Painting business guide
How to price interior painting jobs
Price interior painting from labor hours, not from a per-square-foot number you heard somewhere. Estimate the hours for prep, walls, ceilings and trim, multiply by a labor rate that covers wages, overhead and profit, then add paint and sundries with a markup. Use square footage afterward as a sanity check.
A homeowner wants three bedrooms and a hallway repainted, and you have to put a number on it by tonight. Guess too low and you're working the last two days for free. Guess too high without showing why and the job goes to the painter whose bid was one line long. The fix is to build the price the same way every time, from hours you can defend.
Three ways painters price interiors
- Per square foot of floor. Fast and easy to explain, but it hides the things that eat hours: tall ceilings, lots of trim, a hallway full of doors. It's a check, not a method.
- Per room. Common for bedrooms and simple repaints. Works until you get a bedroom with a vaulted ceiling and built-in shelves priced like a guest room.
- Labor hours plus materials. You estimate production time for each surface, multiply by a rate, and add materials. It takes longer at the kitchen table, and it's the one that holds up when the job turns out different than it looked.
Most experienced painters use hours to build the price and then show the customer a fixed total with the scope written out. The customer never needs to see your hours.
Worked example: three bedrooms and a hallway
Example numbers
The job: walls in three bedrooms and a hallway, ceilings in the main bedroom only, and doors, casings and baseboards in two rooms. Occupied home, light patching, color change from beige to a light gray. Two coats on the walls.
Hours, for a two-person crew:
- Move furniture, cover floors, remove plates: 4 hours
- Patch nail holes, sand, caulk trim gaps, spot prime: 6 hours
- Walls, two coats, cut and roll: 22 hours
- Main bedroom ceiling, one coat: 3 hours
- Doors, casings and baseboards, two rooms: 9 hours
- Daily setup and pack-up, final cleanup: 4 hours
Total: 48 labor hours. At a labor rate of $55 an hour, that's $2,640. The rate has to carry wages, payroll costs, insurance, the van, and profit, so it's well above what anyone gets paid.
Materials: 11 gallons of wall paint at $46 ($506), 2 gallons of ceiling paint ($72), 2 gallons of trim enamel ($118), and sundries like tape, plastic, caulk, patch and roller covers ($110). That's $806, marked up 15 percent to about $927.
Price: $2,640 + $927 = $3,567, rounded to $3,575.
Sanity check: the painted rooms cover about 950 square feet of floor, so this lands around $3.75 per square foot. If your market's typical per-square-foot numbers are far below that, look at your hours before you look at your rate.
Your production rates are the most important numbers in that example, and they aren't universal. Track real hours on your next five jobs, room by room, and use those instead of anyone else's.
What pushes interior hours up
- Ceiling height. Past about 9 feet you're on planks or a taller ladder, and cutting the top line slows way down.
- Trim count. Six-panel doors, crown, chair rail and window stools take more time than the walls around them.
- Color change. Dark to light, or light to a saturated color, usually means primer or a third coat.
- Sheen. Semi-gloss on walls shows every roller lap and patch, so it takes more care than eggshell.
- Surface condition. Old flat paint that chalks onto your hand, crayon, smoke stains or water marks need a stain-blocking primer.
- Occupied rooms. Beds, dressers and a family that needs the room back by 5 PM.
Put the prep on the estimate
Customers compare what they can see. If your estimate says "paint three bedrooms" and the other one says the same thing for less, you lose. Break out the patching, caulking, spot priming and the number of coats, and name the product line. The reasoning behind that is laid out in the prep line items that protect your price.
Rule of thumb: if you'd be embarrassed to skip a step, it belongs on the written estimate. If it isn't written down, the customer assumes it's either free or not happening.
In homes built before 1978, sanding and scraping can trigger the EPA's lead paint rules, which change both your process and your hours. Read what the RRP rule asks of painting contractors before you price that kind of prep.
After the job, check your hours
Pricing gets better only if you compare the estimate to what really happened. When the job wraps, write down actual hours next to estimated hours for each line. If walls always run long, raise the wall hours, not the whole rate. If a crew member is consistently slower on trim, that's a training conversation, not a pricing one. And if paint quantities keep running over, check your coverage assumptions: rough or porous walls, like fresh patches and old flat paint, drink more than the spread rate on the label suggests.
Do this for a season and you'll have your own production rates, which are worth more than any chart. For the rest of the business side, including how to book more walkthroughs, start from the painters hub.
Questions owners ask
Should I charge more when the customer is still living in the house?
Usually, yes. An occupied home means moving and covering furniture, working around kids and pets, and packing up each evening so the family can use the room. Vacant rentals and listing prep go faster. Many painters build an occupied-home factor into their hours instead of showing it as a separate fee.
How do I price a job when the customer is buying the paint?
Price your labor exactly as you would otherwise and drop the materials line, but say in writing that you aren't responsible for coverage, sheen or durability problems caused by the product. Expect an extra coat more often with bargain paint, and quote that possibility up front.
Is it worth charging extra for dark or bold colors?
Often. Deep reds, navies and near blacks can need a tinted primer and a third coat to cover evenly, and they show every lap mark. Going the other way, from a dark wall to a light color, adds a primer coat too. Put the extra coat on the estimate so the price has a reason.
What's a reasonable minimum for a small interior job?
Many painters set a minimum around a half day or full day of labor plus materials, because setup, cover-up and cleanup take nearly as long for one bathroom as for two rooms. Pick a number that makes a small job worth breaking up your week, and say it before you schedule a walkthrough.
Do I charge by the hour or give a fixed price?
Most residential customers want a fixed price, and most painters give one. The hours stay behind the scenes, as the way you build the number. Hourly billing is more common for touch-up lists and property manager punch work where the scope is hard to see up front.