How to price painting jobs

Ask ten painters how they price and you will hear ten methods: per room, per square foot, by the day, by the gallon times some number. They all work if the number underneath covers your hours, your paint and your overhead, and none of them work if it does not. This guide builds a painting price from the ground up, checks it against what homeowners are told to expect, and shows how to present it so customers pick an option instead of shopping the number.

How painting jobs are priced

• Per square foot of paintable surface. The most accurate for walls and exteriors. Make sure you know whether a quoted rate means wall area or floor area; they are very different.
• Per room. Easy for customers to understand, and fine once you know your per room hours.
• By the day or the hour. For small jobs, repairs and work you cannot measure ahead.
• Per item. Doors, windows, shutters, cabinets, railings. Add these as their own lines.

What homeowners are told to expect

Sources: Fixr cost to paint a room and This Old House exterior painting cost, both checked October 8, 2026. Fixr's room sizes and per square foot rates are by floor area (a 144 square foot room is 12 by 12), and its national average to prime and paint a 330 square foot living room is about $1,200. Its whole room prices include walls, ceiling and trim. This Old House says a three-story home of 2,000 square feet runs $8,300 to $15,200 because of access, and lists premium acrylic paint at $45 to $85 a gallon against $30 to $50 for standard latex.

Measure the surface, then work out paint

For walls: add up the length of the walls, multiply by the height, and take off large openings like doors and big windows. For an exterior, do the same for each side of the house, and add gables as triangles (half the width times the height).

Then gallons: surface area × number of coats ÷ coverage per gallon. Use the coverage printed by the maker of the paint you use. For example, Benjamin Moore lists 400 to 450 square feet per gallon for Regal Select interior semi-gloss (benjaminmoore.com, checked October 8, 2026). Rough or porous surfaces like stucco, bare wood and fresh drywall take more. Round up to whole gallons.

What a painting job really costs you

• Labor. Prep, masking, cutting in, rolling or spraying each coat, and cleanup, for every painter. BLS's May 2025 survey puts the national mean wage for construction and maintenance painters at $26.64 an hour, median $23.75 (BLS OEWS 47-2141, checked October 8, 2026). Add payroll taxes and workers' comp for your burden. Count your own hours too.
• Paint and primer. From your measurement, at what you pay.
• Sundries. Tape, plastic, caulk, patch, sandpaper, roller covers. Small per job, real over a year.
• Equipment. Ladders, scaffolding or a lift for tall exteriors, sprayers. Rentals go straight into the job.
• Overhead. Van, insurance, phone, software, advertising, your estimating time.
• Profit. On top of all of it.

A worked example: a standard bedroom

These are example numbers to show the math. Put in your own.

• The room: 12 by 12 feet with 8 foot ceilings. Walls: 48 feet around × 8 feet = 384 square feet. Take off about 40 square feet for the door and window: 344 square feet. Walls only, two coats.
• Paint: 344 × 2 coats = 688 square feet. At 400 square feet a gallon, that is 1.72 gallons, so buy 2. At an assumed $45 a gallon: $90.
• Sundries: an assumed $25.
• Labor: an assumed 5 hours for one painter, for prep, two coats and cleanup. Pay of $27 an hour plus 20% burden is $32.40 an hour. 5 × $32.40 = $162.
• Job cost: $90 + $25 + $162 = $277.
• Price for a 40% margin for overhead and profit: $277 ÷ (1 − 0.40) = $461.67, about $462.

Check it against the market: Fixr lists $215 to $505 to paint the walls only in a 144 square foot room, and $430 to $575 for the whole room. At $462, the walls-only job sits inside Fixr's walls-only range. If the walls needed two extra hours of patching, labor would be $226.80, the job cost $341.80, and the same margin would need about $570. That is why prep gets its own line.

The free profit margin calculator runs this math. Adding 40% to cost gives a 29% margin, not 40%.

Know your production rates

The worked example used an assumed 6 hours. Your real number is the most valuable thing in your pricing. Track, for a few months, how long each kind of work takes your crew: square feet of wall per hour rolled, doors per hour, linear feet of trim per hour, a full exterior side per day. Then your price is measurement × your own rate, not a guess. Update the rates when you add a sprayer or a new painter.

Exterior jobs

Exteriors add things interiors do not: pressure washing first, scraping and priming bare wood, caulking, more masking, ladders or scaffolding, and weather days. Price each as its own line. Height matters a lot: This Old House's range for a three-story home is close to double the two-story range for the same square footage. Siding matters too: its per square foot ranges differ for wood, brick and vinyl.

Set a minimum

A single accent wall still costs a drive, setup, cleanup and a partly used gallon. Set a minimum that covers half a day of your loaded labor plus materials and margin, and show it on your price list.

Offer good, better and best

Painting fits three options well, because scope and paint grade are easy for a customer to understand:

• Good: walls only, standard paint, two coats.
• Better: walls and trim, standard paint.
• Best: walls, trim, doors and ceilings, with a premium paint. This Old House says premium acrylic typically lasts 8 to 12 years against 5 to 7 for standard latex on exteriors, which is an honest reason to choose it.

Koira estimates carry up to three options from your price list, each with a photo and a plain description. The customer picks one, signs and pays the deposit on the same page, and Koira follows up on day two and day four, then stops. Our guide to good, better, best estimates covers how to write them.

When to raise your prices

• When paint prices go up. Update your per gallon cost the same week.
• When your production rates show a job type is losing money.
• When you are booked out more than a few weeks in your busy season.
• When you add a painter and your burden or insurance changes.

Where Koira fits

Snap photos of the rooms or the house and Koira drafts the estimate from your price list. Estimates take a deposit when they are signed, which covers the paint. Progress invoices go out as the job moves, and the final one when you tap done. An hour after the customer pays, Koira asks for the review. Estimates, invoices and card payments are on the free Office plan. See how a painting company runs on Koira and the plans.

Questions contractors ask