Enter room dimensions, ceiling height, number of coats, and prep level — get exact paint quantity plus a full cost breakdown to build your quote.
Pre-built quote form for interior and exterior painting jobs — dimensions, coats, prep, and pricing all in one professional document.
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Two rooms with identical dimensions can have completely different job costs depending on what's on the walls. A builder-grade new construction room with smooth drywall takes half the prep time of a 30-year-old rental unit with crack filler, nicotine staining, and texture mismatch. The paint is almost the same. The labor is not.
Paint manufacturers list 400 sq ft per gallon. Professional painters use 350 sq ft/gallon as their working number — accounting for cutting in, roller nap waste, and texture. For dark colors going over light or vice versa, drop to 300. This calculator uses 350 as baseline and adjusts for coat count. Better to have a partial gallon left than to run short mid-wall.
The standard deduction is 21 sq ft per door (one side) and 15 sq ft per standard window. This calculator doesn't include a door/window count for simplicity — but if a room has a lot of openings, you may want to subtract 5–10% from your paint quantity. For most residential rooms, the difference is less than half a gallon.
Experienced painters typically quote interior walls at $1.50–$3.50/sq ft of wall area (labor only), depending on prep, height, and detail. This calculator gives you the number from the bottom up — actual hours × rate. Use both and see if they agree. If your bottom-up number is much lower than market rate, your labor rate may be too low. If it's much higher, check your hours estimate.
One coat of paint on anything but the most forgiving surface leaves holidays, roller lines, and thin spots. Budget and time two coats on every wall job. The only exception is touch-up matching on an existing color with the same paint. One-coat jobs almost always get a callback. Two-coat jobs almost never do.
Quote templates, pricing worksheets, service agreements, and business forms for handymen and specialty tradespeople — covers painting, repairs, and home improvement jobs.
Room painting pricing depends on square footage of paintable surface (not floor area), ceiling height, number of coats, surface prep required, trim and door count, and paint quality. This calculator builds a complete painting quote from all these variables — so you can price paint jobs accurately and stop losing money on rooms with 10-foot ceilings and extensive trim work.