your picket width, gap, gate count and waste factor, and shows the math substituted with your numbers. If you are speccing a full wood fence rather than just the pickets, the wood fence calculator adds posts, rails and concrete to the same picture.