These three calculators price a property in one go rather than a room or a surface at a time. Use them when you want a single figure for a full repaint, when you are budgeting a project before deciding what to include, or when you want a sanity check on a quote you have already been given.
Pick your scope
| Calculator | What it is for |
|---|---|
| Whole interior | Every room in one estimate rather than pricing each separately. |
| Whole exterior | All elevations, trim and detail in a single figure. |
| Whole house | Inside and outside together, for a full repaint. |
Whole property or room by room
The whole house calculators are faster and better for budgeting. They work from overall size and a small number of choices about scope and condition, and they give you a figure you can plan around in a couple of minutes.
Room by room is more accurate when the property is uneven, which most are. If three bedrooms are sound and the stairwell needs full preparation, an average applied across the whole house will be wrong in both directions at once. In that case price the straightforward rooms with the room calculators and treat the difficult areas separately.
The practical approach for a contractor is to use the whole house figure as a first pass on the phone, then price properly from a walk round before anything is committed to writing.
What a whole house figure has to include
The parts that get left out of whole property estimates are consistent, and they are the reason quotes get revised upwards later.
Ceilings, which are slower per square foot than walls because of the overhead rolling position. Trim, doors and frames, which are priced per unit or per linear foot rather than by area and which can rival the wall cost in a house with a lot of joinery. Stairwells and double height spaces, where the access equipment matters more than the surface area. Wardrobes, airing cupboards and other interiors that people forget until the day. Furniture handling and protection, which on an occupied house is a real daily cost.
Outside, the same applies to gutters, fascia, soffits, garage doors and outbuildings. Each of those has its own calculator in the exterior calculators if you want to price them properly rather than absorbing them into a lump.
Occupied or empty
An empty house is materially faster than the same house full of furniture and people. Every occupied room needs setting up and packing down daily, contents moved and covered, and work restricted to sociable hours. If you are comparing two quotes and one assumed empty and the other did not, they are not the same job.
Condition drives the range
Whole house calculators return a range rather than a single number, and the width of that range is mostly condition. Sound, previously painted surfaces sit near the bottom. Filling, sanding, stain blocking, bare timber, wallpaper removal and repairs push toward the top and beyond.
Nothing in an estimate is undercounted as often as preparation, and on a whole property that error is multiplied by every room. If you are the one quoting, read how to account for prep time in a painting estimate before you commit.
If you are quoting this for a customer
A whole house job is where an error in your hourly cost does the most damage, because it is multiplied across the largest number of hours you will sell in one transaction. Make sure the rate underneath it is a burdened rate rather than a wage, using painting labor burden, and that the price carries your fixed costs, using painting business overhead. Then build the quote with how to bid a painting job and the contractor pricing calculators.
What a whole interior comes to, by size
These figures come from composing each house from the room presets and applying the same coverage and production rates the calculators use. They are a starting point for budgeting, not a substitute for measuring your own rooms.
| House size | Rooms | Paintable surface (sq ft) | Gallons, full interior | Labour hours | Days, 2 painters |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1,000 sq ft | 6 | 2,973 | 17.25 | 76 | 4.7 |
| 1,500 sq ft | 9 | 4,383 | 25.25 | 110 | 6.9 |
| 2,000 sq ft | 12 | 5,718 | 32.75 | 141 | 8.8 |
| 2,500 sq ft | 15 | 7,140 | 41.25 | 178 | 11.1 |
Notice that the paintable surface is roughly three times the floor area in every row. That ratio is the single most useful thing on this page, and it is why estimates based on floor area alone are unreliable: you are painting walls and ceilings, and wall area follows the perimeter of each room rather than its floor.
Why more rooms means more paint at the same size
Two houses of identical floor area can differ by several gallons. Dividing the same area into more rooms adds perimeter, and perimeter is what wall area is made of. An open plan house needs materially less paint than a compartmentalised one of the same size.
That is also why the rows above rise faster than the square footage does: the larger houses in the table have proportionally more rooms, not just bigger ones.
Where the hours go, at every size
Preparation is the largest single block in all of them, ahead of rolling walls. Trim, doors and windows take a share out of proportion to their paint, because none of it can be rolled. A whole house estimate that does not name a preparation standard is not comparable with one that does.
Frequently asked questions
How much does it cost to paint a whole house?
It depends on size, scope and condition, which is what the calculators above ask for. The largest variables are whether ceilings and trim are included, whether the property is occupied, and how much preparation the surfaces need. Condition alone can move the figure more than size does.
Is it cheaper to paint a whole house at once?
Usually yes, per room. One mobilisation, one set up, one lot of materials bought together and one continuous run of work is more efficient than several separate visits. The saving is in the fixed costs of turning up, which do not scale with the size of the job.
Should I use the whole house calculator or price each room?
Use the whole house figure for budgeting and for a first answer on the phone. Price room by room when the property is uneven, because one difficult stairwell or a room needing full preparation will not be captured by an average spread across the house.
Does the estimate include ceilings and trim?
You choose. Both are separate scope decisions and both change the figure meaningfully, because ceilings are slower per square foot and trim is priced per unit or linear foot rather than by area. A quote that does not state whether they are included is not comparable with one that does.
Why do two quotes for the same house differ so much?
Almost always scope rather than rate. Coat count, whether ceilings and trim are in, the preparation standard, whether the painters are moving furniture, and what happens to bare or repaired surfaces are all choices, and each one changes the hours. Compare the scope line by line before comparing the totals.
Are these calculators free?
Yes, all of them, with no signup and no email address.
Why is the paintable area about three times the floor area?
Because you paint walls and ceilings rather than floors. Each room contributes its perimeter times its ceiling height in wall, plus its own ceiling. The ratio holds across every house size in the table above, which is why floor area alone is a poor basis for an estimate.
Should I use a whole house figure or price room by room?
Whole house for budgeting and a first answer. Room by room when the property is uneven, because one stairwell needing full preparation will not be captured by an average spread across the house.