How much have building materials gone up in 2026?
Overall construction input prices are up 5.6% over the past year (May 2026). Below is the 12-month change for the materials behind common home projects, straight from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Producer Price Index — the same numbers contractors watch when they set quotes.
| Material | Used for | 12-month change |
|---|---|---|
| Steel mill products | beams, rebar, fasteners | ▲ +40.1% |
| Nonferrous metals | copper wire & pipe, aluminum, flashing | ▲ +8.1% |
| Iron & steel | structural steel | ▲ +7% |
| Inputs to construction industries | overall construction inputs | ▲ +5.6% |
| Lumber & wood products | framing, decking, trim | ▲ +4.2% |
| Heating equipment | furnaces, boilers, HVAC | ▲ +3.9% |
| Construction machinery & equipment | installation equipment | ▲ +3.5% |
| Concrete ingredients | foundations, driveways, patios | ▲ +3% |
| Paints & coatings | interior & exterior painting | 0% |
| Gypsum products | drywall | ▼ -0.7% |
| Plastic construction products | PVC pipe, vinyl siding, fittings | ▼ -1.2% |
What this means for your project: when a material spikes, quotes for projects that lean on it move first. Steel-heavy work (structural, fencing, roofing fasteners) and anything copper tracks these indexes closely; lumber-driven jobs (framing, decks) follow the wood line. A flat or falling material isn't a discount — labor is usually the bigger half of a bill (see construction labor cost by state).
Method & source
Figures are the year-over-year change in the Producer Price Index (commodity data, not seasonally adjusted) published by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, for May 2026. We track the commodity indexes that map to home-project materials and automatically exclude any series with a one-month discontinuity (a BLS recoding artifact) so the trend stays honest. The PPI measures prices producers receive, which lead retail and contractor pricing. See our full methodology. Data pulled 2026-06-25.
Free to use: download the data as CSV, see the 10-year price trends, or read the full 2026 Construction Cost Report — republish or chart it with a link back.