Painting prices: walls, ceilings, trim, exterior and cabinets priced from your costs
Price interior walls, ceilings, trim, exterior siding or a cabinet job from your labor cost, your real coverage rate, paint and sundries, prep time and margin — then see where you land against typical painting prices.
Every other painting pricing calculator gives you a national average and calls it a price. This one works from your numbers: what your labor actually costs you per hour, how fast you really work, your drive time, your materials and the margin you need. The typical range is shown for context, not as the answer.
What it prices
- Interior walls, two coats — priced per sq ft of wall; typical customer price $1.50–$4.00 per sq ft
- Interior ceilings — priced per sq ft; typical customer price $1.00–$2.50 per sq ft
- Trim and doors — priced per linear ft; typical customer price $1.50–$4.00 per ft
- Exterior siding, two coats — priced per sq ft; typical customer price $2.00–$5.00 per sq ft
- Cabinet refinishing — priced per door or drawer front; typical customer price $75–$150 each
How to use it
1. Pick the job type and enter the quantity. Square feet, linear feet, panes, loads — whatever that job is sold by.
2. Put in your loaded labor cost. This is what one person costs you per hour including payroll taxes, workers' comp and any benefits — or what you need to pay yourself. It is not the rate you charge. If you have never worked this out, start with the wage and add 25%.
3. Check the production rate. The default is a typical figure per person per hour. Your real number, from your last few jobs, is better.
4. Drive time, setup and minimum charge. Small jobs die on the trip. The calculator pays every crew member for drive time and setup, and applies your minimum if the job comes in under it.
5. Materials, overhead and margin. Materials at cost plus your markup; overhead per billable hour (monthly overhead ÷ hours you actually bill); the net margin you want on the job.
Painting pricing: what actually moves the number
Prep is where the time goes. Rolling walls is fast; masking, patching, sanding and caulking are not. The production rate defaults assume normal prep on a lived-in room. A rental turnover with clean walls runs faster; a smoker's house with wallpaper glue runs at half speed. Adjust the rate before you adjust the price.
Wall square feet, not floor square feet. Painting is quoted on wall area — perimeter × height, less openings — which is roughly three times the floor area in a normal room. Customers quote you the floor area. Measure.
Paint is 15–25% of the job. A gallon covers 350–400 sq ft per coat, so two coats on 1,000 sq ft of wall is about 5.5 gallons. Enter the real product at the real price; the gap between contractor-grade and premium is $30 a gallon and the customer usually chooses.
Cabinets are a different trade. Degreasing, sanding, priming and spraying doors off-site is three days of work for a kitchen. Price per door and drawer front and never per linear foot of cabinet.
Worked example
A 12 × 14 bedroom with 8 ft ceilings has about 380 sq ft of wall after the door and window. At 180 sq ft per hour for two coats with normal prep, that is 2.1 hours of painting, plus 45 minutes of setup and masking and a 30-minute round trip. At $28 loaded labor, $15 per billable hour of overhead, $70 of paint and sundries at 20% markup and a 20% margin, the calculator prices the walls at about $265, or $0.70 per sq ft of wall. That is below the typical range, which is normal for a fast solo painter on a single clean room — a whole-house job with more cutting in, a ceiling and trim lands in the middle of it.
How the math works
- Hours = quantity ÷ production rate, plus setup and drive time for every person on the crew.
- Labor = person-hours × your loaded cost. Overhead = clock hours the job occupies × your overhead per billable hour.
- Price = (labor + materials + fees + overhead) ÷ (1 − margin), plus the material markup. Dividing by (1 − margin) gives a true margin on the sale; multiplying by (1 + margin) does not, and it is the most common pricing mistake in the trades.
- If the result is under your minimum charge, the minimum applies.
Turn it into an estimate
Hit Turn this into an estimate and the price lands in the estimate generator as line items, ready to send. When the customer says yes, the same numbers become the invoice in BIG INVOICE, which works offline with no account. Send it on the painting estimate template, and see painter salary by state.
FAQ
How much should I charge to paint a room?
$300 to $800 for the walls of an average bedroom, $500 to $1,200 with ceiling and trim, depending on prep and your market. Per square foot of wall, $1.50 to $4.00 is typical. Price it from your coverage rate, not the room count.
How much do painters charge per square foot?
$1.50 to $4.00 per square foot of wall for interior work, two coats, and $2.00 to $5.00 for exterior siding. Ceilings run $1.00 to $2.50. These figures include paint, which is 15 to 25% of the total.
How much do painters charge per hour?
Effective rates of $50 to $90 per hour for established painters, though almost every job is quoted by the square foot or the room. Use the hourly figure to check a quote, not to give one.
How much to charge for painting exterior of house?
$3,000 to $7,000 for a typical 2,000 sq ft single-story home and more for two stories, or $2 to $5 per square foot of siding. Height, scraping and the number of colours are the big variables.
Does this pricing calculator use my numbers or averages?
Yours. The typical range is shown as context, but the price comes entirely from the labor cost, production rate, materials, overhead and margin you enter. Change any of them and the price changes.
Is this calculator free?
Yes, completely. No account, no email, no download. It runs in your browser and we never see your numbers.