Last updated October 31, 2026

How much to charge for painting work in 2026

The hourly rate a one-truck painter needs to charge, built from what painters actually earn, a price list for 12 common jobs with the arithmetic shown, what moves the number, and the mistakes that cost the most.

Short answer: a one-truck painting business that pays its owner what the median painter earns, carries normal overhead, and keeps a 20 percent margin needs about $65 an hour. To pay yourself like the top quarter of painters, charge about $75. Top ten percent, $85. Below $60 you are subsidizing the customer with your own wages. Every number on this page is built from published wage data and a model you can see, and the price list further down uses the $75 rate.

Painting has the lowest barrier to entry of any trade on this site and the lowest median wage, and both facts push rates down. The painter who competes on price against a guy with a brush and a Craigslist ad loses, every time. The painter who prices on prep, product and a clean written scope, and who shows up when they said, is in a different market and the wage data says it is a real one: the top ten percent of painters earn $38 an hour as employees, and a contractor charging for that level of work has to bill well above it.

The trade's pricing unit is the square foot of surface for interiors and exteriors, with doors, trim and ceilings priced by the piece or the linear foot. The hours are in the prep, not the paint: a room that needs patching, caulking, sanding and two coats is three times the room that needs one coat over sound walls, and the bid has to say which one it is.

What painters earn, and what that means for your rate

The Bureau of Labor Statistics counted 225,190 people working as painters, construction and maintenance in its May 2025 survey and published what they are paid. That is the wage an employer pays an employee, which is the floor for what an owner-operator should pay themselves. A rate is built on top of it: the hidden cost of an hour of labor, the overhead of running a truck, the hours you cannot bill, and a margin. The model here uses a 22% labor load for payroll taxes, workers comp and the liability share, $26,000 a year of overhead for the truck, insurance, phone, software, tools and licenses, 1,100 billable hours a year, and a 20% margin. Change any input and the rate moves; the hourly rate calculator runs it with your numbers.

If you pay yourself like the	BLS wage	Loaded	Overhead per hour	Rate to charge
Bottom quarter	$21	$26	$24	$60
Median	$24	$29	$24	$65
Top quarter	$30	$36	$24	$75
Top ten percent	$38	$46	$24	$85

Rate = (wage × 1.22 + $26,000 ÷ 1,100) ÷ (1 − 0.2), rounded to $5. Wages: BLS OEWS May 2025, painters, construction and maintenance, national.

Painting overhead is modest, which is why the model rate is lower than the licensed trades: a van, ladders, a sprayer, drops and insurance, around $26,000. The painter who adds a second person and a sprayer setup for exteriors should rebuild the rate with the real overhead. Paint itself is a material line with markup, and premium paint costs $60 to $90 a gallon at contractor pricing in 2026.

A painting price list, with the math

Flat prices for the jobs painters quote most, built the same way every time: hours at the $75 rate, plus materials at cost with a 30 percent markup, rounded to $5. The hours and material costs are example inputs for a typical job in a typical market, stated so you can swap in your own. A job with a crew of two doubles the labor line. Interior prices assume standard 8-foot ceilings, walls in sound condition, furniture moved to the center and covered by you, and two coats of a mid-grade paint. Heavy patching, wallpaper removal and dark-to-light color changes add hours.

Job	Labor	Materials at cost	Price	What it assumes
Paint a 12x12 bedroom, walls only, two coats	5 h	$70	$465	Sound walls, minor patching, two gallons
Paint a 12x12 bedroom, walls, ceiling and trim	9 h	$120	$830	Two coats walls and ceiling, trim brushed
Paint a ceiling, per 100 sq ft	0.75 h	$10	$70	Flat white, one coat over sound surface
Paint interior walls, per 100 sq ft of wall	0.6 h	$8	$55	Two coats, rolled
Paint an interior door, both sides	1.25 h	$12	$110	Brushed or sprayed off the hinges
Paint baseboard and casing, per linear foot	0.05 h	$0	$5	Caulk, one coat semi-gloss
Paint kitchen cabinets, 25 doors and drawers	28 h	$320	$2,515	Degrease, sand, prime, two sprayed coats; doors off-site
Paint an exterior, per 100 sq ft of siding	1 h	$14	$95	Wash, scrape, spot prime, two coats sprayed and back-rolled
Paint exterior trim, per linear foot	0.08 h	$1	$5	Scrape, prime bare wood, two coats
Stain and seal a deck, per 100 sq ft	1.5 h	$25	$145	Wash, light sand, one coat semi-transparent
Wallpaper removal, per 100 sq ft	1.5 h	$5	$120	Strippable or steamed; wall repair extra
Drywall patch, up to 1 sq ft, each	1 h	$6	$85	Patched, taped, textured to match, primed

Price = hours × $75 + materials × 1.3. Trip or diagnostic fees, permits and disposal are extra lines.

This is a sample. The free price book builder prices the full painting book, 40 jobs, with your own wage, overhead and margin, and gives you the PDF for the truck and the spreadsheet that keeps the formulas.

What moves the price

Prep. Patching, caulking, sanding, priming stains and bare wood. It is half the hours on a good job and the line the cheap bid leaves out. Write what prep you are doing.
Coats and color. Dark to light is three coats. Deep reds and blues are three coats. Say two coats of a named product and price a third if the color needs it.
Height and access. Two-story foyers, vaulted ceilings and exteriors above one story need planks or a lift. A lift rental is a line.
Occupied versus empty. An empty house sprays in a day. A furnished, lived-in house with pets and a work-from-home customer takes twice the hours and more care. Price it.
Product. The customer who wants the premium line pays for it on the materials line. Mid-grade is the default on the bid; the upgrade is an option they tick.

Hourly, flat rate, or by the unit

By the square foot for walls, ceilings and siding, with the rate built from your hours per hundred square feet. By the piece for doors and cabinets, by the linear foot for trim. Give the customer one total, but keep the per-unit arithmetic in your notes so a change, one more room, is priced in a minute.

Day rate for small punch-list painting where the list is too long to itemize, commonly a two-painter day at a flat price. Hourly almost never, because the customer cannot see the difference between a slow painter and a careful one.

A worked painting bid

A 2,000 square foot interior, walls and ceilings, trim brushed, two coats, mid-grade paint, occupied house. Walls: about 5,000 square feet of wall surface at 0.6 hours per hundred, 30 hours. Ceilings: 2,000 square feet at 0.75 per hundred, 15 hours. Trim: 600 linear feet at 0.05, 30 hours. Doors: 14 at 1.25, 17.5 hours. Patching and prep as its own line, say 10 hours. About 100 hours at the top-quarter rate from the table, which is two painters for a week. Paint: 40 gallons at $45, marked up 30 percent. Sundries $150.

That lands where most markets see a whole-interior repaint, $7,000 to $10,000, and the customer can see exactly what they are buying. The sample interior painting estimate shows the finished bid, and the paint calculator gets the gallons from the room sizes.

The pricing mistakes that cost the most

Estimating from the floor area instead of the wall area. A 12x12 room has 144 square feet of floor and about 380 of wall.
Prep that is not on the bid, so when you spend a day patching the customer thinks you are slow.
"Two coats" on a color change from navy to white. It is three, and the third is on you if the bid did not say so.
Buying paint at retail. A contractor account at the paint store is worth 25 to 40 percent on every gallon.

Writing the price into a bid that gets signed

The number is half the job. The other half is a bid the customer can say yes to from their phone: the scope in lines, one price, the deposit and payment terms, the warranty, a date it expires, and a signature. The free painting estimate template is laid out that way in PDF, Word and Excel, and How to bid painting jobs covers the scope lines that keep you out of arguments. If you want the typing done for you, BidWriter Pro turns your notes into a clean bid your customer signs on their phone, with the deposit paid by card. $29 a month, 30 days free.

Sources and method

Wages: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025, Painters, construction and maintenance, national percentile hourly wages and employment.
Rate model: labor load 1.22, overhead $26,000 a year, 1,100 billable hours, 20% margin. Hours and material costs in the price list are example inputs, not survey data. Prices are examples, not advice for your market.

Questions contractors ask

How much do painters charge per hour in 2026?

Built from BLS wages, a one-truck painter paying themselves the median wage needs about $65 an hour and $75 to earn like the top quarter of painters. Most painters quote by the square foot or the room rather than the hour.

How much should I charge to paint a room?

For a 12x12 bedroom, walls only, two coats, about five hours plus two gallons: $350 to $600 in most markets. Add the ceiling and trim and it is roughly double.

How much should I charge per square foot for interior painting?

For walls, two coats over sound surfaces, $1.50 to $3.50 per square foot of wall surface is common, built from about 0.6 hours per hundred square feet plus paint. Ceilings and heavy prep price separately.

How do I price cabinet painting?

By the door and drawer front. A 25-piece kitchen is about 28 hours of degreasing, sanding, priming and two sprayed coats plus $300 of product, landing $3,000 to $5,000 in most markets.

Should I charge for prep separately?

Show it as its own line on the bid even if you fold it into the total. It is where your hours go and it is what separates your bid from the cheap one.

Write a painting bid from your notes

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Free, no account: estimate checker, job price calculator, markup vs margin, hourly rate, and 84 sample estimates.