Painting business guide
How to price exterior painting jobs
Price an exterior from the prep, not the paint. Walk the house side by side, rate the condition of each elevation, count the stories and the trim, then estimate hours for washing, scraping, priming, caulking and two coats. Add weather days and any lead-safe work practices, and treat per-square-foot ranges as a check at the end.
Exteriors are where painters make their year or lose it. The paint is the cheap part. The money is in how long it takes to wash, scrape, sand, prime, caulk and then climb every wall twice, and that changes a lot from one house to the next even when the square footage is the same.
What moves the price on an exterior
Rate the house on each of these during the walkthrough. Every row changes hours, and hours are the price.
| Factor | Easy end | Hard end |
|---|---|---|
| Height and access | One story, flat yard, walk-around ladder work | Two or three stories, steep grade, landscaping against the walls, lift or staging needed |
| Siding type | Smooth fiber cement or sound stucco | Rough-sawn cedar, shakes, or lap siding with lots of edges to cut |
| Paint condition | Chalky but sound, wash and spot prime | Widespread peeling, bare gray wood, alligatoring |
| Trim and detail | Simple corner boards and a few windows | Divided-lite windows, shutters, brackets, dentil molding, porch railings |
| Carpentry | None | Soft fascia, rotted sills, split trim that has to be replaced before paint |
| House age | Built after 1978 | Pre-1978 with paint you'll disturb, so lead-safe practices apply |
Two houses of the same size can land thousands apart once you score these honestly. That's why a phone quote from square footage alone is a trap.
Common price ranges, as a check
Once you've built the price from hours, compare it to what's typical. These are broad ranges you'll often see for a full repaint of walls and trim with normal prep. They are not market data, and your area may sit well above or below them.
| House | Commonly quoted |
|---|---|
| Small one-story, simple trim | $3,000 to $6,000 |
| Average two-story, moderate prep | $6,000 to $12,000 |
| Large or detailed home, heavy prep | $12,000 and up |
Ranges vary widely by region, labor market and year. Build your price from your own hours first.
If your built-up number lands far outside the range, find out why. Usually it's either production rates you haven't measured or prep you forgot to count.
Price the prep in layers
A clear way to write an exterior bid is to price prep as its own section, then the coats. Customers can see what they're paying for, and you can adjust one layer without redoing the whole bid.
- Wash. Pressure or soft wash, plus drying time before anything else happens.
- Scrape and sand. Loose paint off, edges feathered so the old paint line doesn't telegraph.
- Prime. Bare wood and repairs, with a primer made for the substrate.
- Caulk and fill. Joints, nail holes, gaps at trim. Not horizontal cracks that need to drain.
- Finish. Usually two coats, with the product line named.
This matches the thinking in the prep lines that protect your price: the bid that shows its work looks more expensive for about ten seconds and then looks more complete.
Extras to quote as their own lines
Some parts of an exterior eat time out of proportion to their size. Quote them separately so the customer can say yes or no to each, and so your base price isn't carrying work that might get cut.
- Front door. Often a different color and a higher-gloss enamel, with hardware off and back on. Many painters price it as a fixed add-on.
- Garage doors. Raised panels take longer than they look, and customers frequently want them a different color from the body.
- Shutters. Take them down and spray them on sawhorses, or brush them in place. Either way, count them.
- Gutters and downspouts. Aluminum needs cleaning and the right primer or the paint lets go.
- Porch floors and steps. Foot traffic means a floor-rated coating and a shorter life than the walls, which is worth saying in writing.
Weather and lead rules belong in the number
Exterior hours on paper assume dry days at the right temperature. Real schedules lose mornings to dew and afternoons to storms. Many painters pad exterior labor for weather, or bid shoulder-season jobs higher because the usable day is shorter. The science behind short fall days is in painting in cold weather, and the label on your product sets the minimum temperatures you have to respect.
On pre-1978 homes, scraping and sanding painted surfaces is exactly what the EPA's Renovation, Repair and Painting rule is about. Containment, cleanup and record keeping add real time, so price them as a line. The requirements are summarized in the RRP rule guide for painting contractors.
A mistake to fix this season
Most underpriced exteriors are underpriced on the second story. The ladder moves, the setup, and the slower cutting at height all take longer than your ground-floor pace suggests. On your next two-story job, time one high wall start to finish and compare it to a ground-level wall of the same size. Then carry that multiplier into every two-story bid you write. Do the check before exterior estimate requests start piling up in late winter, which the season calendar on the Booked for painters page walks through.
Questions owners ask
Should I price each side of the house separately?
It helps on the walkthrough even if the customer only sees one total. The south and west sides usually take the most sun and need the most scraping, while a shaded north wall may only need a wash and two coats. Rating each elevation keeps you from pricing the whole house off the side you saw first.
Do I charge extra for spraying versus brushing and rolling?
Spraying is often faster on siding, but masking windows, doors, roofs and cars eats much of the time you save, and overspray risk goes up with wind. Price the method you will actually use and the masking that comes with it. Back-rolling after spraying is common on rough siding and adds time.
How do I handle rotten wood I find during the walkthrough?
List it as its own line with a unit price, such as per linear foot of fascia or per sill, or as an allowance. Rot you can't see until scraping should be covered by a change order clause that says you'll stop, show the customer, and price it before replacing anything.
What if the customer wants only the trim painted?
Trim-only jobs look small but carry nearly the full ladder, setup and masking time of a whole exterior. Many painters price them with a higher hourly assumption or a firm minimum. Quote the ladder work honestly and the number will make sense to you even if it surprises the customer.
Should the exterior price include a warranty?
Most painters include a written workmanship warranty with exterior work, but the length and what it covers should match the prep the customer paid for. A house that got full scraping and priming can carry a longer promise than one where the customer declined the prep lines.