Q&A for How to Calculate Price Per Square Foot for House Painting

There's a great amount of variables that will influence how much paint you're going to use, the number one being paint quality. For example, with better paint, you’ll need less coats. The second thing is the color. If you’re going from a dark brown to a white, you’ll need more paint than if were going from a tan to a little darker tan.

It all depends on a lot of factors. Higher-end paints are usually made of different minerals, including titanium, while cheaper paints are mostly made out of clay. For exterior paints, you could also look for the time rating. Some offer lifetime coating, while others offer 25-year coating, or 10-year coats. The higher the year, the better the paint.

As a general rule, 1 gallon of paint will cover 400 square feet. Calculate the total area of all the surfaces you need to cover, then divide that by 400 to determine how many gallons of paint you'll need. For example, 6.25 gallons of paint should cover 2,500 square feet of wall/ceiling/trim.

Calculate the perimeter of the room, minus the width of any doors, and multiply the result by the height of the molding in feet. Divide the resulting number by 100 to find out how many quarts of paint you need. For example, in a 16 x 12 foot room with one door, you'd bee looking at about 23.19 square feet of molding, which would be covered by about a quarter of a quart of paint. The cost will vary depending on the price per quart of the paint you choose.

It's hard to answer that definitively. Calculate the cost of materials and then add plus an hourly fee (at least minimum wage for your area).

Between $2.5-4 sq/ft, depending on which items are being painted. Things like trim, doors, crown molding and ceilings are more work and time intensive than flat walls.

It depends on what you are painting. Ceilings, walls and trim should cost from $2.50 per floor square foot to $4.00 per square, foot all depending on crown molding, chair rails etc, or you can figure how much to charge per piece of trim and measure all walls and ceilings and charge from $.75 to $1.00 per wall and ceiling square foot.

10' × 4 (walls) = 40. 40 × 8' (height of walls) = 320 square feet. 1 gallon should cover.

Measure the perimeter of the wall. Deduct the window and door area. What you have left will be the amount to be painted. Take the square footage of the wall areas x the price per sq ft.

That depends on a few factors, including the cost of paint, how many layers you want to apply, and whether or not you're paying someone else to do it.

There should be a minimum charge for any job you do. For a typical size bedroom (130-150 sq ft), my minimum charge is $250.00.