How much does it cost to paint a house?
Published survey ranges put interior painting at $2–3 per square foot, or roughly $1,000–$2,900 per room. Labour is about 85% of that and materials about 15%, which is why prep time moves the price far more than the paint you choose.
Why the quotes you get vary so widely
That 85/15 split is the single most useful number when you read a quote. Upgrading from a mid-range paint to a premium one changes the total by a few percent. Going from one coat over no preparation to two coats over proper preparation changes it enormously — and only one of those is still visible in two years.
A quote that comes in far below the others is usually buying that gap out of the preparation line rather than the profit line. Ask each painter how many coats, which products, and what surface preparation is included, then compare those three answers rather than the headline figure.
What moves the number most: surface condition, ceiling height and access, the number of different colours, and how much trim and detail there is. A room with tall ceilings, heavy mouldings and a dark existing colour can cost double a plain room of the same floor area.
These are third-party survey ranges collected nationally, not quotes. Local labour rates vary enormously — painters are commonly $20–50 an hour, rising toward $100 in high-cost metros — so treat a national average as a sanity check on a local quote, never as a target price.
How we sourced this
This answer is composed from our knowledge base, which holds only what a regulator, a standards body or a manufacturer supports. The sources behind it are listed below with the date we accessed each one. If a claim on this page has no source under it, that is a bug — tell us and we will fix it.
Where a figure is product-specific — coverage, dry time, recoat time, temperature limits — we point you at the manufacturer's technical data sheet rather than printing a general number as though it were a specification. That distinction is the most common error in this trade, and it is the one that costs people a repaint.
Common mistakes
- Comparing quotes on the headline figure without comparing coat count, products and preparation scope.
- Treating a national survey average as a local price. Labour rates vary more than any other input.
- Paying a large deposit before work starts.
- Accepting a quote that does not name the products or state the number of coats.
Related questions
Sources
- Aggregated third-party cost surveys. US painting cost ranges (accessed 2026-08-17).
- Sherwin-Williams. Product technical data sheets (accessed 2026-08-17).
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