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Interior Painting Cost Calculator

Painting quotes look simple and are not.

Last updated Free, no sign-upHow it works

Your inputs
What you are painting
Scope and finish
Location

Labor rates and prices vary enough by state to move an estimate substantially.

Optional. Used only to pick your state out of published labor and price tables. We never ask for a street address and nothing is stored.

Use this if you would rather not enter a ZIP code.

Results update as you type. Nothing you enter is sent anywhere or stored.

Estimated interior painting cost: $2,150, ranging from $1,500 to $3,250.

Estimated interior painting cost

low confidence
$2,150Materials and labor, before contingency
$1,500 lowhigh $3,250

What makes up the typical figure

  • Painting labor$1,600
  • Paint — mid grade$500
  • Tape, plastic, caulk, and sundries$88
  • United States average
  • +10% contingency advised
  • Assumptions 2026.07.1

Why low: no state was resolved, so national averages were used; the modeled range spans about 81% of the typical value.

Key figures

Wall area to paint
1,646 sq ftEstimated from room floor areas and ceiling height.
Cost per square foot of wall
$1.32($0.92 – $1.98)
Cost per room
$543($377 – $815)
Paint needed
10 gallons
Estimated labor
25 hours
Materials only, if you do it yourself
$588($428 – $802)Painting is the most commonly DIY-ed interior job. This is what the materials alone would cost.

Cost breakdown

Estimated cost of each component, with low, typical, and high values.
ComponentLowTypicalHigh
Paint — mid gradeMaterials10 gallons for 2 coats over 1,646 sq ft.$380$500$650
Tape, plastic, caulk, and sundriesMaterials$48$88$150
Painting laborLabor25 total hours at $63/hr billed.$930$1,600$2,650
Estimated interior painting cost$1,500$2,150$3,250
Recommended contingency (10%)Mostly for repairs discovered during prep — soft drywall behind wallpaper, water staining that keeps bleeding through, or trim that needs replacing rather than painting.$150$220$330
Total to budget$1,650$2,370$3,580

The low and high columns above will not add up to the headline range. Each line has its own uncertainty, and every line landing at its worst case at the same time is unlikely, so the total combines them as partially independent rather than summing the extremes.

For reference — already included above

  • Surface preparation — moderate$500

What moved your estimate

  • Preparation level

    Prep is the majority of the skill and often a third of the hours. Wallpaper removal in particular can cost more than the painting itself.

How this number was produced
  1. Wall area4 rooms × perimeter × 8 ft1,646 sq ft
  2. Paint1,646 sq ft × 2 coats ÷ 350 sq ft per gallon10 gallons
  3. Labor hourswalls + ceilings + trim + preparation25 hours
  4. Totalmaterials + labor, combined as partially independent$2,173

Adjustments applied

  • Regional labor — national×1.00

    National 47-2141 Painters, Construction and Maintenance mean wage of $26.64/hr (BLS OEWS May 2025), times the contractor burden multiplier.

  • 2 coats×1.00

    Two coats is standard for a colour change over a similar tone.

  • Regional material index×1.00

    National material pricing; no state resolved.

Notes and sources2 notes, 2 sources

Worth knowing

  • Coverage of 350 square feet per gallon per coat assumes primed, smooth drywall. Textured, porous, or previously unpainted surfaces can consume noticeably more.
  • Estimating wall area from floor area assumes reasonably rectangular rooms. An open plan with lots of glass will have less wall than the formula suggests; a hallway-heavy layout will have more.

Sources

  • U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS), State cross-industry estimatesprimaryMay 2025retrieved 2026-07-31
  • PlainTotal editorial baseline, reviewed against publicly advertised supplier pricing, manufacturer specifications, and published trade guidanceassumption2026 national baselineretrieved 2026-07-31

The paint itself is usually under a fifth of the cost — the rest is preparation, cutting in, trim, and the ladder work that ceiling height forces. This calculator works out your wall area, how much paint that needs, and how many hours it represents, then prices the labor using published painter wages for your state.

Methodology

How this calculator works

Working out the wall area

If you give us room count and average floor area, we estimate each room’s perimeter as 4.2 times the square root of its floor area — a shape factor for a moderately rectangular room — and multiply by ceiling height. That is more reliable than the common shortcut of using floor area directly, which badly underestimates tall rooms and long narrow ones.

We do not deduct for windows and doors. Painters generally do not either, because cutting around an opening takes about as long as rolling the wall it replaced.

Paint quantity and labor

Paint is calculated at 350 square feet per gallon per coat, a common manufacturer figure for primed smooth drywall, and rounded up to whole gallons. Covering a dark colour adds a coat.

Labor is split into rolling, cutting, ceilings, trim, and preparation, each at its own rate, then priced with the Bureau of Labor Statistics mean wage for painters in your state multiplied by a contractor burden factor.

Location and data

Where the numbers come from

Location is optional, and we only ask for a ZIP code or a state — never a street address. A ZIP code is matched to its state using published postal prefix ranges, and that state is used to look up labor and price rows in the tables below. If you leave it blank, or your ZIP cannot be matched, the estimate falls back to a national average and says so on the result.

Nothing you enter is transmitted or stored. The calculation runs entirely in your browser, and the only place your inputs appear is in the page URL, so you can bookmark or share a result if you choose to.

  • primaryMay 2025v2025.05

    U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS), State cross-industry estimates

    Hourly mean wage (H_MEAN) for each trade. These are employee wages, not billed contractor rates. Billed rates are derived in the engine by applying a documented burden-and-overhead multiplier; see docs/calculator-methodology.md.

  • assumption2026 national baselinev2026.07.1

    PlainTotal editorial baseline, reviewed against publicly advertised supplier pricing, manufacturer specifications, and published trade guidance

    These are NOT published statistics. No public agency publishes a national residential material price index at this granularity, and proprietary construction cost databases cannot be reproduced. Each figure is a documented editorial baseline for material only, excluding labor, delivered to a metropolitan supply yard, before regional adjustment and before sales tax. They are the least certain inputs in the project calculators and are the first thing to replace with surveyed data. Labor hours are crew-hours for a competent crew under normal conditions.

Full detail on every dataset is on the data sources page. Spotted something wrong? Report incorrect data.

Calibration

The judgements behind this estimate

These are the figures we chose rather than measured. For each one we record the range of values found across references, what we selected, and why — because an estimate you cannot interrogate is not much better than a guess. The 1 marked high risk are the ones most likely to be wrong and most consequential when they are.

  • Contractor burden multiplierhigh risklow confidence
    Observed range
    1.8 — 3 (typical 2.35)multiple of employee wage
    Why this value
    Published contractor pricing guidance and trade-association break-even material put the wage-to-billed-rate multiplier between roughly 1.8x for an owner-operator with minimal overhead and 3.0x for an insured company with vehicles, office staff, and target profit. We narrowed the shipped band to 2.0-2.75 because the extremes describe business models a homeowner rarely encounters: below 2.0 usually means an uninsured single operator, above 2.75 usually means commercial or specialty work. Roofing sits at the top of the band because workers' compensation for roofers is several times the rate of other trades.
    Applies to
    United States, all states. The multiplier itself is not regionally adjusted — regional variation enters through the underlying BLS wage, not through the burden.
    Known limits
    The single largest lever in every project calculator. A 10% error here moves every project estimate by roughly 6%.
    Sources
    Recorded before the richer schema; see rationale for provenance
    Last verified
    2026-07-31 · reviewed annual
  • Recommended contingency by job charactermedium confidence
    Observed range
    0.05 — 0.25 (typical 0.15)share of project cost
    Why this value
    Published renovation guidance clusters at 10% for like-for-like replacement, 15% where hidden damage is common, and 20% for work crossing several trades. Values below 10% assume a job where nothing is opened up; values above 25% are usually quoted for historic or structurally compromised properties, which is outside what these calculators model.
    Applies to
    United States. Older housing stock warrants the upper figure regardless of region.
    Known limits
    No additional limitation recorded.
    Sources
    Recorded before the richer schema; see rationale for provenance
    Last verified
    2026-07-31 · reviewed annual
  • Regional material price sensitivitymedium confidence
    Observed range
    0 — 0.5 (typical 0.25)share of the local labor differential
    Why this value
    Building materials are nationally traded commodities, so the floor case is 0.0 — no regional variation at all beyond freight. The ceiling case of 0.5 would imply materials track local wages half as strongly as labor does, which overstates it: what actually varies locally is freight, yard margin, distribution labor, and sales tax, not the commodity. We selected 0.25 as a single point rather than a band because modelling it as uncertain would double-count uncertainty already carried by the material price band itself.
    Applies to
    Continental United States. Alaska and Hawaii almost certainly warrant a higher figure because of shipping, and are not currently distinguished.
    Known limits
    No additional limitation recorded.
    Sources
    Recorded before the richer schema; see rationale for provenance
    Last verified
    2026-07-31 · reviewed annual
  • Paint coverage per gallon per coatmedium confidence
    Observed range
    250 — 400 (typical 350)square feet
    Why this value
    Manufacturer labels state 350-400 sq ft per gallon for primed, smooth drywall. Real coverage falls to 250 on textured, porous, or previously unpainted surfaces. We ship the manufacturer figure of 350 as a single value and disclose on the page that textured surfaces consume more, rather than widening the band — the user knows their wall texture and the calculator does not.
    Applies to
    Not regionally variable.
    Known limits
    No additional limitation recorded.
    Sources
    Recorded before the richer schema; see rationale for provenance
    Last verified
    2026-07-31 · reviewed biennial

Cost factors

What changes the price most

Preparation
The biggest variable. Sound walls need an hour a room; wallpaper removal or water damage can need six.
Ceiling height
Raises wall area and forces staging above about ten feet, slowing everything down.
Trim and doors
Slow detail work priced separately. Trim alone can rival the wall cost in a trim-heavy older house.
Colour change
Going dark to light adds a coat and often a tinted primer.
Paint quality
Premium paint costs more per gallon but covers better, so the difference in total job cost is smaller than it looks on the shelf.
Occupied versus empty
Not modeled here. Working around furniture and a household in residence adds masking, moving, and daily setup.

Questions

Frequently asked

How much does it cost to paint a room?

A standard 12 by 14 foot bedroom with eight-foot ceilings, two coats, and moderate prep typically runs a few hundred dollars in labor and materials nationally. Trim, high ceilings, and heavy prep move it up quickly. Enter your details above for a state-adjusted figure.

How much does it cost to paint a whole house interior?

For a typical 2,000 square foot home with eight-foot ceilings and moderate prep, expect a figure in the low-to-mid four figures for walls only, and considerably more with ceilings and trim included. Painter wages vary by roughly 50% across states, so location matters.

How much paint do I need?

Divide your wall area by 350 for one coat, then multiply by the number of coats. A 12 by 14 room with eight-foot ceilings has about 416 square feet of wall, so two coats needs about three gallons. Always round up — a partial gallon of a custom colour is hard to match later.

Is it cheaper to paint yourself?

Materially, yes — the materials-only figure above is usually a fifth to a quarter of the full job. Painting is genuinely DIY-able. What you are buying with a professional is speed, cut lines, and the prep judgement that determines whether it still looks good in five years.

Do I need to prime before painting?

Not usually over sound, previously painted walls in a similar colour. You do need it over bare drywall or wood, over stains that would bleed through, after wallpaper removal, and when making a dramatic colour change — a tinted primer is cheaper than a third finish coat.