How much does interior painting cost?

What moves a room up the range

Ceiling height, because a room that needs staging or a taller ladder is slower everywhere, not just at the top.

Preparation. A wall with nail pops, cracked seams and old patches has to be made right before paint, and that work is drywall work rather than painting.

The colour change. Going dark over light, or light over dark, or covering a strong colour, needs more coats than refreshing a wall in a similar tone.

Cut-in length. A room with a lot of trim, windows, doors and built-ins has far more slow careful work in it than a plain box of the same square footage.

Why the cheapest quote is usually the one with no prep in it

Preparation is most of the labour on an interior repaint, so it is the easiest thing to leave out of a number without saying so.

A quote that gives you a price per room and nothing about patching, caulking, sanding or priming is not a cheaper way to do the same job. It is a different job, and the difference shows up when the paint fails early or when the wall telegraphs every old repair.

What is priced separately

Trim, doors and ceilings are their own line items, because they take different products and different amounts of time. Trim in particular is slow, since it is all cut-in work and it usually takes a harder sheen than the walls.

Wallpaper removal, significant drywall repair, and anything involving lead-safe practice in an older property are separate as well, and they should be named rather than absorbed.

Getting a number you can hold

Ask for the quote broken out by surface, with the product and sheen named per surface and the number of coats stated. Ask what preparation is included and what happens if more is found once the furniture moves.

We give room-by-room estimates with those lines in them. If drywall repair is needed first, that shows as its own line rather than appearing later.