What should this paint job cost?

Type each room the way you'd walk it. The calculator turns square feet into labor hours at real production rates, adds prep, setup and paint, then prices the job at the margin you want, not at a flat $/sq ft.

Rooms

Your numbers

Painter wage $/hr

Overhead $/labor hr

Target margin %

Crew size

Wall paint $/gal

Payroll burden %

Walls sq ft/hr

Minimum job $

Overhead per labor hour = yearly truck, insurance, phone, software and marketing costs ÷ hours your crew bills in a year. $12 is a common starting point for a 2-person crew; yours may be higher.

How the hours are figured

Wall area is 2 × (length + width) × height, less 21 sq ft per door and 15 per window. Each coat is rolled and cut at your walls rate (175 sq ft/hr), ceilings at 130, baseboard and casing at 55 lin ft/hr, doors at 1 hr each and windows at 45 min. Fair rooms take 15% longer and Poor rooms 35% longer, plus prep: 0.5, 1.5 or 3.5 hours a room. Each crew day adds 45 minutes of setup and cleanup per painter.

Why margin, not markup

If the job costs you $5,000 and you add 30%, you charge $6,500 and keep $1,500: a 23% margin. To keep 30% of the price, divide cost by 0.70 to get $7,143. This calculator prices that way. Paint is marked up 15% on top.