Interior Painting Cost Calculator
Figure the whole room in seconds. Enter the room size (or your wall area), take out the doors and windows, and get the real takeoff — gallons of wall paint, ceiling, primer, trim, and tape — plus your material cost, your labor, and what to charge. Measured the right way, off wall area, not floor space.
You priced the job. Now run it like a business.
That's the hard part done. SideWRK runs the rest from your phone: text the estimate, your customer taps approve, and the money hits — card or Apple Pay from their own phone, landing in your own Stripe account. It keeps a line on who still owes you, logs every material and cost so your real profit and your tax write-offs tally themselves, and stands up a free website with reviews that feeds you the next job. A free estimate today, or your whole operation in one app. Built for painting and every trade.
The paint is cheap — your hours aren’t
Material is maybe a fifth of a paint job; the rest is your cutting-in, your prep, your ladder time. So price the square footage honestly, then charge for the parts that eat hours: ceilings and trim, patching, dark walls that need an extra coat. A room quote that ignores prep is a quote you painted for free. Walk it first, write down what you see, and put a number on all of it.
Questions
- How much does interior painting cost per square foot?
- Walls-only interior painting runs about $2–$6 per square foot of floor space, labor and paint included — so a 1,500 sq ft interior lands roughly $3,000–$9,000. Add ceilings and trim and it climbs to about $4.70–$6.75 per square foot. Labor is 70–85% of the number, so your time is what you are really pricing.
- Do I price by wall area or floor area?
- Quote off the floor square footage. It is the number the customer already knows, it is how the big cost guides publish rates, and it tracks wall area closely in a normal-height room. If you are painting one accent wall or a stairwell, price the actual wall surface instead — the shortcut only works room by room.
- How should I charge for prep work?
- Never eat it. Patching, drywall repairs, sanding glossy surfaces, and covering dark colors add 25–50% to a job, and skipping prep is how repaints fail. Walk the rooms before you quote, call out the prep on the estimate as its own thing, and let the multiplier carry it — a job that needs two hours of patching is not the same job.
- Is this calculator free?
- Yes. It runs entirely in your browser, there is no sign-up, and nothing is stored anywhere but your own device.
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