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Painting Estimate Calculator
Estimate paint, labor, costs, and what to charge for a painting job — from room dimensions or measured area, with your minimum job charge built in.
Everything stays in your browser — nothing you enter is sent to or stored on our servers.
Ready to quote it? Use the free estimate generator, or get Revenuor for iPhone & iPad.
Start from an example setup:
Example inputs are for demonstration. Use your own production rates, material costs, and minimum charge.
Advanced: painting assumptions
These are editable operational assumptions, not market averages.
Recommended painting estimate (before tax)
Your minimum job charge is setting the recommended price.
Calculated price: · Minimum charge:
- Paintable area
- Paint to buy
- Total worker-hours
- Team duration
- Estimated job cost
- Profit
- Margin / markup
- Price per sq ft
- Effective rate per worker-hour
Where the area comes from
- Gross wall area
- Ceiling area
- Doors & windows deducted
- Net paintable area
Where the time comes from
- Ceiling
- Primer
- Doors & trim
- Prep & detail work
- Setup / cleanup
- Total worker-hours
Where the cost comes from
- Labor
- Payroll burden
- Sundries & masking
- Equipment & travel
- Overhead
- Total cost
How this estimate is calculated
- • Using the measured area you entered directly
- • Prep, doors, trim, and setup/cleanup add their own minutes
Editable operational assumptions — not market averages. Coverage varies by paint, surface, color, and application method.
Turn this painting estimate into a professional quote
Put it on a PDF with the free estimate generator — or save your wall, ceiling, trim, and door services with their rates in Revenuor and reuse them on every job from your iPhone or iPad.
Coming soon to the App StoreHow painting estimates work
Start with honest square footage
Wall area is perimeter × height: a 14 × 12 room with 9-foot walls is 468 gross square feet before openings. Subtract roughly 20 sq ft per door and 15 per window — or skip the deduction and treat it as your buffer, as long as you do it consistently. Guessing area instead of measuring is where most bad painting quotes start.
Coats and coverage decide the paint bill
Area × coats ÷ coverage gives gallons, and coverage genuinely varies — smooth drywall might see 350–400 sq ft per gallon while textured or porous surfaces drink far more. Add waste, round up to what you can actually buy, and remember a dark-to-light change often needs primer or a third coat that doubles the material math.
Prep is labor, not a favor
Patching, sanding, caulking, scraping, and masking are minutes on the clock before any color goes up — and on rough repaints prep can rival the painting itself. Painters who "include" prep silently are cutting their effective hourly rate on exactly the jobs that deserve a premium.
Ceilings, trim, and doors are their own line items
Ceilings paint slower than walls, doors are a fixed block of minutes each, and trim is priced by the linear foot. A walls-only refresh and a full room with ceiling, baseboards, and six-panel doors are different jobs — price them like it.
Height and access multiply everything
Stairwells, high ceilings, and awkward access slow every task: more ladder moves, more cutting-in, more care. A multiplier on the painting hours is the honest way to model it — and it's why two same-sized rooms can deserve very different prices.
Minimum charges protect small jobs
One-room jobs still cost travel, setup, masking, and cleanup. Set a minimum that covers showing up plus baseline profit, and let the calculator tell you when the minimum — not the math — is setting the price.
Why painters underprice
Usually three misses: prep time that never made the quote, payroll burden on top of wages, and overhead no job was asked to carry. Materials get remembered; minutes get forgotten. Price the minutes.
Safety and accuracy notes
Coverage and hide vary by product and surface — never guarantee coats. Older coatings, water damage, and specialty surfaces may require professional assessment before you commit to a price, and high work needs proper access planning. This calculator estimates pricing only — not surface preparation safety or hazardous-material procedures.
A note on taxes
Painting services are taxable in some places and not in others, and materials are sometimes treated differently from labor. The calculator can add tax on top of your pre-tax price, but check your local rules with a tax professional.
Six jobs, six different prices
Same calculator, different scope — quoting every room the same flat price leaks money.
Single bedroom repaint
Walls only, similar color, light prep. The bread-and-butter job — and often close to your minimum charge.
Whole room, walls + ceiling
The ceiling adds slower overhead work and its own coat math. Same footprint, meaningfully more hours.
Move-out repaint
Patched, scuffed walls and a full-coverage repaint. Prep multiplies the base hours — quote what you saw, not the best case.
Trim and doors
No wall area at all: doors by the each, baseboards by the linear foot. Detail time is the whole job.
High-ceiling room
Stairwell or tall walls slow every task and add ladder time. The access multiplier changes this job more than its size does.
Small commercial office
Bigger area, repetitive rooms, maybe a crew. Production is high but scheduling and setup still need their share.
Pricing a different trade? The service price calculator handles the general case, and the painting page shows how painters run the whole workflow. The hourly rate calculator works out what your hour needs to earn. And the profit margin calculator converts margin and markup instantly.
Price the room once. Run the whole job in Revenuor.
Save walls, ceilings, trim, and doors as line items with square-foot, linear-foot, each, or flat rates — then every estimate, scheduled job, and invoice is a few taps on your iPhone or iPad.
- Save wall, ceiling, trim, and door services
- Sq ft, linear ft, each, hourly, or flat rates
- Professional estimate PDFs
- Schedule the job
- Invoice after the final walkthrough
- Track unpaid invoices
Frequently asked questions
Is the painting estimate calculator free?
Yes. The calculator is completely free, with no sign-up and no limit on how many jobs you price.
Is my data stored?
No. Everything you enter stays in your browser. Nothing is sent to or stored on our servers, and the numbers are gone when you leave the page.
How do I calculate wall square footage?
Perimeter times height: 2 × (length + width) × wall height, times the number of rooms. The calculator does this from your room dimensions, or you can enter measured square footage directly.
Should I subtract doors and windows?
For accuracy, yes — a door is roughly 20 sq ft and a window around 15 sq ft. Some painters skip the deduction as a built-in buffer; the calculator lets you do either and the deduction values are editable.
How many coats should I estimate?
Two finish coats is the safe default for repaints. Color changes — especially dark-to-light or bold, low-hide colors — often need a primer coat or a third coat. Estimate the coats the wall needs, not the coats you hope it needs.
How much paint do I need?
Paintable area × coats ÷ coverage, plus waste. A gallon typically covers roughly 250–400 sq ft per coat depending on paint, surface, and application — the calculator uses your coverage number and rounds purchase quantity up to whole gallons.
How should prep work affect price?
Prep is labor like any other — patching, sanding, caulking, and masking are minutes on the job. On repaints in rough condition, prep can rival the painting itself; tick the prep work in the calculator and it's added to the hours.
Should I charge by square foot or hour?
Most painting quotes end up as a flat job price, but a defensible flat price is built from area, production rates, and materials. The calculator shows the flat price plus the per-square-foot and effective hourly numbers behind it.
How do ceilings and trim affect labor?
Ceilings paint slower than walls — overhead work with more cutting-in — and trim and doors are detail time priced per door or per linear foot. The calculator models each separately so a walls-only job and a full room don't get the same price.
How should I set a minimum charge?
Add up what it costs to show up — travel, setup, cleanup, and a base amount of profit — and never price below it. Enter your minimum and the calculator holds the price at that floor, telling you when the minimum is controlling the result.
Should painting be taxed?
Painting services are taxable in some places and not in others, and materials are sometimes treated differently from labor. The calculator can add tax on top of your pre-tax price, but check your local rules with a tax professional.
Can I turn the result into an estimate?
Yes. Put the price on a professional PDF with our free estimate generator, or save your painting services in the Revenuor app for iPhone and iPad and reuse them in every estimate and invoice.
Can I use this for exterior painting?
Yes — choose the exterior siding project type, enter the measured area directly, and adjust the production rate and access multiplier for ladder work. Exterior prep and weather windows deserve their own attention when you commit to dates.
Does this handle cabinet refinishing?
Not as a dedicated estimator. You can add cabinet work as custom detail labor and materials, but cabinet refinishing is its own process — doors, spraying, drying time — and larger cabinet jobs deserve a purpose-built quote.