In 40 seconds
Cladding the outside of a UK house typically costs roughly £80–£220 per square metre installed, depending on the material: uPVC around £80–£150/m², timber around £90–£180/m², fibre-cement around £60–£150/m² and composite around £120–£220/m². For a typical three-bed semi with roughly 90–120m² of wall, that usually works out at around £9,000–£22,000 before extras. A like-for-like recladding of a standard house is often treated as permitted development and needs no planning permission, but conservation areas, national parks, AONBs and listed buildings are exceptions, and recladding more than 25% of your external walls normally triggers building-regulations approval and a thermal-insulation upgrade. The honest answer is always a range, because it depends on your wall area, material and access.
Most cladding guidance is published by companies fitting or selling it, so the numbers tend to be optimistic and the rules glossed over. The pages below give honest cost ranges, compare the materials fairly, explain where planning and building rules apply, and weigh cladding against render — before you take a single quote.