Should I charge per room or per square metre?

Work it out per surface, present it per room. Per square metre is how you get a defensible number; per room is how a customer reads it without arguing about a wall.

How much to paint a whole house interior?

The same method, room by room, plus the hallway and the ceilings — and hallways are worse than they look because they are mostly cutting in. Building it up from surfaces is what keeps a whole-house quote from being a guess with more zeros.

Do I charge more for a ceiling than a wall?

Usually yes, per square metre, because of the ladder and the neck. Most painters carry a ceiling rate somewhere above their wall rate for exactly that reason.

All guides

How much to charge to paint a room

Nobody can tell you the number. They can tell you how to work out yours, which is more useful.

6 min read

Why every answer you find is wrong

Search this and you will get a range — a few hundred to a couple of thousand a room. The range is real and it is useless, because it is an average across ceiling heights, cities, conditions and margins that have nothing to do with your job.

A painter in a capital city and one in a country town should not charge the same and do not. What travels between them is the method, not the number.

Build it from the surfaces

Take a 4 × 4 metre bedroom with a 2.4 metre ceiling, one door, one window, previously painted and sound.

Surface	Quantity	At a rate of	Comes to
Walls, two coats	38 m²	$12/m²	$456
Ceiling, one coat	16 m²	$14/m²	$224
Skirting	15 lm	$10/lm	$150
Door and frame	1	$105	$105
Window frame	1	$68	$68

Those rates are illustrative — they are not a recommendation and they are certainly not yours. The point is the shape of the calculation, which comes to about $1,000 before preparation, materials and margin.

What moves it most

Four things account for most of the spread between one room and another, and none of them are the floor area.

Ceiling height — a 3.6 m ceiling is not fifty percent more wall, it is fifty percent more wall done off a platform
Preparation — a sound wall and a filled, sanded, sealed one are different jobs at the same square metreage
Colour change — light over dark is a third coat across the whole room
Access and furniture — a furnished, occupied house is slower than an empty one, every time

Then check it against a job you know

The fastest sanity check on any rate is to price a job you have already done and compare it with what you actually charged. If the method says $1,000 and you know that room is a $1,400 room, your rates are low — and now you know by how much.

That is a better calibration than any published average, because it is built from your own finished work.

A rate you have tested against a finished job is worth more than a rate you read on the internet, including this one.

Common questions

Should I charge per room or per square metre?: Work it out per surface, present it per room. Per square metre is how you get a defensible number; per room is how a customer reads it without arguing about a wall.
How much to paint a whole house interior?: The same method, room by room, plus the hallway and the ceilings — and hallways are worse than they look because they are mostly cutting in. Building it up from surfaces is what keeps a whole-house quote from being a guess with more zeros.
Do I charge more for a ceiling than a wall?: Usually yes, per square metre, because of the ladder and the neck. Most painters carry a ceiling rate somewhere above their wall rate for exactly that reason.