Interior Painting Estimate Template

Interior painting bids go wrong in two places: the square footage (openings not deducted, coats not multiplied) and the paint order (rounded in your head, then one gallon short on the last wall). Pricing by the room or by gut feel hides both mistakes until the job is done and the margin is gone.

This workbook puts the takeoff, the paint order, and the bid on one Estimate sheet. Enter total wall length and ceiling height, subtract door and window openings in square feet, add ceiling area if you are painting it, and set the number of coats (default 2). The sheet returns wall area, total paintable area multiplied by coats, and, from your coverage per gallon (default 350), the number of gallons rounded up to whole cans. Primer gallons and a sundries lump sum (tape, plastic, brushes, rollers) are your inputs, and sales tax is applied to the materials subtotal. Labor comes from a production rate in square feet per hour including cut-in (default 200) and your burdened hourly rate. The pricing block applies your markup (default 20%) to total direct cost and reports bid price, gross profit, and gross margin. A Price Book sheet lists 12 interior painting line items (walls at 2 coats, ceilings, primer coat, doors both sides, trim, baseboard, crown, closets, cabinets per door or drawer, accent wall, patch and sand, wallpaper removal) with blank unit-price cells for your market, and a Read Me sheet covers the four steps. 15 formulas across 3 sheets, no macros.

First 15 minutes: enter the perimeter and height of a room you painted last month, deduct its openings, and compare the gallons and labor hours the sheet produces with what you actually used. Then fill the Price Book so per-door and per-foot extras are ready for the next walkthrough.