How to Bid a Painting Job: Measure, Hours, Paint, Overhead, Margin

What's the best way to bid a painting job?

Bid from the hours the job will take and what those hours cost you. Measure, turn area into hours with a production rate, cost the hours at your loaded rate, add paint and overhead, and price on margin. Every step is arithmetic you can check.

I'm not a painter — I build the pricing math. That is why every figure on this page is an input you replace, not a going rate. For how the per-square-foot number falls out of this method, see painting price per square foot.

How do painters estimate a job? Start by measuring

Measure every surface you will paint and convert it to square feet: walls are perimeter × height, ceilings are length × width, less openings. Coats multiply the area you actually roll.

Door and window allowances are assumptions; measure the real openings on unusual rooms. Trim, doors and cabinets are better priced as separate line items (per door, per linear foot of trim) using the same hours-based method. Try the room in the calculator — enter hours and materials and it returns break-even and the price to quote.

How to calculate painting hours from production rates

Hours = area × coats ÷ production rate, plus fixed allowances for set-up, prep and clean-up. The production rate is the one number you must measure yourself: time two or three jobs and divide square feet by hours.

The 150 and 100 sq ft per hour rates above are placeholder assumptions for one painter rolling and cutting in — replace them with your own measured rates. A faster painter bids lower and still keeps the same margin; a slower one who copies a fast painter's rate works for less than break-even.

How much paint does a room (or a house) take?

Gallons = area × coats ÷ coverage per gallon, rounded up to what you can buy. Sherwin-Williams says a gallon typically covers about 350–400 square feet; the examples use 350, the cautious end.

Paint prices and sundries are assumptions. For a whole house the method is the same: add up every room's net wall and ceiling area, then divide. A house's floor area does not tell you its wall area, so there is no honest one-line answer to “how much paint for a 2,000 sq ft house” without measuring. As a check on scale, 1,000 sq ft of wall at 2 coats needs 2,000 ÷ 350 = 5.71 gallons.

Worked example: bidding a 12 × 14 bedroom

Put the hours and materials into the job formula. The painter is paid $25 an hour with 30% burden (payroll tax, workers' comp, insurance, time off — an assumption), so labour costs $32.50 an hour, not $25.

Overhead is $14,520 a year divided by 1 painter × 220 billable days × 8 hours = $8.25 per hour. Break-even is $343.20 + $210.00 + $87.12 = $640.32. The price is $640.32 ÷ (1 − 0.35) = $985.11, leaving $344.79 of profit.

The painting estimate calculator template runs this same sequence per job and keeps each one, so you are not rebuilding the math on the back of a receipt.

How much should I charge to paint a 12 × 12 or a 20 × 20 room?

Run the same method; the answer depends on your rates, but with the assumptions above a 12 × 12 room prices at $886.41 and a 20 × 20 room at $1,441.08.

Notice the 12 × 12 room is barely cheaper than the 12 × 14. Four hours of set-up, prep and clean-up are the same in both. This is why small rooms priced at a flat per-square-foot rate lose money and large open rooms can look expensive — the fixed hours are spread over different areas. If you bid a 1,000 sq ft wall job with the per-square-foot guide's 60 sq ft/hr all-in rate, it comes to $1,567.95.

The bidding mistake: markup instead of margin

Adding 35% to your cost does not give you a 35% margin. Markup multiplies cost; margin divides it. The difference comes straight out of profit.

On the 12 × 14 room, break-even $640.32 × 1.35 = $864.43. Priced on margin it is $985.11. The markup bid is $120.68 lower and keeps 25.93%, not 35%. At three rooms a week that is $18,825.41 a year. The markup vs margin calculator shows the conversion for any percentage.

The second common miss is costing labour at the wage. Hours at $25 instead of $32.50 leaves out burden on every hour you bid.

Interior vs exterior and commercial bids

The formula does not change; the inputs do. Exterior and commercial bids swap in different production rates, access costs and risk allowances.

• Exterior: measure siding area (perimeter × wall height, plus gable triangles at ½ × base × height). Add ladder or lift time, pressure-washing prep and a weather allowance as hours. Textured siding usually spreads less paint per gallon than a smooth wall; use the product's stated coverage.
• Commercial: read the specification for products, coats and schedule. After-hours work, access equipment rental and site rules become line items. Price each from your costs, then apply margin to the total.
• Handyman painting: the same method works; small jobs need a minimum charge because the fixed hours dominate.

How to give a painting estimate the customer can say yes to

Keep two documents: an internal sheet with your costs and a customer bid with scope and price. The customer sees what is included, not your break-even.

• Scope per room: surfaces, coats, colours, and what is excluded (trim, doors, repairs).
• Prep included: patching, caulk, sanding, furniture moving.
• Products: brand and sheen, or “customer-supplied” with a lower price.
• Price, deposit, payment terms and how long the price holds.

If you want the template side of this, the painting estimate template guide covers what the spreadsheet should contain.

Step-by-step: How to Bid a Painting Job: Measure, Hours, Paint, Overhead, Margin

1. Measure every surface. Walls = perimeter × height less doors and windows; ceilings = length × width. Multiply by coats.
2. Convert area to hours. Divide coated area by your measured production rate, then add set-up, prep and clean-up hours.
3. Work out paint. Gallons = area × coats ÷ coverage per gallon, rounded up. Add sundries.
4. Cost the labour. Hours × wage × (1 + burden %). Use the loaded rate, never the bare wage.
5. Add overhead. Hours × (yearly overhead ÷ sellable hours). Break-even = labour + materials + overhead.
6. Price on margin. Price = break-even ÷ (1 − target margin). Check it against the markup number.

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