How long to paint a 3 bedroom house?

Using the same rates across a typical three-bedroom interior — walls, ceilings, skirting and doors, two coats — the finish labour comes to about 124 hours, or roughly three weeks for one painter and half that for two. Preparation is on top and varies more than anything else.

How long for one wall?

A 4 × 2.4 metre wall is 9.6 m². At two coats and 10 m² an hour that is under two hours of finish labour, plus whatever the surface needs before you start.

Does a second coat take as long as the first?

Usually slightly less, because the cutting in is faster the second time and you are not stopping to fill. Not enough less to plan around — count it as a full pass.

All guides

How long does it take to paint a room?

Put the room in and it works the hours out surface by surface, the way a quote does.

5 min read

Work out the hours

Finish labour only — preparation is its own line, and it varies more than any of this.

Length (m)

Width (m)

Ceiling height (m)

Coats

Doors

Window frames

Walls	38.4 m²	7.7 h
Ceiling	16.0 m²	2.7 h
Skirting	16.0 lm	2.1 h
Doors	1	1.7 h
Door frames	1	1.0 h
Window frames	1	1.3 h

Finish labour16.5 hours

At 10 m² of wall an hour per coat — the rate this app ships with, chosen to include cutting in and setting up rather than just rolling. If you know your own pace, yours is the better number.

Why "about a day" is the wrong unit

A room is not a unit of time any more than it is a unit of price. What takes the time is surface area, the number of coats, and the number of fiddly items — and two rooms with the same floor plan can be five hours apart on the last of those alone.

Priced properly, the question is never how long a room takes. It is how long each surface takes, added up.

A worked example

A 4 × 4 metre bedroom with a 2.4 metre ceiling, two coats throughout, one door and its frame, at the production rates this app ships with.

Surface	Quantity	Hours
Walls, two coats	38.4 m²	7.7
Ceiling, two coats	16 m²	2.7
Skirting, two coats	16 lm	2.1
Door, two coats	1	1.7
Door frame, two coats	1	1.0
Window frame, two coats	1	1.3
Total finish labour		16.5

Finish labour only — no preparation, no masking up, no moving furniture. Those are real hours and they belong on the quote as their own line.

These rates are deliberately conservative

Ten square metres of wall an hour, per coat, sounds slow to a painter who has just rolled out an empty room. It is slow, if all you count is rolling.

It is not slow once it includes cutting in, moving the trestle, the second cut where the roller could not reach, and the fact that almost nobody paints for eight uninterrupted hours. A rate that only describes the easy part of the work produces quotes that lose money on the hard part.

The rate to trust is the one you have checked against a finished job. Everything else, including this, is a starting point.

What actually makes a room slow

Roughly in order of how much time they add.

Preparation — filling, sanding and spot-priming can exceed the painting on an older house
Cut-ups — six doors and a run of built-ins beat a big empty wall every time
Ceiling height — above about 2.7 m you are working off something, and everything slows
Furniture and occupancy — masking, moving, and working around people
Colour change — a third coat is not fifty percent more time, it is another full pass

Common questions

How long to paint a 3 bedroom house?: Using the same rates across a typical three-bedroom interior — walls, ceilings, skirting and doors, two coats — the finish labour comes to about 124 hours, or roughly three weeks for one painter and half that for two. Preparation is on top and varies more than anything else.
How long for one wall?: A 4 × 2.4 metre wall is 9.6 m². At two coats and 10 m² an hour that is under two hours of finish labour, plus whatever the surface needs before you start.
Does a second coat take as long as the first?: Usually slightly less, because the cutting in is faster the second time and you are not stopping to fill. Not enough less to plan around — count it as a full pass.