Enter the wall area. You get labor hours, gallons, and a bid price that covers overhead and margin — the number a job should go out at, not just what the paint costs.
Computed by the same engine, with the default assumptions: crews cover 180 sqft per hour on walls, a gallon covers 350 sqft, paint at $42, crew cost $45/hour, 2 coats, 15% overhead, 30% margin on price.
| Interior walls | Bid | $/sqft | Crew hours | Gallons |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 400 sqft | $866 | $2.16 | 7.4 h | 3 |
| 800 sqft | $1,400 | $1.75 | 11.9 h | 5 |
| 1,200 sqft | $1,935 | $1.61 | 16.3 h | 7 |
| 2,000 sqft | $3,090 | $1.54 | 25.2 h | 12 |
| 3,000 sqft | $4,512 | $1.50 | 36.3 h | 18 |
Your rates will differ. That's the point of the inputs — a crew that cuts and rolls 220 sqft an hour bids very differently from one doing 150.
Notice the $/sqft column falls as jobs get bigger. Setup, cleanup and prep are fixed hours, so a 400 sqft powder room carries them worse than a 3,000 sqft repaint. Anyone quoting one flat rate per square foot for every interior job is subsidizing small jobs with big ones.
On a 1,500 sqft job the engine bids $2,379. Cost plus 30% markup would put it at $1,701 — and after 15% overhead, that price leaves you roughly $255 short of a real 30% margin. The gap between margin and markup is where interior painters quietly lose money. The calculator above prices margin ON the price, so overhead and profit both survive.
Ceilings, trim and doors aren't in this free version — they paint at different rates (140 sqft/hr for ceilings, 60 linear ft/hr for trim, about 45 minutes a door) and estimating them at the wall rate underbids the job. The full calculator handles each separately.
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 firstNo — this free version prices walls. Ceilings roll slower (140 sqft/hr here vs 180 for walls) and trim is slower still, so we'd rather leave them out than pretend one rate fits all. The $49 version prices each surface at its own rate.
The coats field multiplies both labor and paint. Two coats on 1,000 sqft is 2,000 sqft of rolling.
They're the same defaults our paid calculator ships with, tuned for a small residential crew. Every one of them is editable, and if you paint faster or pay more, change them — the estimate is only as honest as its inputs.