How Much to Charge to Paint an Apartment: A Quoting Method

You quote an apartment the same way you quote anything else: measure the real paintable area, count the cut-in items, estimate the hours honestly, multiply by your own billing rate, add materials, recover your overhead and add your margin. What makes apartment work different is that the client is usually a repeat buyer, so the first unit you price becomes the template for every unit after it. Get the method right on unit one and the portfolio is profitable. Guess low on unit one and you have just set your own rate for two years. This guide walks the full build. If you are the owner trying to read a quote rather than write one, start with the cost to paint an apartment instead.

Step one: measure what you will actually paint

Lease square footage is floor area. You do not paint floors. Start from a real takeoff.

• Wall area: perimeter of each room multiplied by ceiling height. Do not deduct for small openings. Deduct only for large glazing runs and full-height openings, because you still have to cut around everything else.
• Ceiling area: floor plan area per room, only if ceilings are in scope.
• Trim: linear feet of skirting, architrave and any rails.
• Counts: doors (both faces plus jamb and frame), windows, closets, and any built-ins.

Then walk it. Photograph every wall. Note existing colour, existing sheen, substrate condition, stains, prior repairs, and anything you will refuse to warranty. Your measurement gives you area. Your walk gives you hours, and hours are where the money is.

Step two: count the cut-in items, because they eat the day

Rolling open wall is the fastest work you will do all day. Everything else is slow. The reason an apparently small unit blows a schedule is almost never the wall area, it is the count of edges.

Count and price these separately in your head even if they end up in one line on the quote:

1. Interior doors, per leaf plus frame plus jamb.
2. Closets and wardrobes, per opening. An interior closet is slow, awkward and badly lit.
3. Windows, per unit, including reveals and cills.
4. Wall to ceiling cut lines, per room, especially with a colour change.
5. Skirting runs interrupted by furniture, radiators or pipe boxing.
6. Switch plates, sockets, thermostats, intercom panels and smoke detectors.
7. Kitchen and bathroom edges, where you cut to tile, cabinetry and splashbacks.

A useful habit: build your estimate from two buckets. Bucket one is open area at your normal production rate. Bucket two is cut-in and detail hours, estimated per item. On a compact, heavily partitioned unit, bucket two can rival bucket one. Your own painting production rates are the input here, and if you do not have your own numbers yet, start tracking them on the next three jobs.

Step three: choose the scope before you choose a number

Never quote until the scope rung is agreed in writing. Three rungs cover almost all apartment work.

Write the exclusions as hard as the inclusions. Wallpaper removal, mould treatment, plaster repair beyond simple filling, spraying cabinetry, balcony surfaces, and any external work should be named as out of scope unless quoted separately. Vague scopes are how apartment jobs go from acceptable to unprofitable without anyone deciding to lose money.

Step four: price occupancy honestly

Occupied units are a different job and must be priced as one. Do not absorb it to look competitive, and do not hide it in the rate. Show it.

On an occupied unit you will spend real hours every single day on work that produces no finished wall: moving and stacking furniture, sheeting and unsheeting, protecting possessions you are liable for, sequencing so the resident keeps a usable bedroom and bathroom, working around their schedule, and packing everything back down before you leave. You will also lose flow time to conversations, and you may be restricted to low odour products and to shorter working hours.

Price it as an explicit line: a per-day occupancy allowance covering setup and breakdown, plus any product restriction. Explain it to the client in one sentence. Owners accept it readily when it is stated. What they do not accept is discovering it as a variation halfway through.

Step five: price access and the building

Apartment blocks impose costs that a house never does. Walk the route from the parking spot to the unit door before you price.

• Parking distance, time limits and permit requirements.
• Lift availability, booking rules, and whether it needs protective blankets fitted.
• Stair flights and turn widths for ladders, boards and drums.
• Building induction, insurance certificates or contractor approval before you can start.
• Working hour restrictions in the building rules, which can shorten your day.
• Waste disposal rules. Many blocks will not let you use the residents' bins.

Each of these is a small tax on every single day, and together they can turn an eight hour day into six hours of productive work. If you have priced a whole block for the same owner, some of this cost amortises and you can pass a genuine efficiency saving on, which is a strong argument in a portfolio negotiation.

Step six: the three pricing models, and when each wins

Under the wrapper you always calculate the same way. The wrapper is a commercial choice.

A practical approach: calculate bottom up in hours every time, then present in whichever wrapper the client wants. Your internal number never changes. Only the presentation does. The mechanics of the square foot wrapper are in how to price painting jobs per square foot, and the general bidding sequence is in how to bid a painting job.

Step seven: a worked example in hours

Here is a two bedroom vacant unit, walls only, one neutral colour, two coats, light to moderate prep, normal ceiling height, second floor with a working lift. Numbers are hours, and you multiply the total by your own billing rate.

Now adjust. Add ceilings and you are adding both area at height and a slow cut line, so expect a substantial block on top. Add trim and doors and you are adding another significant block, plus a second product and a second cure window. Make the unit occupied and you add a daily setup and breakdown allowance for every day on site. Make it a dark to light colour change and you are adding a whole extra pass. Put it on the fourth floor of a walk-up with no parking and add carrying time to every day.

Once you have your hours, finish the build the same way as any job: hours multiplied by your loaded labour cost, plus materials and sundries, plus an allowance for equipment and consumables, plus your overhead recovery, plus your margin. The detail on the labour side is in how to calculate painting labor cost, the markup mechanics are in painting contractor markup percentage, and what you should be aiming to keep is in painting business profit margin.

Do not underbid the first unit

This is the most important commercial point in apartment work, and it is worth being blunt about.

When a landlord or property manager gives you one unit, they are not buying one unit. They are running an audition. The number you produce becomes the reference price in their head, in their spreadsheet, and in the conversation they have with their board or their owner. When they come back with four more units, they will expect the same number. When they come back next year, they will expect the same number again, and they will be surprised and slightly offended if it has gone up.

So price the first unit at a number you would be happy to repeat twenty times. If you want to offer a genuine portfolio discount, structure it as a volume commitment: this rate applies to a block of units scheduled together, because that is where your real efficiency comes from. Never structure it as a one-off introductory price, because there is no such thing. There is only your rate, and the first unit is where you set it.

Two related traps. First, do not quote from photos. A photo hides prep, and prep is your entire variance. Walk every unit or agree a written condition standard that triggers a variation. Second, do not accept a scope of "make it look good" on an occupied unit. Define surfaces, coats and exclusions or you will be repainting the same wall for free.

What to include on the quote document

• Unit address, floor, and whether vacant or occupied at time of works.
• Measured paintable area, or a stated basis if you are quoting per unit.
• Surfaces included, and a hard list of exclusions.
• Number of coats and product category, plus sheen.
• Colour count. Note that additional colours are chargeable.
• Prep included, and the condition assumption it is based on.
• Days on site and crew size, so the client can plan around you.
• Access assumptions: lift, parking, working hours, waste disposal.
• How variations are priced and approved.
• Payment terms and what triggers final payment.

Turnover work in particular rewards a clean repeatable document, because you will issue it dozens of times. The specialised version of this for high-volume vacancy work is in how to price apartment turnover painting. And if the enquiry you received was actually about a room inside somebody's house rather than a rental unit, the pricing method for that is in how much to charge to paint a home office.

Frequently asked questions

Should I quote apartments per unit or per square foot?

Calculate bottom up in hours either way, then present in whichever format the client prefers. Per unit works once you have painted a few of that owner's units and know the prep variance. Per square foot is safer on a first job or on mixed unit sizes, and it makes your quote easier to compare against others on a like for like basis.

How much extra should I charge for an occupied unit?

Price it as a separate daily allowance rather than a percentage guess. Estimate the real setup, protection and breakdown hours you will lose each day, add any product restriction, and show it as its own line. Clients accept a stated allowance and resent a surprise variation.

What if the landlord wants one price for the whole block?

Price one representative unit properly, then apply a volume adjustment tied to a scheduling commitment, not to a vague promise of future work. Your efficiency gain is real only if the units are done consecutively with continuous access, so make continuous access a condition of the volume rate.

Do I need to see the unit before quoting?

Yes. Prep is the single largest source of variance in apartment work and it is invisible in photographs. If a site visit is genuinely impossible, quote against a written condition standard and state clearly that anything worse than that standard is a priced variation.

How do I stop a repeat landlord client from squeezing my rate every year?

Set the rate correctly on the first unit, review it on a stated annual cycle written into your terms, and compete on turnaround and reliability rather than price. Landlords lose more money to a unit sitting empty an extra week than they save on a small rate reduction, so sell speed and predictability.

Should I include touch-ups after the tenant moves in?

Only if it is defined and paid for. Offer a short defects window covering genuine defects in your work, and price any post-occupancy touch-ups caused by move-in damage as a separate callout. Leaving it undefined turns you into a free maintenance service.