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?
- Cost guides quote walls-only interior painting at 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. This calculator works from wall area instead, so its labor rate is per square foot of wall and runs lower. 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?
- This calculator prices off wall area: the room's walls minus 20 sq ft per door and 12 per window, which is what the paint actually covers. Cost guides publish rates per square foot of floor, so if you quote that way, keep your rate on the same footage it was set against.
- 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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