Price interior and exterior repaints from your own hours and gallons
Set up your painting company's costs one time. Then every room, house or exterior gets priced from your crew's hours and the paint it needs, not from a flat rate someone posted online.
- Know what an hour of your painters really costs Rent, insurance, the van, the sprayer and every wage, yours included, become one break-even rate per billable hour.
- Price the whole repaint, not just the walls Masking, patching, ceilings, walls, trim, paint, sundries and rentals each get their own line.
- Still see the price per floor square foot The quote gives the job total and what it works out to per floor foot, so you can compare with what you used to charge.
- Get paid for windows, colors and cleanup Easy-to-miss hours like taping every window and setting up each day sit on a checklist you answer before the price is final.
- Hand over a clear quote at the kitchen table A one-page customer quote listing rooms, colors, number of coats, price, deposit and your painting terms.
- Learn which kinds of jobs run long The Job Log keeps quoted hours and gallons next to the real ones for every job, won or lost.
- One-time payment, no subscription
- Instant download
- Excel and Google Sheets
How it turns crew hours and gallons into a repaint quote
There are six tabs. The company setup is done once, paint prices get updated when your store changes them, and each job gets its own quote.
- Start HereWhich cells to fill first so your rate is set before your first bid. Budget one evening for setup.
- Shop SetupYour overhead, your crew leader and painters (you included), your van and sprayer, turned into the break-even rate each billable hour has to earn.
- Price ListWall, ceiling and trim paint, primer, tape, plastic and patch at your contractor-account prices. A price you haven't re-checked in 6 months turns red.
- QuoteCrew size and hours for each stage, gallons, rentals like a scaffold for a tall foyer, and the painting don't-forget checklist. It shows the price, the profit and the price per floor square foot.
- Customer QuoteThe page your customer signs: rooms, colors, coats, price and deposit.
- Job LogAfter the last coat, the real hours and gallons go in, so you can see if the job made money.
What is a break-even rate? It is the amount one billable hour of painting has to bring in to pay every wage, yours included, plus burden and overhead, before any profit. In the sample shop it is $49.25, and anything the job earns above that per hour is profit. The true hourly rate guide walks through it, and painting profit margin, hourly rate and paint markup shows how painters turn it into a margin.
Prefilled example built-in
The file comes filled in with a made-up painting company and its $8,663 interior repaint quote, so you see a finished quote before you type in your own numbers.
The sample job is a vacant 4 bed / 4 bath house of about 2,300 sq ft: walls, ceilings, baseboards and door frames, two coats on the walls and three colors, painted by a crew of two with about 31 gallons.
| A | B | |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Part of the price | Amount |
| 2 | Paint, sundries, crew hours, van and scaffold | $5,406 |
| 3 | Easy-to-miss costs | $912 |
| 4 | Markup, cushion and profit | $2,345 |
| 5 | Price to the customer | $8,663 |
After every cost, the owner's wage included, $2,345 stays with the company. Across about 91 labour hours the job brings in about $75 an hour against the $49.25 break-even, and the price works out to about $3.77 per floor square foot. The full walk-through is on how much to charge for painting.
$912
That is what the easy-to-miss lines alone added to this one example quote. It is about 18 times what the calculator costs. Miss them once and the file has paid for itself.
- One-time payment, no subscription
- Instant download
- Excel and Google Sheets
Why a flat price per floor square foot loses money on repaints
Plenty of painters quote a house at a flat rate per floor square foot. The trouble is that you don't paint floors. Two houses with the same floor area can have very different wall height, trim, window count and number of colors, and the floor number sees none of it.
Take the sample house. At a flat $3.00 per floor foot, 2,300 sq ft is $6,900. Priced from its own hours and gallons, the same repaint comes to $8,663. The flat price is $1,763 short, which is more than half the job's profit gone before the first coat is dry.
The calculator builds the price from the stages, the hours and the gallons first. The per-foot number still shows at the end, as a check you can compare with your old habit, not as the thing that sets the price.
Window taping, extra colors and the other painting hours it catches
The Quote tab keeps flagging the job until each of these has a Yes, No or N/A:
- The estimate visit, measuring every room and taking photos, on the bids you lose as well as the ones you win.
- Setup and cleanup every day on site: drop cloths, washing brushes and rollers, packing the van.
- Taping and cutting around every window, which is why two rooms with the same wall area can take different times.
- Each color past the first: a partial gallon you won't use up, plus more cut lines.
- Paint store runs and drive time, paid hours with nothing going on a wall.
- A warranty touch-up visit. Left as No in the example on purpose, so the warning stays until you set your own number.
Exactly what you get
Checkout gives you one file straight away. It works in Microsoft Excel and in Google Sheets, costs one payment, and has no account, app or renewal.
- The six-tab painting calculator, set up for stages, gallons and paint markup.
- A sample painting company with a finished 2,300 sq ft repaint, so you can watch every tab work before you touch it.
- Painting terms you can edit, stating how many colors and coats the price covers and turning rot or extra colors into a written change order.
- A Job Log of quoted against real hours and gallons, the habit behind job costing.
How it compares
Most owners price a job one of these ways. Here is what each one gives you.
| Copying another company's price | A free estimate template | Estimating software | This calculator | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Starts from your own costs | No | No | Varies | Yes |
| Makes you answer the easy-to-miss costs | No | No | Varies | Yes |
| Shows which jobs made money | No | No | Varies | Yes |
| Works in Excel and Google Sheets | – | Yes | No | Yes |
| Cost | Free | Free | Usually a monthly fee | $49.95 once |
Who it's for: repaint contractors and small painting crews
It fits owner-operators and small painting companies of about 1 to 15 people doing residential repaints, inside or out, who now price by gut feel, a flat rate per floor foot, or a day rate they can't explain. One painter with a ladder or three crews with sprayers, it works the same, because the hours, gallons and costs in it are yours.
It is not for commercial bidders working from plans and takeoff software, new-construction painters paid a set price per house by a builder, or anyone who only wants a blank bid sheet to fill in by hand. To see your break-even rate before buying, run the free true hourly rate calculator.
Stop pricing repaints by a flat rate per floor foot. Price every room from your own hours, gallons and overhead, catch the windows and extra colors that eat a day, and see which jobs made money.
Painting Contractor Pricing Calculator
$49.95 one-time
Buy now and download- One-time payment, no subscription
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- Excel and Google Sheets