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A crew day rate is what it costs you to put a crew on a site for a day, and then what you charge for it. It is the unit a lot of painters actually think in, because schedules are built in days, crews are booked in days, and a job that takes three days is easier to picture than one that takes twenty-two hours.
The short version: build the cost of a day from the ground up, including the parts of the day that are not painting, then price the day to recover overhead and earn profit on top. The mistake almost everyone makes is quoting a day rate that covers wages and paint and quietly forgets everything else. The crew day cost calculator assembles the whole stack so nothing goes missing.
This is about the cost and price of a day. If you are working out how many painters should be on the van in the first place, that is a different question and it is answered in painting crew size.
What makes up a crew day
| Layer | What it includes | Easy to forget |
|---|---|---|
| Burdened wages | Every painter on the crew for the full paid day, at burdened cost not bare wage | The apprentice, and the lead who is only there half the day |
| Vehicle | Fuel, running cost and the daily share of finance, insurance and maintenance | The cost of the van on days it does not move |
| Consumables | Tape, filler, abrasives, sheets, sleeves, cleaning materials | These are not job materials, they are spent every day |
| Equipment | Daily share of sprayers, towers, ladders, plus hire for anything brought in | Depreciation and replacement of gear you already own |
| Overhead | The day’s share of running the business at all | Left out entirely more often than any other layer |
| Profit | Applied on top of the full cost | Confused with overhead, so counted once instead of twice |
The first layer is the one people get wrong before they even start. A crew day is not the wage bill for the hours painted, it is the wage bill for the hours paid, and those differ by travel, loading, briefing, breaks and pack-down. Price it with the burdened rate from painting labor burden.
The day is shorter than you think
Take a paid day and remove the parts that are not production. Loading at the yard, travelling out, unloading, protecting and masking, the first brush going in rather later than anyone plans. At the other end, stopping in time to clean up, pack down, load and drive back. Breaks in the middle.
What is left is productive time, and on many jobs it is considerably less than the paid day. This is not slack to be squeezed out. Most of it is necessary work that simply is not painting. It matters because your painting production rates describe productive hours, so if you convert areas into hours and then into days without allowing for the non-productive part, every job you schedule will be planned tighter than it can be worked.
Travel deserves its own line
A crew working thirty minutes away and a crew working ninety minutes away are being paid the same and producing different amounts. If your work spreads over a wide area, either build the travel into the day rate as an average, which is simpler but overcharges the near jobs, or price it separately by zone, which is fairer and reflects what actually happens. Whichever you choose, do not treat it as free, because it is paid time on your payroll every single day.
Turning cost into price
Once you have a full day cost, add overhead recovery and profit. Overhead per crew day is one of the cleanest ways to recover fixed costs for a business that schedules in days, and the method is in painting business overhead: annual overhead divided by the crew days you actually sell in a year.
The denominator is the trap. Sellable crew days are not calendar days. Remove weekends, holidays, weather days, the days lost between jobs, and the days a crew is short-handed. Painters who divide overhead by an optimistic number of days end up with a rate too low to recover anything, and the shortfall repeats on every day they sell.
Then profit, applied to the full cost including overhead rather than to wages alone. Whether you express that as a markup on cost or a target margin on price changes the number, and the markup versus margin calculator converts between the two so you can be sure which one you are actually applying.
When to price by the day and when not to
Day rates are a scheduling and costing unit. Whether they should be the thing you quote to the customer is a separate decision.
Day rate works well for
Work with genuinely unknown scope, such as older properties where nobody knows what is under the existing coating until it comes off. Ongoing maintenance for a property manager or a builder who wants a crew for a period. Snagging and remedial work where the list keeps moving. Any job where a fixed price would have to carry so much contingency that it becomes uncompetitive.
Fixed price works better for
Most domestic work. Homeowners want to know what it will cost, not what it will cost per day, and a day rate asks them to carry the risk of your pace, which they are not equipped to judge and will not enjoy. It also caps you: on a job you work efficiently, a fixed price rewards you and a day rate does not.
That last point is the strategic argument. A painter who gets faster and better earns more on fixed price and exactly the same on day rate. If you are investing in equipment, training and method to work more efficiently, day rate quietly takes the returns away. That is worth knowing before you make day work the default.
If you do quote day rates, quote the whole job in days
Telling a customer a day rate without telling them how many days is an invitation to a dispute. Give a rate and an expected number of days, say plainly what would change that number, and put both in writing. What that document should contain is set out in what should a painting estimate include, and the terms that protect you if the number moves belong in what should a painting contract include.
Different crews, different rates
Holding one day rate for every configuration you send out is the most common simplification, and it costs money in both directions. The wage layer scales almost exactly with headcount. The vehicle, the equipment and the overhead layers barely move. So a four painter day is not twice a two painter day, and pricing it as though it were overcharges the large crew and undercharges the small one.
Build a rate for each configuration you actually run. A lead working alone, a lead and an apprentice, a two painter crew, a three painter crew. The rates are not proportional to headcount and should not look it. Where crews vary in skill mix that matters too, since a lead and an apprentice cost less than two leads and produce differently, which is part of the wider question in painting crew size.
Subcontracted crews sit on a different stack
When you bring in a subcontract crew for a day, their invoice already carries their own wages, taxes, insurance and non-productive time. Do not rebuild the burden layer on top of it. What you do still add is your overhead, your supervision time, your materials if you are supplying them, and your profit, because you carry the client relationship, the risk and the warranty regardless of who held the brush.
The temptation with subcontracted days is to price them at a thin uplift on the invoice, on the reasoning that you did little of the work. That misreads where your cost sits. You quoted the job, you scheduled it, you are answerable for the finish and you are the one going back if something is wrong. The trade-offs either way are set out in employee versus subcontractor painting.
Checking your rate against reality
A day rate is a prediction, and the only way to know whether it is right is to compare it against finished jobs. Record the days a job was scheduled for and the days it actually took, along with what it earned. Do this for a season and you will see which kinds of work you consistently over-plan and which you under-plan, which is far more valuable than any single job’s outcome.
The gap between planned and actual is where the money is, and it is nearly always concentrated in specific job types rather than spread evenly. The tools for that comparison are how to track painting job costs and the job profitability calculator.
Recalculate the rate at least annually, and whenever wages, insurance, fuel or vehicle costs move noticeably. A day rate carried forward unchanged from a year when fuel and wages were lower is quietly absorbing the difference out of your margin.
Watch the half days
Half days are where day rate pricing leaks most reliably. A crew booked for half a day still loads, travels, unloads, sets up, packs down and travels back, so the productive share of a half day is much lower than half the productive share of a full day. Charging exactly half the day rate for it therefore sells the least efficient time you have at your average price.
Either price half days above half the rate, which is defensible and easy to explain in terms of the fixed set-up, or avoid them by pairing two half days into one full day in the same area. The second option is better for everyone when the geography allows it, and it is a scheduling decision more than a pricing one, which is why it belongs in the same conversation as how to schedule painting jobs.
Price the day the way you actually schedule it.
If you book in days, your estimate should think in days too. PaintPricing turns measurements into hours, days and a branded quote you can send from the driveway. Free for your first 3 quotes, no card required.
Frequently asked questions
How do I calculate a painting crew day rate?
Add the burdened cost of every painter on the crew for the full paid day, the daily share of vehicle and equipment, the consumables spent each day, and the day’s share of overhead. That is cost. Add profit on top of the full cost to get the rate you charge. The crew day cost calculator assembles the layers so none is skipped.
Should a crew day rate include materials?
Include daily consumables such as tape, sheets, abrasives and cleaning materials, because they are spent whether or not the job is large. Keep job-specific paint separate and price it against the job, since paint quantity follows the surfaces rather than the days. Mixing the two makes it impossible to tell whether a slow day or an expensive specification caused a poor result.
How many productive hours are in a crew day?
Fewer than the paid hours, and the difference is real work rather than slack. Loading, travel, set-up, protection, breaks, clean-down and pack-down all consume paid time without producing coverage. Measure it on your own jobs rather than assuming, because it varies hugely with travel distance and the amount of protection a job needs.
Is day rate better than fixed price for painting?
Day rate suits unknown scope, remedial work and ongoing maintenance, where a fixed price would need heavy contingency. Fixed price suits most domestic work, and it rewards you for working efficiently in a way day rate does not. If you are investing in getting faster, fixed pricing is where that investment pays back.
How do I work out overhead per crew day?
Divide your annual overhead by the crew days you genuinely sell in a year, not by calendar days. Remove weekends, holidays, weather days and the gaps between jobs first. An optimistic denominator produces a rate too low to recover your fixed costs, and the shortfall repeats on every day you sell.
Should the crew day rate change by crew size?
Yes, because the wage layer scales with headcount while the vehicle and overhead layers largely do not. A two painter day and a four painter day are different costs and should be different prices. Build the rate per crew configuration you actually send out rather than holding one blended figure for all of them.
