What a pergola costs

The honest entry point to a louvered roof, and useful on a cost page because it shows exactly what gets dropped to reach a lower price.

You get the mechanism: an adjustable aluminum louvered roof with integrated drainage on an aluminum frame, at 10 x 13 ft. Functionally that is the same proposition as pergolas costing considerably more.

What is absent is every durability figure. No wind rating. No snow figure. No frame wall thickness or post dimension. A one-year warranty covering material and manufacturing defects is the entire published disclosure.

That is the trade at this tier, and it is worth naming plainly: you are not necessarily buying a worse structure, you are buying one you cannot assess. We have no evidence it performs badly and no evidence it performs well. If budget is the binding constraint, this is where the category starts.

A useful reference point for what stepping up actually gets you, because PURPLE LEAF publishes the specification the cheaper tier does not.

Powder-coated aluminum, 1.5 mm wall, 4.33 in. x 4.33 in. crossbeams — the only published wall thickness in the category. 72 mph, fully secured with expansion screws on a hardened floor — a figure with its test condition stated. Integrated drainage in the beams. Sizes 10 x 12 to 14 x 24 ft.

So the money between tiers is buying frame section and disclosure. Whether it is also buying a longer life we cannot tell you from specifications alone — but a manufacturer publishing a gauge is at least making a claim it can be held to.

One-year warranty, which is the category norm and where Domi's five years marks a genuine difference at a similar tier.

If value means specification per dollar rather than lowest price, this is the pergola that documents the most.

72 mph wind and 15 lb/ft² snow — the only pergola we track publishing figures for both loading directions. Five years on the hardtop roof and frame, one year on curtains and netting — five times the structural term of the category norm.

On a cost page, that warranty is the number worth weighing. A warranty is a commitment to spend money, priced by a manufacturer that has seen its own return rates. Five years against one is not a marketing difference; it is a different bet about how long the structure lasts, made by the people with the data.

Aluminum frame with adjustable louvers, 10 x 10 through 12 x 20 ft, M6 expansion bolts into deck or concrete immediately after assembly.

Cedar with real published figures, and a useful illustration that the top of the category is not always the louvered aluminum.

100 mph Pro-Tect tested — the highest published wind rating in backyard shade — on 100% cedar with 5.5 in. x 5.5 in. posts, dual structural cross beams and corbels, five-year warranty, anchoring mandatory with concealed concrete anchors supplied. Sizes 10 x 10 through 20 x 12 ft.

What the money buys here is section and repairability, not a mechanism. Heavy timber posts publish better wind figures than aluminum extrusions, and a checked cedar beam is replaced with one board from a lumberyard where a chalked aluminum member cannot be repaired at all.

And it carries an ongoing cost aluminum does not: re-sealing every two to three years, indefinitely. That is sealant plus an afternoon, and it is a real line item over ten years — and skipping it is how cedar becomes the worst-value option in the category rather than the best.