How much does it cost to paint a home by an interior painter? The answer is, of course, that it depends on many, many variables, such as location, the kind of company you plan to hire, the size of your home, the quality of paint used, and so much more.
In this post, we’re sharing some of the variables that determine the overall cost of painting the interior of your home. Then, we’ll give you a more solid answer to help you get a better idea of how much an interior painter costs.
Plus, we’re sharing the estimating method we use at Robinson Painting Co. If you’re in our service area — Lansing and Detroit — and wondering how much our interior painting contractors cost near Lansing or Detroit, then read on to get a general idea of potential painting costs.
Note: we’re looking at the cost of painting a home by an interior painter — as opposed to going the DIY route. This article won’t discuss the costs of painting the interior of your house by yourself.
How Much Do Interior Painters Charge Per Hour?
The cost of an interior painting job is a function material costs (mostly paint), labor costs, and business operational overhead. These are the only three variables that influence the average cost for an interior paint job.
Labor is the most expensive cost to any interior paint job. So, getting a rough idea of how much interior painters charge per hour, gives homeowners a rough idea how much it might cost to paint the interior of a home.
According to the web, the average interior house painter earns around $17 per hour, nationally, and $15 per hour in Michigan. However, this rate is for employees and doesn’t include the real costs a painting business has to pay to hire an interior painter.
In addition to a salary or wage, the company likely incurs the cost of taxes, training, clothing, and some other items.
When you add up the total cost to a painting business, the rate is closer to $20 to $25 per hour for an interior painter.
And, that tends to be what you will find for “just starting out” independent painters who work solo. These interior painters often offer low rates to start, but will quickly increase their price as they build up their client list.
In our current market, we tend to find independent interior painters working for roughly $30 per hour.
On the other end, a painting company with a deep pool of painting contractors, that offers warranties on their work, and exceptional customer service tend to run $75 to $100 per hour.
So, there is a large range in how much an interior painter is going to charge per hour. A solo contractor is going to be less, whereas a professional painting company is going to be more.
Does Price Equal Value?
As the saying goes, you get what you pay for. Am I saying that you can’t get a quality job at a low price?
Absolutely not. In fact, there are plenty of affordable painting contractors that do an excellent job. However, it comes with a certain amount of risk or less value.
For example, by hiring a small independent painting contractor, you might get the same job. You might not. It’s unlikely you will get any sort of warranty or guarantee on the work.
You might have to chase your painting contractor down. They might leave their worksite a mess. The list goes on.
As a general rule, it’s safe to say that the more you pay, the greater the exchange of value. A good painting company will thoroughly explain exactly what you’re getting for what you’re paying.
While an individual painter is cheaper, they may be less reliable, hard to get a hold of, and lack customer service skills. At the end of the day, you have to strike the right balance between your budget and the quality of service you wish for.
At Robinson Painting, we tend to be among the highest. Higher than many of our competitors. That’s okay.
If you’re looking for cheap painting services and place higher emphasis on your budget over quality of workmanship and customer service, then we’re probably not a good fit for each other.
How Much Do Interior Painters Cost?
Once you have an idea of labor costs, you can start to estimate how much interior painters cost to paint your home or a single room.
The next step is to determine how many hours it would take to complete a painting job. This can also vary from painting contractor to painting company.
For a large part, the most important aspect to any painting job is the prep work, which can also be the longest part. It’s also going to vary based on what is being painted in a room.
Painting walls and not the ceiling and trim is a relatively simple job that can be completed in a few hours. On the other hand, if you want trim, ceilings, and walls painted, that takes some more time.
For example, the walls for a 10×10 room (average size room) can be painted in about 6 hours. So, if you plan to hire a professional painting company, you can expect to pay anywhere from $150 to $400 to paint a single room.
Go through that same process for each room and you’re left with the total cost of a paint job.
How We Do It At Robinson Painting
Our estimating standards are pretty clear. Note: we may have updated our pricing costs when you find this article as we’re facing strong pressure from inflation and labor shortages to raise prices.
But, here is the general idea. First, we go through this process room by room. And then add up the total cost for each room to determine the total cost to paint the interior of a home.
We start with the square footage of a room. For example, let’s say we’re looking at a master bedroom that is a 12×12 room, or 144 square feet.
Next, we determine our square footage cost. For rooms that are going to be 1 color, we multiple by $4.00. For two colors, we multiply by $4.50 and for three colors we multiply by $5.50.
So, let’s say you want the ceiling and walls painted a single color and would like the trim to be painted a different color. In this case, that’s two colors. For this, we would take the square footage and multiply it by $4.50 per square foot.
For a 144 square foot master bedroom, that brings the cost to $648.
Once we have this number, we tend to make adjustments based on various factors such as the condition of the walls, prep work needed, easiness of painting, if there are sloped ceilings or bump outs, etc.
Plus, we may give a client certain discounts based on working on our schedule or other various discounts.
Conclusion
How much does it cost to paint a home by an interior painter? It depends. In general, you can expect to pay anywhere from $30 to $100 per hour for an interior painter. In our case, we tend to charge by the square footage of a room.
So, for example, a 2,000 square foot home might cost around $8,000 to paint.
