Guides / Estimating
Painting production rates
A production rate is square feet covered per painter per hour, for one specific task. It is the number that converts a measurement into hours, and hours into money. Everything downstream of it inherits its error, which is why a company with good rates and rough pricing beats a company with precise pricing and guessed rates.
Why published rates do not work
You can find tables of production rates in estimating books and they are not useless — but they describe an average crew, at an average prep standard, in average conditions. Your rates differ because your prep standard differs, your crew differs, and the houses in your market differ.
The gap is not small. Two crews painting the same wall to different prep standards can differ by a factor of two, and both can be doing good work for their respective customers. A published rate cannot tell you which one you are.
Measure by task, never by job
This is the whole trick, and it is where most attempts fail. If you record "job took 60 hours" you have learned almost nothing transferable, because the next job has a different mix of wall, trim and prep.
Record hours against tasks: wall rolling, cutting in, trim, doors, ceilings, prep, masking. Then divide each by the quantity of that task. Now you have numbers that compose — you can price any mix.
- Open wall rolling — the fastest number you will have
- Cutting in and detail — often a third of the rolling rate or less
- Trim, by linear foot
- Doors, per unit, and say whether that includes the jamb and casing
- Ceilings, separately — height and texture change them
- Prep: washing, scraping, sanding, filling, caulking
- Masking and setup, which is real labor and usually unpriced
Four weeks is enough to start
Five jobs with honest task-level hours gives you working rates. Twenty gives you confidence intervals. You do not need a year of data before the exercise pays — the first five will usually reveal one line item that is badly wrong, and fixing it affects every future quote.
The hard part is not the math, it is getting hours recorded against tasks while the work is happening. Reconstructing them on Friday from memory produces numbers that confirm whatever you already believed, which is worse than having none.
Do not blend them back together
Having measured separate rates, the temptation is to average them into one convenient square-foot number. That throws away everything you just learned.
A blended rate systematically overprices simple, open jobs — which you then lose to someone quoting them correctly — and underprices detailed, trim-heavy jobs, which you then win and lose money on. Over time this selects your business toward exactly the work you are worst at pricing.
Re-measure when something changes
New crew member, new sprayer, a change in prep standard, a shift from repaints to new construction: each invalidates rates built before it. A rate is a measurement with a date on it, not a constant.
Tracking actual against quoted on every job makes this automatic — the rate that has drifted shows up as a pattern of overruns on one task, rather than as a vague sense that jobs are tighter than they used to be.
Questions
What is a good production rate for painting walls?
There is no single answer that will price your work, because it depends on your prep standard, your crew and your surfaces. The rate that matters is the one you measure — published figures describe an average crew that may be nothing like yours.
How long does it take to measure my production rates?
Five jobs with hours recorded by task rather than by job is enough to start pricing from. Twenty gives you real confidence.
Can I use one blended rate instead of separate ones?
You can, but it will overprice simple jobs and underprice trim-heavy ones — which over time selects your business toward the work you price worst.
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.