Interior Painting Cost Calculator

How to use the painting cost calculator

1. Pick one room, a whole home, the outside or kitchen cabinets. For a room, type its size, wall height, doors and windows; for a home, its floor area; for the outside, the house’s length and width, its stories, siding, gables, garage doors, doors and windows; for kitchen cabinets, the length of the lower and the upper cabinets, and the doors and drawers.
2. Choose what gets painted (walls, or walls and ceiling), whether you need primer, and the paint you would buy.
3. Read both prices: a painter’s range with the typical middle, and the paint for doing it yourself, drawn side by side.

How painting is priced

• A painter: $2–$6 per square foot of floor. Angi’s 2026 data puts interior painting at $2,000–$6,000 for every 1,000 sq ft of home, as NerdWallet reported in February 2026; the national average job was $2,021. The calculator gives the range and its middle.
• Yourself: the paint. Interior paint runs $15–$60+ a gallon and primer $20–$60 (the same report). How much you need is the paint calculator‘s answer: two coats, a gallon for every 350 sq ft of wall.
• What moves a quote: the walls’ condition and the patching they need, a dark color going light (more coats), tall ceilings, trim and doors, and where you live. Ask two or three painters, and ask whether the ceiling and trim are in the price.

Cost to paint a room, by size

Walls only, 8′ high, one door and two windows; the paint at $40 a gallon.

Cost to paint the inside of a home

Cost to paint the outside of a house

Painters price the outside by the area they paint: the walls and gables, without the windows, doors and garage doors. This Old House’s 2026 guide (its figures from Homewyse and The Home Depot) puts it at $2.20–$4.40 a square foot, and the siding moves it: wood $1.70–$3.60, aluminum $2.10–$4.20, stucco $2.50–$4.80, brick $2.60–$5.00 and vinyl $2.80–$5.20. Height moves it too. “Most homes with more than one story are more expensive to paint than the same surface area on a single-story home”: the guide’s 2,000 sq ft of wall costs $4,400–$8,800 on one story, $6,900–$12,700 on two and $8,300–$15,200 on three. The calculator measures your walls the way the paint calculator does, then applies both.

A 50′ × 30′ house with two gables, a garage door, two doors and twelve windows, the walls only:

• The trim and doors come on top: $4.25–$8.25 a foot of trim and $165–$330 a door, by the same guide. That house has about 433 ft of trim (the fascia, the corner boards and the casing round each window and door), so another $2,171–$4,233.
• Fiber cement has no rate of its own in the guide; the calculator uses its overall $2.20–$4.40. Rough stucco and wood shakes take the stucco and wood rates, and much more paint.
• A second opinion. NerdWallet’s Angi figures (February 2026) are lower: most exterior jobs $1,800–$4,500, $3,177 on average, or $1.50–$4 a square foot of the home. The calculator works that out for your house too, so you can see how far quotes can spread.
• Before 1978? “Many homes built before 1978 contain some kind of lead-based paint.” Have it tested before anyone scrapes or sands, and ask for a painter certified to work with it.

Cost to paint kitchen cabinets

Painters price cabinets by the foot or by the door. Angi’s September 2026 guide: “Most painters charge $30 to $60 per linear foot or $100 to $250 per door.” The calculator adds the lower and the upper cabinets’ lengths and prices them by the foot, and puts the doors beside it, because the two ways rarely agree. The paint below is acrylic enamel at $40 a gallon.

• HomeGuide sits in between: $70–$125 a door and $30–$110 a drawer in its February 2025 guide, $1,640–$3,380 for the L-shaped kitchen; sprayed, $40–$100 a foot. Angi’s national average job, from 13,847 projects, is $425–$1,466.
• Yourself, the paint is the small part. Each foot of cabinets is about 30″ of doors, drawer fronts and frames, painted on both sides of the doors: two coats of enamel (“350-400 sq. ft. per gallon” on Sherwin-Williams’ trim enamel data sheet; the calculator takes 350) and a coat of bonding primer (450 sq ft a gallon on its Extreme Bond sheet, which lists kitchen cabinets), plus $40–$78 of brushes, a roller kit, filler, a scraper, tape, sandpaper and a drop cloth. The cost is time: “Painting 200 square feet of cabinets yourself takes 30 to 60 hours, including prepping and priming the surface and applying two coats of paint” (HomeGuide).
• The prep decides how long it lasts. Degrease, scuff-sand and prime before the enamel. Angi: “Skipping or rushing prep is one of the most common reasons cabinet paint jobs fail prematurely.”
• Paint, reface or replace? HomeGuide puts painting at $2,000–$6,500, refacing at $5,000–$13,000 and new cabinets at $4,500–$15,000. The cabinet refacing cost calculator prices refacing and new cabinets for your own kitchen, and the kitchen remodel cost calculator the rest of the kitchen.

Worked examples

A 12′ × 12′ bedroom, walls only. A painter: $288–$864, about $576. Yourself: 334 sq ft of wall takes 2 gallons; at $40 that is $80.

A 10′ × 12′ room, walls and ceiling, primed, premium paint. A painter: about $480. Yourself: 2 gallons for the walls, 1 for the ceiling and 2 of primer at $60 = $300. The ceiling, primer and premium paint narrow the gap to $180.

A 2,000 sq ft home. $4,000–$12,000 with a painter, about $8,000. For the paint, run each room through the paint calculator: a floor area does not say how much wall a home has.

The outside of a 50′ × 30′ one-story house in vinyl siding. 1,542 sq ft of wall: a painter $4,318–$8,018, about $6,168, and $2,171–$4,233 more for the trim and doors. Yourself: 13 gallons for the walls, 2 gallons and a quart of trim and a quart for the front door, at $50 a gallon = $775.

A 40′ × 25′ two-story house in fiber cement, primed, premium paint. 2,220 sq ft of wall: a painter $7,660–$14,099, about $10,879. Yourself: 18 gallons for the walls, 3 of trim and a quart for the door at $85, and 11 gallons of primer at $60 = $2,466.

An L-shaped kitchen: 20 ft of lower cabinets, 14 ft of uppers, 20 doors and 8 drawers. A painter by the foot: $1,020–$2,040, about $1,530; by the door, $2,000–$5,000. Yourself: 170 sq ft of fronts takes 1 gallon of enamel and 1 of primer at $40 a gallon, and about $59 of supplies = $139, over 26–51 hours.

A 60′ × 30′ ranch in rough stucco. 1,775 sq ft of wall: a painter $4,438–$8,520, about $6,479. Yourself: rough stucco drinks paint, 45 gallons for the walls alone, so about $2,363.

Common mistakes

• Comparing quotes that cover different work. One includes the ceiling, trim and patching; another is walls only. Line them up before you pick the cheaper.
• Pricing paint without primer. New drywall and a dark wall going light both need it, and it can cost as much as the paint.
• Pricing the outside by the floor. Two houses with the same floor area can have very different walls: the same floor on two stories has more wall than a ranch, and every story up costs more a foot to reach.
• Forgetting the tools. Rollers, brushes, tape, drop cloths and a tray come on top of the paint the first time you paint.
• Judging paint by the price on the can. A paint that needs a third coat to cover means half as much paint again and another day of work.

Read next

• Can you use the same paint for walls and ceilings?
• Does it matter which direction you paint a ceiling?
• A geometric accent wall, step by step
• Accent walls in the living room
• Kitchen cabinet color ideas

Painting cost questions

How much does it cost to paint a room?

With a painter, $2–$6 per square foot of floor in 2026: $288–$864 for a 12′ × 12′ room, about $576. Doing it yourself, the paint for the same walls is about $80.

How much do painters charge per square foot?

$2–$6 per square foot of the home’s floor area for interior work (Angi’s 2026 data, as NerdWallet reported it in February 2026).

How much does it cost to paint the interior of a 2,000 sq ft house?

$4,000–$12,000 with a painter, about $8,000. For comparison, the national average interior painting job in the same data was $2,021.

How much does it cost to paint kitchen cabinets?

$30–$60 a foot of cabinets or $100–$250 a door with a painter (Angi, 2026): $1,020–$2,040 for 20 ft of lower and 14 ft of upper cabinets, about $1,530. Yourself, about $139 of enamel, primer and supplies.

Is it cheaper to paint a room yourself?

In money, yes: about $80 of paint for a 12′ × 12′ room against about $576 for a painter. What you pay instead is a weekend, plus rollers, brushes and tape if you have none.

How much does it cost to paint a bedroom?

For a 10′ × 12′ bedroom, $240–$720 with a painter, about $480; about $80 of paint to do the walls yourself.

How much does it cost to paint the outside of a house?

$2.20–$4.40 a square foot of wall in 2026 (This Old House), more on two or three stories: about $6,168 for a 50′ × 30′ one-story house in vinyl siding, $17,736 on two stories, with the trim and doors on top.

Does a painter’s price include the ceiling and trim?

Not always: some quotes cover walls only and price the ceiling, trim and doors on top. Ask before you compare two quotes.