How to Price Exterior House Painting: Square Feet to Quote

Here is how to price exterior house painting so the number holds up on the job: measure the walls and subtract the openings, turn the square feet into gallons with the coverage the paint maker publishes, price prep and ladder time as their own lines, check the year the house was built for the lead rule, and divide the total by the square feet.

How to measure a house for exterior painting

Walk the house with a measuring wheel, or trace the footprint on satellite imagery for the perimeter, read the wall height from grade to the eave at a corner, then take out the openings you will not paint and add the gables back in.

1. 1Step 1: Perimeter: add the length of every wall.
2. 2Step 2: Gross wall area: perimeter times the height from grade to the eave; a split level gets each section at its own height.
3. 3Step 3: Openings: width times height for every door and window you will not paint; subtract the total.
4. 4Step 4: Gables: each triangle is half its width times its rise; add them.
5. 5Step 5: Trim, doors and shutters: count them; they get their own lines, not a share of the wall area.

Note the siding type too: deep lap boards and shingles take more paint than the flat number suggests, and that decides which end of the coverage range you use.

Prep is its own line: scrape, sand, prime, caulk

Prep is where a painting bid goes wrong, so price it apart from the coating. Mark the peeling, chalky and bare areas, the open caulk joints and the soft fascia, write down what you will do to each, then time it from past jobs: hours to wash and dry, hours to scrape and sand, the primer on bare wood, the tubes of caulk.

Primer covers more than finish paint. One water based primer's listing says a gallon covers about 450 sq ft and dries in an hour, so spot priming the bare patches rarely takes more than a gallon or two; a house that needs a full prime coat is a third coat and should be priced like one.

Stories, ladders and lifts: the time that is not painting

A second story adds setup time for every ladder move and often a lift rental. Under the US OSHA construction standard, 29 CFR 1926.1053, a portable ladder's side rails extend at least 3 feet above the upper landing and a non self supporting ladder stands with its foot about one quarter of the working length out from the wall. The Bureau of Labor Statistics lists falls from ladders as a common hazard for painters. Price an hour count for moving and footing ladders, or a day rate for a lift, as its own line.

Exterior paint coverage per gallon, and the gallons on the quote

Take the coverage from the maker's own page. Benjamin Moore's product page for Regal Select Exterior states 275 to 375 sq ft per gallon, 1 or 2 recommended coats, a 1 hour dry time and recoat in 4 hours. A retailer's listing for Valspar Professional exterior says approximately 400 sq ft per gallon. Sherwin-Williams says Duration takes one coat for repaints and two coats for new work.

The arithmetic: net wall area times coats, divided by the coverage figure, rounded up to whole gallons. Use the low end of the range for rough or porous siding and the high end for smooth, previously painted boards. A color change over a dark wall is a two coat job whatever the can says about repaints.

Exterior painting labor cost from the BLS wage and your own pace

Labor is the biggest line, and the only published floor for it is the federal wage data. The Bureau of Labor Statistics' Occupational Outlook Handbook puts the median pay for painters at $23.75 an hour, or $49,400 a year, in May 2025, with the lowest 10 percent under $37,440 and the highest 10 percent above $78,810. That is the wage, not your rate: add payroll taxes, insurance, the truck and the unbilled time, and the loaded hourly figure is what goes into the quote.

Hours come from your own pace. Time three recent houses, split the hours into wash, prep, prime, coats and trim, and divide each by the square feet or the count it covered. Those rates times this house's numbers are the labor estimate.

Lead paint rules for painters: homes built before 1978

Check the year the house was built. The EPA's Renovation, Repair and Painting Program page says the federal government banned lead-based paint for homes in 1978 and that about three quarters of US homes built before then still contain some of it. Anyone paid to do work that disturbs paint in those homes must be certified in lead-safe work practices, which the page says includes all firms, even sole proprietorships.

The threshold is small. The EPA's page for contractors exempts only minor repair and maintenance that disturbs 20 square feet or less on the exterior of a home; scraping a wall of peeling siding is far past that. The definition in 40 CFR 745.83 adds that jobs in the same room within the same 30 days count as one job, and a removed painted component counts by its entire surface area.

• Certification: the firm is certified by the EPA or its state and a certified renovator leads the job; the EPA's program rules page says the requirements became fully effective April 22, 2010.
• Renewal: online training certifies a renovator for three years, hands-on training for five.
• Testing: a certified renovator may use an EPA recognized test kit to show a component is free of lead-based paint; housing built in 1978 or later is not covered.

A pre-1978 house with peeling paint gets a lead line that covers containment, test kits, cleanup and the hours the work practices add, and the quote says the work is done under the EPA rule by a certified firm.

Good to know: This is general information, not legal advice. Read the current EPA rule and your state's program before relying on it, and ask your state lead program or a lawyer when a job is close to the line.

A quote with the walls per square foot, the windows and doors by the count and the prep by the hour.

Exterior painting cost per square foot: the answer on the quote

The per square foot rate is the output of the example, not the input. Divide each house's total by its net wall area and after ten houses you have a band, one story ranches at the bottom and three story houses with 40 windows at the top. Quote the next house from the band, then check it against the gallons and hours. Show the arithmetic on the quote: a customer who sees 2,382 sq ft and two coats understands the number, and the crew has the takeoff in hand.

Weather windows: 35 degrees, dew and the recoat time

The three products above publish the same floor: Benjamin Moore's page gives an application temperature range of 35 to 100°F, the Valspar listing says the paint can be applied in temperatures as low as 35°F, and Sherwin-Williams says Duration is formulated for low temperature application down to 35°F.

Sherwin-Williams' late-season painting article names the common mistake: painting when daytime temperatures rise above 50°F and nighttime temperatures drop below 35°F, because the paint can stop coalescing when the temperature falls, and dew that forms as soon as the sun sets seeps into uncured paint, causing staining and adhesion problems.

With a 4 hour recoat, the second coat goes on the same day only when the first is finished by early afternoon, so at the ends of the season price the days, not the coats, and put a weather clause on the quote.

Writing the quote so the customer approves it

In MakeHay, quote lines carry their own units, so the walls go on per square foot, the trim per linear foot, each door and window per item and the prep as a flat line (create and send a quote). A satellite measurement of the footprint gives the perimeter before the site visit. The customer approves and signs online, and a deposit on the quote covers the paint order before the crew arrives.

Keep the quote specific: net square feet, coats, the product by name, the window and door count, the prep you will and will not do, the weather clause and the lead line. Writing a service quote customers approve covers the wording; how much deposit to ask for covers the state caps.