The performance of a building material degrades as time goes by and the failure of the material is often defined as the point at which the performance of the material reaches a pre-specified degraded level. Based on a stochastic deterioration model, a performance based service life prediction method for building materials and components is developed. As a stochastic degradation model, a gamma process is considered and lifetime distribution and service life of a material are predicted using the degradation model. A numerical example is provided to illustrate the use of the proposed service life prediction method.