Same engine as our interior calculator, preset for exterior work: more prep hours, pricier paint. Enter the siding area and see what the job should bid at.
Defaults here: 6 prep hours (washing, scraping, masking — the part that actually decides exterior profitability), exterior paint at $48/gallon, 2 coats, 15% overhead, 30% margin on price.
| Exterior siding | Bid | $/sqft | Crew hours | Gallons |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1,000 sqft | $2,068 | $2.07 | 18.1 h | 6 |
| 1,800 sqft | $3,284 | $1.82 | 27.0 h | 11 |
| 2,500 sqft | $4,312 | $1.72 | 34.8 h | 15 |
| 3,500 sqft | $5,709 | $1.63 | 45.9 h | 20 |
Prep is the number to fight over. Six hours covers a house in decent shape. Peeling south walls, chalky siding, or a power-wash-and-wait day can double it, and every prep hour you fail to bid comes straight out of your margin at $45/hour.
One honest limitation: this free version assumes 350 sqft per gallon, which suits smooth siding. Rough or porous surfaces drink more — stucco can run under 250. We don't publish one universal number because there isn't one; the full calculator lets you set coverage per job.
Perimeter times wall height, minus nothing. Skip subtracting windows and doors on exteriors — you'll brush their trim and frames anyway, and the "saved" gallon has a habit of going into second-coating the sunny side. A 40×30 ft single-story house at 9 ft walls is about 1,260 sqft of siding before gables.
This page prices walls with fixed assumptions. The full PaintProfit calculator prices walls, ceilings, trim and doors at separate production rates, builds a quote sheet you can send, tracks estimated vs actual per job, and runs five sanity checks before a bid goes out. $49 once, 14-day refund.
Try the full version free firstNot in the math — but it changes your schedule risk. A rained-out day is unbilled crew time; some exterior painters add a weather cushion to prep hours in shoulder season. That's a judgment call, not a formula.
Mid-grade exterior acrylic runs higher than interior wall paint. If you're spraying premium elastomeric at $70, type it in — the estimate moves with it.