Paint House Cost Calculator

Square footage sets the floor, not the price. The gap between a $5,000 and $9,000 quote on identical paintable surfaces comes down to labor hours, and labor hours come down to what the painter has to fight.

Smooth vinyl is the baseline. Wood lap siding, shingle, or shake adds 30–50% labor because every course has an edge that needs a brush. Stucco drinks paint — expect 20–30% more material than the can suggests.

Masonry usually pushes you into elastomeric, a different product category entirely — $4–$8/sq ft installed, roughly double a standard acrylic job.

Height is the second multiplier. Single story is ladder work; two stories add 20–30%; three stories require scaffold at $300–$800 rental plus 50–70% more crew time.

Trim complexity is the third lever: fascia, soffits, window casings, shutters, and porch columns are all cut-in work, and a Victorian with layered trim runs 20–40% over a plain colonial of the same footprint.

Geography stacks on top of all of it. BLS OES data for painters (SOC 47-2141) puts the national median wage at $23.75/hr as of May 2024 — about $49,400 a year.

The spread is wide: 10th percentile at roughly $28,490 and the 90th above $62,770 — a 2.2× range from one end of the trade to the other.

That 2.2× wage spread lands almost directly on the installed price: roughly $1.50–$2.50/sq ft in Texas and the Midwest, $2.5–$5 in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast, and $5.00–$8.00 in coastal California or New York City.

Converted to total installed labor: BLS OES 47-2141 supports $1.50–$3.00/sq ft in labor on exterior work nationally. Material adds $0.3–$0.65/sq ft depending on grade.

The $1.50–$3.00 range is the number to check every line item against — if a contractor's labor component comes in above $3.50, ask what's driving it.

Power washing is the cheapest insurance on the entire job. It runs about $200 as a line item, and skipping it is the most common reason a fresh exterior paint job fails within one or two seasons. Paint bonds to a surface, not to the chalk, pollen, and mildew film sitting on it.

When that bond fails you are not touching up — you are repainting, which is $3,000–$10,000 all over again.

Caulking is the second non-negotiable. Unsealed gaps at trim joints, window casings, and siding butt-ends let water behind the envelope. Rot remediation on one wall section runs $500–$5,000+ once sheathing is involved, and no amount of good paint prevents it.

Scraping is the third: painting over peeling material without taking it to bare wood guarantees the new coat peels with the old one underneath it, usually inside six months.

Weather is prep too. Below 50°F or above 90°F, the film does not form properly — the coating dries before it coalesces, and the fix is stripping and redoing.

A contractor who wants to paint your house in a January cold snap or an August heat dome is buying himself a callback and charging you for it twice.

Material is the minority of the bill but it sets the repaint interval. Consumer-shelf paint runs $30–$40 a gallon, contractor mid-tier $48–$58, and premium exterior lines $65–$75.

A 2,000 sq ft house is roughly 3,600 sq ft of paintable surface — about 25 gallons for two coats at 250–350 sq ft per gallon on siding — so that entire grade spread is $400–$700 in materials.

Less than one extra day of crew time, and it buys three to five extra years of service life.

Coating prices have not held still. The BLS producer price index for paint and coatings manufacturing sits near 196 on its most recent monthly reading against a December 2012 base of 100.

Wholesale coating costs have run roughly 96% above the 2012 baseline — which is why material now lands at $0.3–$0.65/sq ft rather than the sub-$0.30 it once did.

Spread over the repaint cycle, premium costs less per year of service than builder grade does — the $700 you save on paint buys a repaint three to five years early.

Gulf Coast and Pacific Northwest humidity puts you on a 6–8 year cycle regardless of grade, with an annual walk-around to catch failures early.

Repaint cycles by grade in a moderate climate: premium acrylic 10–12 years, mid-tier 7–9, builder-grade 5–7. Subtract two to three years in the sun belt.

"We have leftover paint from another job." Refuse it. That paint is either expired, mis-tinted, or degraded from a season in a truck bed. You are being sold disposal as a discount.

A price handed to you without a walkthrough. Nobody can price surface condition from the curb. A quote written on the spot is a placeholder that becomes a change order once the scraper comes out.

A deposit above 40%. Industry norm is 10–30% to cover material. Anything larger transfers your entire risk to a contractor you have not worked with.

A scope that just says "two coats." Two coats of what, on what? Get it in writing whether trim, soffits, fascia, garage doors, and the front door are included, and whether primer is being counted as coat one. If primer counts as a coat, you are getting one coat of finish paint at a two-coat price.

Ask for the certificate of insurance before work starts, not after. If an uninsured worker falls off a ladder on your property, your homeowner's policy is what pays, and a serious fall is a six-figure medical claim.

The reason three bids come back $4,000 apart is usually that all three are pricing different jobs. Hand every painter the same written scope and the numbers collapse into a real range you can judge. Specify:

• Paint: brand, product line, sheen, and color code — e.g. "Sherwin-Williams Duration Exterior Satin, Extra White SW 7006." Not "premium paint."
• Coats: two coats of topcoat after primer. Primer is not coat one.
• Prep: power wash, scraping, and caulking each named as included or excluded.
• Surfaces: body, trim, soffits, fascia, garage doors, front door — list every one you expect painted.
• Touch-up: leftover sealed cans with the color formula label stay with you.
• Payment: 10–30% deposit, balance on completion of a joint walkthrough.

On a $5,000+ job, getting three bids against one written spec typically saves 20–40%. Timing helps too: November through February pricing runs 5–15% below peak, and late April–May or mid-September–October gives you good weather with crews still hungry to fill the schedule.

Labor is 70–80% of the bill, so DIY genuinely removes most of the cost. Materials alone for a 1,500 sq ft exterior run $600–$1,500 including paint, primer, caulk, brushes, rollers, drop cloths, and a sprayer rental.

Against a $4,000–$5,000 contractor quote, that is real money — roughly $3,000–$4,000 saved, for something like 60–100 hours of your own weekends.

The break-even is not the painting. It's the prep. Every DIY exterior job that fails in two or three years failed because the homeowner power-washed lightly, scraped the obvious flakes, and skipped priming bare wood.

Do that and you spend $1,000 in materials to buy a repaint on a five-year-early schedule — a net loss against just hiring it out once and getting ten years.

DIY makes sense when: the house is single story, the siding is intact with no widespread peeling, the trim is simple, and you'll actually do the full prep sequence (wash, scrape to bare, spot-prime, caulk every gap, then two topcoats).

Hire it out when: the house is two or more stories. Ladder work at that height is how people end up in emergency rooms, and scaffold rental erases the savings. Also hire out complex trim, failing surfaces, or tight weather deadlines.

Anything over roughly 2,500 sq ft of paintable surface on a two-story is contractor territory.

Walk every elevation in daylight before signing off. Look for holidays (missed spots), drips at window casings, and whether trim received the specified coats.

Keep the sealed leftover cans with the color formula label — touch-up in year 3–4 costs $200 versus a full repaint.

Mark your calendar for an annual walk-around. Catching a lifting seam at the trim joint in year 8 is a $150 caulk-and-touch-up, not a $6,000 repaint. Southern and western exposures fail first.

Data sources: labor ranges derived from BLS OES 47-2141 (May 2024). Material pricing from BLS PPI PCU325510325510 (Paint and Coatings Manufacturing). Project ranges are editorial estimates; reviewed annually.