How to Quote Painting Jobs (m², Labour and Margin)

Painting quotes rarely go wrong on the painting. They go wrong on the prep you didn’t allow for and the extra coats you didn’t price. If you want to know how to quote painting jobs so the number holds up on the last day, the method is simple: measure properly, do the coverage maths instead of guessing tins, price prep as its own line, and put a margin on top before GST. This guide walks the whole thing, ending with a full worked example on a three-bedroom interior repaint.

Measure up properly

Everything downstream (paint quantities, labour hours, your m² rate) hangs off the measure, so do it the same way every time:

• Walls: perimeter of the room × wall height. Deduct openings bigger than about 1 m² (doors, windows, sliders); leave small ones in as your allowance for cutting in around them.
• Ceilings: length × width, measured rather than assumed, because raked and high ceilings change both litres and hours.
• Trims, doors and windows: count them, don’t area them. A door is a unit of work (both faces plus frame), and enamel work is slow; pricing it inside your wall m² rate is how trim-heavy period homes eat your weekend.

Quick example: a 4 m × 3.5 m bedroom with 2.4 m ceilings. Perimeter is 15 m, so walls are 15 × 2.4 = 36 m². Take off a door (1.7 m²) and a window (1.8 m²) and you’re at roughly 32.5 m² of wall, plus a 14 m² ceiling, one door and one window counted separately. Do that for every room and total the columns.

Two more things while you’re there with the tape. Note the access: stairwells, voids and anything over 2.7 m mean planks, platforms or a taller ladder, and slower, more careful hours. And write the measure down room by room, not as one grand total. When the customer later drops the study to save money, you can reprice in thirty seconds instead of re-measuring the house.

m² rate or hourly?

For standard interior repaints, quote per square metre. Customers can compare it easily, it makes your quote look considered rather than plucked, and it rewards you for being fast — if your rate assumes 5 m² an hour and you roll 7, the difference is yours. For interior walls, somewhere around $12–$30/m² is common, with prep condition and the number of coats driving most of that spread. Two coats is the standard assumption; anything beyond that gets priced, not absorbed.

Go hourly when the job is full of unknowns: restoration work, peeling heritage exteriors, anything where you can’t see what’s under the surface until you’re into it. Most painters charge somewhere in the $45–$80/hr range depending on region and speciality; if you haven’t built your own charge-out rate from your actual overheads, start with our guide to tradie hourly rates in Australia. Either way, the hours still matter. A m² rate is just your hourly rate and your speed wearing a different jacket, so track your real m²-per-hour on every job.

For the counted items, many painters carry unit prices the same way: so much per door (both faces and frame), per window, per metre of skirting. Build the units once from your own timed jobs and quoting a trim-heavy house becomes a counting exercise instead of guesswork.

The coverage maths

Guessing tins is how you end up back at the trade counter on a Sunday, or with $300 of paint on the shelf. Work it out:

Litres = (area × coats) ÷ spread rate.

Data sheets quote a theoretical spread rate around 14–16 m² per litre. On real walls, with texture, porosity and roller loss, plan on more like 11–12. So 160 m² of walls at two coats is 320 m² ÷ 12 ≈ 27 L: two 15 L drums, not “a couple of tins”. Then add:

• Sealer or undercoat on new plasterboard, patched areas, bare timber or glossy surfaces — a full extra coat’s worth of litres and labour, priced in.
• Paint grade: premium low-sheen costs more per litre but touches up and washes better; quote the grade you named, and name it on the quote so you’re not compared against a budget-tin price.
• Sundries: filler, gap filler, tape, drop sheets, sandpaper, sugar soap. Small each, real across a job, which is why many painters add a flat sundries line.

Prep is where quotes die

Ask painters where a fixed price went wrong and the answer is almost never the rolling. It’s the two unpriced days of prep before the first coat. Walk the job before you quote and look for:

• Grubby or greasy walls that need washing down before anything sticks.
• Filling and sanding: dents, screw pops, picture hooks in every room.
• Cracks: hairline is filler; recurring movement cracks need raking, taping and honesty about whether they’ll return.
• Mould: treat the cause and the surface, or it’s coming back through your paint and your reputation.
• Flaking or chalky old coatings that need scraping and sealing before coats count.

Then put prep on the quote as its own line with its own hours. It makes the price defensible (“$780 of that is prep — here’s what’s involved”), and it protects you: if the scope says two hours of minor filling and you uncover sheets of drummy plaster, that’s a variation with a paper trail, not an argument.

A rough rule from painters who track their hours: on an average occupied-home repaint, prep runs somewhere near 20–30% of total labour, and more again on older places. If your quote shows prep at 5% of the hours, you haven’t priced prep — you’ve donated it.

Worked example: three-bedroom interior repaint

Say the measure comes back at 165 m² of walls (after openings), 105 m² of ceilings, 8 doors and 6 windows, surfaces in fair condition with one dark-to-light bedroom. Sole trader, $65/hr charge-out:

Sanity-check it against your m² rate: the walls (their paint, a share of the prep, margin and GST) come out around $18/m², comfortably inside the common range for a fair-condition repaint. Sixty-four hours is eight solid days for one painter; if that feels tight for this house, fix the hours now, not on day six. And note the margin maths: divide by 0.85 for a 15% margin; multiplying by 1.15 quietly gives you less.

Putting it on the page

The number is only half the quote. To make a fixed price safe to give, the page needs:

• Scope, room by room: surfaces, coats, and the paint brand and grade you’ve priced.
• Exclusions, stated plainly: colour changes after work starts, moving heavy furniture, repairs beyond minor filling, and anything uncovered once prep begins.
• Validity: 14–30 days, because paint prices move.
• Deposit and payment terms: a deposit that at least covers materials before you order them, and when the balance falls due.
• Assumptions: surfaces sound unless noted, water and power available, rooms cleared of small items by the customer before you start.

One total, including GST, at the bottom. Itemising prep and the paint spec builds trust; itemising your margin starts a negotiation. And keep a copy of the measure and your workings in the job file. When the customer comes back in three years for the exterior, half the quote is already done.

Then send it fast; the first professional number usually sets the anchor for the whole job. For the general method behind all of this (scope, margin versus markup, and what wins work), see our full guide on how to quote a job.