How to bid a paint job

A bid is a guess about hours with a price on top. Get the hours right and the rest is arithmetic. Here's the whole bid for a painter working alone, walkthrough to signature.

“I've seen guys just take the floor square footage, and say ‘That's $500.’ But I always measure all the walls and ceiling areas to be painted.… You can lose a lot of money bidding like that.”

Tony Severino, Professional Painters, LaGrange, IL, in Benjamin Moore's contractor guide

1. Walk it and tape it

Don't price off the client's square footage. Tape or laser every wall and ceiling, count doors and windows, run linear feet of baseboard and casing. Benjamin Moore's guide says the same: measure it yourself, and it builds trust.

Write down what you'll fight: patches, stains, old gloss, a dark color, furniture, ceiling height. Openings: the PCA measuring rule quoted on its blog keeps small openings in the wall and deducts only those over 100 sq ft. Cutting around a window takes as long as rolling it.

2. Quote by wall sqft or room sqft?

Wall. A 12 × 12 room is 144 sq ft of floor and 384 sq ft of wall at 8 ft. At 10 ft the walls hit 480 and the floor stays 144. Floor pricing works until the house has tall ceilings. More in how much to charge to paint a room.

3. Sq ft per hour, cut & roll

hours = area × coats ÷ rate per coat

Surface by surface. Walls and ceilings in sq ft/hr, trim in linear ft/hr, doors and windows in hours each. Time an average painter at a comfortable pace, more than once. Your best day isn't your rate (PCA blog, written by PaintScout).

Their worked example: 425 sq ft of walls, two coats, 5 hours, so 85 sq ft/hr for both coats. Find yours with the production rates calculator.

4. Prep, setup and cleanup get their own hours

Rates measure paint going on. Masking, patching, caulk, furniture, drop cloths, the drive and wash-up don't. Give them hours per room and per day. Benjamin Moore suggests 30% more time on new construction for priming and caulking, and its contractors name prep time as one of the two most common misses.

5. “Two days and five gallons”: turn it into money

• Labor
  Hours × what you pay yourself, loaded with payroll taxes, workers' comp and insurance. For scale: the 2025 median wage for construction and maintenance painters was $23.75/hr (O*NET, from BLS data). That's a wage, not a price.
• Overhead
  Truck, insurance, phone, software, ads and estimating time over your billable hours. Example: $30,000 a year over 2,500 billed hours is $12 an hour. Your own salary belongs here too.
• Materials
  Gallons = area × coats ÷ data-sheet coverage. SuperPaint Interior Latex lists 350–400 sq ft per gallon at 4 mils wet. Add tape, plastic, caulk and tax.

6. Price by margin, not markup

price = (labor + overhead + materials) ÷ (1 − margin)

A 30% margin needs a 42.9% markup (1 ÷ 0.7). A 30% markup gets you 23%. Margin vs markup, with a converter. Set a minimum job price so a one-wall job still pays for the drive. Run it in the room price calculator.

7. What to charge per foot: check the market

Divide your price by floor sq ft and by wall sq ft, then compare:

• Angi: $2–$6 per floor sq ft, $290–$870 for a 12 × 12 room.
• Thumbtack, citing Xactware: $807–$1,350 per 1,000 sq ft of walls and ceilings, two coats, one color.
• Benjamin Moore: some contractors use a flat $1.50 or $2.00 per sq ft.

Way off? Check your rates and overhead before you touch the margin. The homeowner's view: cost per square foot to paint a room.

8. Write a scope nobody can misread

• Surfaces, coats, colors, sheen.
• Prep included, and what isn't.
• Who moves furniture.
• Price, valid-until date, deposit and payment terms, signature.

Send it soon after the walkthrough. The free estimate template has a quote block that prints on one page. Every line, with a checklist: what to put in a painting quote.

9. Close the loop

After each job, log estimated vs actual hours by surface. Two or three jobs show whether your rates flatter you. Win nearly every bid? You're probably cheap.

Sources

1. Benjamin Moore: How to Estimate a Paint Job the Right Way (fetched 2026-10-17)
2. PCA blog, by PaintScout: Top Painting Companies Don't Guess on Pricing (fetched 2026-10-17)
3. O*NET 47-2141.00: Painters, Construction and Maintenance, wages from BLS 2025 data (fetched 2026-10-17)
4. Sherwin-Williams SuperPaint Interior Latex product data sheet (fetched 2026-10-17)
5. Angi: How Much Does It Cost to Paint a Room? (updated Jul 8, 2026; fetched 2026-10-17)
6. Thumbtack: Interior House Painting Cost, with Xactware data (updated Mar 31, 2026; fetched 2026-10-17)