How Much Should I Charge for a Painting Job?
You walked the house, guessed at the wall area and gave a number. Two extra coats over a dark red wall later, the paint bill ate your profit.
Put in your own numbers. The calculator adds your overhead, prices the job to the margin you want, and shows what you keep.
Painting Job Price Calculator
- Materials$540.00
- Labour$960.00
- Tape, Plastic and Sundries$80.00
- Overhead$237.00
- Job cost$1,817.00
Questions
How do I measure a room for painting?
Measure the length of each wall, multiply by the height and add them up. That's the wall area in square feet. Leave out big openings like large windows and patio doors, and price ceilings and trim as their own lines.
How do I work out paint cost per square foot?
Use a recent job: the paint and primer you bought, divided by the square feet you painted. The number changes with the product you use and how many coats the walls need, so check it against the job in front of you.
Markup or margin: which should I use to price a painting job?
Price from margin. Markup is your profit as a share of your cost. Margin is your profit as a share of the price. They are not the same number: mark a $1,000 cost up 30% and you charge $1,300, but your margin is 23%, because $300 is 23% of $1,300. Price from the margin you want and you know what you keep.
Should overhead go into the price of a painting job?
Yes. Your truck, insurance, phone, tools and the hours you spend quoting jobs you don't win are all paid for by the jobs you do win. A simple way to set it: add up last year's overhead, divide it by last year's job costs, and use that percentage here.
How do I turn this price into a painting quote?
Sign up for HomeJet free and build the quote with a line for each part of the job: materials, labour and the extras. HomeJet adds your sales tax. The quote stays on the job with the photos and notes, so when it's accepted your crew already has what they need and the invoice comes from the same lines. It's free for one-person businesses, with no credit card.
You Priced the Margin. Now Keep It.
A good price only holds if the job runs clean. In HomeJet the quote, the photos, the notes and your crew's updates live on one job, so nobody chases details by text and nothing falls through the cracks. Less chaos, fewer mistakes, more of this margin kept. Free for one-person businesses, no credit card.