How to price a painting job.
Measure the rooms, work out the paint, add your labour, then overhead and profit. The calculator does the arithmetic with your numbers — it doesn’t guess your rates.
Rooms
Openings: measure the doors, windows and anything else you won’t paint, and enter the total in sq ft.
Paint
Use the coverage printed on the product you’ll use1. Rough or porous surfaces take more.
Labour
Per-sq-ft labour is charged once on the surface area, whatever the number of coats.
Supplies, overhead and profit
Starting points, not rules: 10% overhead and 8–12% net profit2. Use your own numbers if you know them.
Your price
| Walls | |
| Ceilings | |
| Paint to buy | |
| Paint | |
| Supplies | |
| Labour | |
| Overhead | |
| Profit | |
| Price |
Saved on this device only. “Put it in an estimate” opens the painting estimate template with these lines filled in.
The five steps.
Measure it yourself.
Wall area is the room’s perimeter times the ceiling height. Subtract the doors and windows you measured. Ceilings are length times width. Benjamin Moore’s contractor guide recommends taking your own measurements rather than relying on the square footage a client gives you.2
Work out the paint.
Multiply each surface by its number of coats, then divide by the coverage printed on the product. For example, Benjamin Moore lists Regal Select Matte at 400–450 sq ft per gallon, with one or two coats recommended.1 The calculator starts at 400, the low end of that range. Change it to match your product.
Add your labour.
Charge per square foot if you’ve timed enough similar rooms to trust your rate, or by the hour for prep-heavy or unusual jobs. Benjamin Moore’s guide suggests allowing about 30% more time on new construction for priming and caulking.2 Your own past jobs are the best source for hours.
Cover overhead.
Insurance, the van, phone, software and your own salary have to come from somewhere. The same guide cites about 10% overhead as an average for trades, and suggests starting there if you don’t yet have a year of figures.2
Then add profit.
Profit is separate from your wage and your overhead. It’s what lets the business grow. The guide gives 8–12% net profit as a common range, and notes that sources vary widely.2
A worked example.
The two bedrooms from our painting estimate template: walls two coats, ceilings one coat. The paint price, hours and hourly rate are example inputs, not a market rate.
| Walls: (12+12+12+12)×8 − 60 + (10+12+10+12)×8 − 55 | 621 sq ft |
| Ceilings: 12×12 + 10×12 | 264 sq ft |
| Area to cover: 621×2 + 264×1 | 1,506 sq ft |
| Paint: 1,506 ÷ 400 = 3.77, so buy 4 gal at $50 | $200.00 |
| Supplies | $45.00 |
| Labour: 20 hours at $60 | $1,200.00 |
| Overhead: 10% of $1,445.00 | $144.50 |
| Profit: 10% of $1,589.50 | $158.95 |
| Price | $1,748.45 |
That’s $1.98 per square foot of surface (885 sq ft). Once you know your own figure for jobs like this, you can quote similar rooms per square foot.
Questions and answers.
Is the calculator’s price a fair market price for my area?
It’s your price, built from your own costs, hours and rates. It doesn’t know what other painters near you charge. If you want a market check, compare it with a few written quotes from local painters.
Why does it round paint up to whole gallons?
Because you buy paint in cans. It shows the exact amount too, so if you buy quarts or five-gallon buckets you can adjust the price per gallon to match.
Is profit here a markup or a margin?
A markup. Overhead is added to your direct costs, then profit is added on top of cost plus overhead. A 10% markup works out to a margin of about 9.1% of the final price, so if you think in margins, enter a slightly higher figure.
Can I use it for exterior painting?
The area maths is the same: perimeter times height, minus what you won’t paint. Labour is very different. Benjamin Moore’s estimating guide notes that interiors can take two to three times as many hours as the same exterior square footage, so time your own exterior jobs and use those hours.
Does the price per square foot include ceilings?
Yes. It divides the price by the surface you’re painting once — walls plus any ceilings you switched on — not by the total area of all coats.
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