For house painting — interior or exterior. Enter the area and your numbers; it returns the direct cost, the crew hours, and the price the job should actually go out at.
Run a 1,500 sqft job with the defaults and the direct cost — labor plus materials — comes to $1,308. That's what the job costs YOU. Charge that and you painted for free.
The bid the engine produces is $2,379. The difference isn't padding: $357 of it is overhead (insurance, truck, phone, the unpaid hours between jobs) and $714 is margin — the part that's supposed to still be in the account in January.
The common mistake is "cost plus 30%", which prices this job at $1,701. Looks close. It's $678 lower, every job, and the shortfall lands on your margin, not your overhead — overhead gets paid either way.
The verdict line under the result flags exactly this: if your effective hourly after materials drops under what you pay the crew, the bid is working for wages.
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 is house painting: walls, rooms, siding. Auto refinishing is a different trade with different math.
15% is the default, and most one-crew outfits we've seen run 12-18% once they count everything. If you've never computed yours, that's worth an afternoon — it changes every bid you write.
Yes — run the numbers, then "Email me this estimate" sends the breakdown to your inbox, free.