Guides / Estimating
How to price interior painting
Interior repaints look simple to price and routinely are not, for one reason: the walls are the big number on the tape measure and the small number on the clock. Most of the labor is in the parts nobody measures.
Price the trim before you price the walls
On a typical occupied repaint, trim, doors, baseboards and casings often account for more labor hours than all the wall area combined. A door is 21 square feet and can absorb an hour; 1,800 square feet of open wall can be rolled in a fraction of the time per square foot.
So count the doors and run the tape along the baseboards before you do anything else. If your estimate has a square-foot wall price and a vague allowance for trim, the trim is where it will go wrong.
Prep is a line item, not an attitude
Washing, sanding, filling nail holes, caulking gaps, spot priming stains, scraping a failing windowsill — all real hours, all invisible on a finished wall, all routinely absorbed into the wall price and then resented.
Walk the job and price prep explicitly. It also protects you: a customer who declined the prep line cannot later be surprised that the finish followed the substrate.
Occupied homes cost more and should say so
Furniture to move and move back, floors to protect, pets, children, somebody working from home in the room you need, and the simple fact that you cannot leave tools out. An occupied repaint is slower than the same work in an empty house and the estimate should reflect it rather than hoping.
This is also a conversation worth having rather than a number worth hiding. Customers understand it immediately when it is explained, and not at all when it shows up as a price they cannot account for.
Ceilings, sheens and coats
Ceilings are their own rate — height, texture and cutting around fixtures all change them, and a textured ceiling can drink paint well beyond the 350-square-foot assumption.
Sheen changes the work. A high-sheen finish shows every imperfection in the substrate, so the prep standard the finish requires is part of the price of the finish. Quoting a gloss trim finish at a flat-wall prep standard is quoting a complaint.
Two coats is the default for a color change and should be stated. One coat over the same color in good condition is sometimes legitimate; be explicit, because the customer will not assume what you assume.
What belongs on the estimate
Room by room, or at least area by area, with the surfaces named: walls, ceiling, trim, doors, baseboards. What is included, what is excluded, how many coats, what prep is in scope, and what happens if something is found behind the furniture.
A detailed estimate is not bureaucracy — it is the only version of the document that can settle a disagreement three weeks later, and it is also the version that makes you look like a company rather than a guy with a quote.
Questions
How much of an interior repaint is trim labor?
On an occupied repaint it is commonly more than the wall labor, despite being a fraction of the square footage. Count doors and run the tape along the baseboards before pricing anything else.
Should prep be a separate line on the estimate?
Yes — it is real hours and it protects you. A customer who declined a prep line cannot be surprised when the finish follows the substrate.
Do I charge more for an occupied home?
It genuinely costs more — furniture, protection, interruptions, not being able to leave tools out. Price it and explain it; customers understand it when told and not at all when it is hidden in the number.
Where this stops being arithmetic
Aerys prices a job from your own catalog and production rates, sends it with an accept link and the invoice already attached, and then compares what the job actually cost against what you quoted — by task, while the job is still running.