Bid an Interior Painting Job
Room size
Paint & production
Your rates
Put this number on a professional quote
Estimating and field service apps turn your bid into a branded quote the homeowner can approve online, then track the job and invoice.
Some of these are partner links. If you sign up through one, CalcTrades may earn a referral fee at no cost to you. It never changes the numbers this calculator gives you.
How this price is built
- Wall area per room = 2 × (length + width) × height, minus about 21 sq ft per door and 15 sq ft per window.
- Ceiling area per room = length × width (if included).
- Gallons = total area × coats ÷ coverage per gallon, rounded up.
- Labor hours = total area × coats ÷ your painting speed + prep and cleanup hours per room.
- Price = labor hours × your labor rate + (paint + sundries) × (1 + materials markup).
Trim, doors, cabinets and accent walls take their own time. Add them as extra prep hours or price them separately.
How to Bid a Painting Job
A painting bid is three numbers added together: labor, materials and markup. Labor is almost always the biggest piece, so the accuracy of your bid comes down to how well you know your production rate, the square feet you and your crew actually paint per hour, including cutting in.
Step 1: Measure the Paintable Area
Measure each room's length, width and wall height. Wall area is the perimeter times the height. Take off doors and windows if you're not painting them. Add the ceiling area if it's in the scope. Multiply by the number of coats to get the total area you'll actually roll and brush.
Step 2: Figure the Paint
Divide the total area by the coverage on the can, usually listed per coat. Rough or porous surfaces and dark-to-light color changes use more paint than the label suggests, so round up and consider a third coat for big color changes.
Step 3: Estimate Labor From Your Production Rate
Time your crew on a few rooms and calculate square feet per hour per coat. Divide the job's total area by that rate. Then add prep: moving furniture, masking, patching nail holes, sanding, caulking and cleanup. Prep often takes as long as painting on older homes.
Step 4: Price It
Multiply labor hours by the rate you charge per hour. That rate must cover the painter's wage, payroll costs, insurance, vehicle, overhead and profit, not just the wage. Mark up materials to cover the time you spend buying and hauling them. If you're unsure what your hourly rate should be, run the labor cost calculator.
Pricing per Square Foot vs. per Room
Many painters quote by the room or by the square foot of floor for speed. Those shortcuts work once you know your averages. The price-per-room and price-per-sq-ft results above show what this bid works out to, so you can check quick quotes against a real estimate.
Frequently Asked Questions
Measure the paintable area, multiply by the number of coats, divide by paint coverage to get gallons, divide by your painting speed to get labor hours, add prep time, then price labor at your hourly rate and add marked-up materials.
Work it out from the room's paintable area, your production rate and your hourly rate, plus paint and supplies. Rooms with high ceilings, lots of trim or heavy prep take longer and should cost more.
It varies widely with the surface, cutting in, the tools and the painter. Track your own jobs: total area painted per coat divided by hours spent painting. Use that number in this calculator.
Many contractors add a markup to materials to cover purchasing, pickup and waste. The right percentage depends on your market; this calculator lets you set it.
Divide the paintable area by the coverage on the can and multiply by the number of coats. A 12×14 room with 8-foot walls, two coats, one door and two windows needs roughly 2 to 3 gallons for the walls.
