You have the necessary skills, a capable team, and a strong passion for undertaking interior paint projects. However, the challenging part now arises – bidding for these projects.
Rest assured, I am here to provide guidance on how to determine the pricing for your projects efficiently, accurately, and confidently. Instead of simply telling you what to charge, my goal is to teach you how to estimate the costs for your own projects.
Let’s Start with a Template
I have developed a user-friendly house painting estimating template designed to streamline the collection of essential information for your interior painting estimate. With this template, you can easily price each room individually, factor in paint costs, and effortlessly add or remove items as needed. This straightforward tool simplifies the estimation process, ensuring that you have all the necessary details at your fingertips to make informed decisions about your interior painting estimate.
Build Pricing from Hours
Utilizing an hour-based approach for interior paint estimates offers a comprehensive alternative to traditional size-based methods. By prioritizing hours over room size, our strategy ensures a more accurate and efficient estimation process. This method involves recording hours instead of relying solely on room dimensions, as the true scope of a project extends beyond its size. Material costs are seamlessly factored in through a percentage calculation, simplifying the overall estimation process.
Embracing this approach not only provides a more holistic perspective but also saves valuable time, allowing for complete pricing before leaving a potential customer’s residence. While refining hourly calculation skills may require some practice, mastering this technique significantly enhances the precision and fluidity of estimations. The emphasis on hours as the primary metric for estimation yields a more nuanced and accurate understanding of the project’s requirements, ultimately optimizing the entire estimation process for interior painting projects.
Illustrative Example
Let’s delve into an example to illustrate how to construct an interior painting estimate based on hours, using a typical vacant bedroom W12’ x L14’ x H8’ as a reference. We’ll consider various tasks such as painting ceilings, walls, baseboards, crown, windows, and doors, factoring in additional elements like bay windows and furniture.
Walls and Ceiling
I am going to figure for the ceiling (1 coat at 1.5 hours) and the walls (2 coats at 4 hours).
Let’s add for bay, bump outs and furniture. Our room has a 3-window bay, a bump out at the entrance of the room, and medium amount of furniture to deal with. The 3-window bay and bump-out are going to add 1 hour to our walls and .25 hours for the ceiling. To move the furniture out of the way and put it back will take .5 hour and will likely slow down the wall and ceiling operation by another .5 hours working around it. Don’t discount the time it takes to remove televisions, outlet plates, blinds, curtains or anything else that may throw your hours off. So, this is what my final hours look like for the walls and ceiling for this room.
Ceiling – 2 hours
Walls – 5.75
Windows
We now have to include the window casing trim around our 3-bay window and the window sill. I estimate that each window casing will take approximately .5 hours and the window sill will take .25 hours to paint.
Windows – 1.5 hours
Window Sill – .25 hours
Baseboards
I estimate the 2.5” baseboard to take 1 hour to complete.
Baseboard – 1 hour
Crown
I estimate the 2.5” crown to take 1.5 hours.
Crown – 1.5 hours
Closet
The closet is going to be a simple, recoat using the same paint as our ceiling. We will figure this in at about 1.5 hours.
Closet 1.5 hours
Doors
We have a standard 6-panel interior door and a set of bi-folds on the closet. We figure the door/jamb at 1 hour and a set of (2) bi-folds at 1 hour (we’re not painting the backsides).
2 doors – 2 hours
Setup, Clean-up and Break Down
It’s important to understand that it costs money to drag all your tools into the project, clean-up each day, and break down at the end of each job. This can be implemented separately, within your paint costs, or your labor. Most importantly, leave yourself a little wiggle room when building your price to accommodate unforeseen costs.
Building Your Labor Price
The cost for our project will be set at $60 per hour. The labor for our project will be estimated at:
15.5 hours x $60 = $930.00
Paint
As you enter the labor for each item, the cost of paint and materials will also accrue. You can customize the percentage rate for each project. My percentage rate is based on how many colors are being used throughout the project. Typically, I’m somewhere between 15% – 25%. More colors = higher percentage. For this project, we will go with 20%. The paint for our bedroom will be:
$930 x 20% = $186.00
Our Total Room Price:
$930 Labor + $186 Paint = $1,116.00
Your Best Asset is Estimating Hours
Based on my personal experience, the most valuable asset for accurate estimation is having a clear understanding of the time required to complete a particular task. It is beneficial to review your estimates after completing a job as it helps refine your ability to accurately estimate the duration of each painting task. As a result, when there is a need to increase prices, there is no need to recalculate the cost for each item, simply adjust your hourly rate.
Your Price, Your Value
There is no one price fits all. This is the misconception of new business owners. Selling an interior paint job is a conversation for another article called “How to Win House Painting Bids: Advice for Painting Business Owners”.
HAPPY PAINTING!
Wishing you success and fulfillment as you embark on your interior painting ventures.