Free Painting Estimate Calculator

Add up your true direct costs — labor including burden, materials with markup, and job extras like equipment or disposal. Add a contingency for surprises if the job has any. That's your break-even, the floor you never quote below. Then add your profit on top: price = break-even × (1 + profit%). This calculator runs exactly that math as you type, and shows the result both ways — what you added on to your costs, and what share of the final price that leaves you — because the two numbers are easy to confuse and quoting on the wrong one is how a job loses money.

Burden is everything an hour of labor costs beyond the paycheck: payroll taxes (typically 8–10% of wages), workers' compensation (a few percent for low-risk trades, well over 15% for high-risk ones like roofing or concrete), liability insurance, and paid time off. All-in burden commonly lands between 15% and 40% on top of base pay — and forgetting it is one of the most common ways a profitable-looking job loses money. If you're solo and paying yourself, you can leave it at 0%.

Markup is a percentage added on top of your cost; margin is your share of the final price. Adding 100% on top — charging double your costs — is the same thing as a 50% margin. Quoting a markup when you mean a margin is one of the most common ways contractors underprice a job, so this calculator keeps it simple: you enter what you add on top — no cap — and it always shows what share of the final price that leaves you.

Work backward from your own numbers instead of copying competitors: add up what you want to earn in a year plus every cost of being in business, then divide by your realistic billable hours — most painters bill far fewer hours than they work. That result is your floor. Local demand, licensing, and skill decide how far above it you can go.

Somewhere between 15% and 50% is common practice across the trades, and it isn't padding: the markup pays for sourcing time, supply runs, returns, warranty callbacks, and the money you float between buying materials and getting paid. If the customer supplies materials, price the labor accordingly — you still carry the workmanship risk.

Coverage runs the clock more than anything else. Going light over a deep red, or over a cheap flat that soaks, means a third coat, and deep and accent bases hide poorly to begin with.

Then there is what opens up once you start. You scrape one loose patch on the south elevation and it runs to the corner, the caulk lets go the length of the window, or the sill is soft under paint that looked sound. Wallpaper is the worst of it, because it either comes off in postage stamps or takes the drywall face with it and turns a repaint into a skim coat.

Weather sets the exterior day: dew keeps you off the siding until mid morning, wind ends spraying, and you cannot beat the sun around the house. Recoat times do not compress either. Cabinet enamel wants overnight, and humidity stretches that. Occupied houses add their own hours — moving a room's contents to the middle and back every evening, working around somebody's day, and cutting in around furniture nobody can shift.

Prep is most of the labor, but paint is a real line and it misleads you if you count it off the label. Spread rates assume a smooth, primed, sealed surface. Knockdown, popcorn, rough cedar, stucco and split-face block take considerably more, and bare drywall or new masonry drinks the first coat.

You never get a whole gallon onto the wall, between the tray, the liner, the cover and the film left in the can, so order in whole gallons and fives and expect leftovers. Buy the job in one order and box the gallons together, because tint lots vary and the difference shows as a stripe where two walls meet. Custom tints are generally not returnable.

When the customer supplies the paint you still own the finish, and it arrives a gallon short or in the wrong sheen. Sundries are what get missed: tape, paper, caulk, filler, covers, liners and spray tips, which wear and start throwing wide. Cold storage is the sleeper cost — latex left in a truck through a freeze is gone, and so is the half-used five you were saving for the touch-up visit.

Free and unlimited, no account needed. The math runs in your browser and your pricing setup saves only on your own device — we never see your numbers. Printing or sending the estimate it makes counts as a document: your first 2 are free, with no account.