A painting quote looks like a paint problem and is usually a labour problem. The paint is the part you can price precisely, down to the litre, and it is often a third of the total or less; the hours are the part everyone underestimates, because prep and cutting in take longer than rolling and the second coat takes almost as long as the first. This splits the job into the lines that actually move — paint, labour and sundries — shows each as a slice of the bar, and gives you the cost per square metre, which is the only number that lets you compare two quotes for different rooms.
Surface, paint and labour
Paint is rarely the largest slice. On most jobs it is not even half.
Walls and ceiling, less openings. Or the total from the wall area figure.
Two over a similar colour; three, or one primer plus two, over a big change.
On the tin. Retail emulsion is 11 to 13; primer is nearer 8.
What stays in the tray, the brush and the tin. Five percent is normal.
Square metres of coat per hour. A professional rolls 10 to 14; a careful owner 6 to 8.
Tape, dust sheets, filler, brushes, rollers, tray liners. Priced per job, not per room.
Result
Why labour dominates and paint does not
Paint is priced by the litre and the litre is priced on a shelf, so it feels like the controllable cost. It is also, on a typical room, the smaller half. Forty-two square metres with two coats needs about seven and a half litres, which at twenty-four dollars is under two hundred dollars. The same area at eleven square metres an hour is more than seven and a half hours of work, which at thirty-five dollars is over two hundred and sixty. The labour is the larger slice before anyone has opened a tin.
That ratio gets worse, not better, as the job gets more careful. Cutting in around skirting, window reveals, a ceiling line and a door frame is slow work that does not scale with area — a room with six openings takes noticeably longer per square metre than a room with one, even though both measure the same. High ceilings, stairwells and anything needing a scaffold add time without adding area at all.
The three lines that make up the number
Paint is the easy line, and the only trap in it is rounding. Coverage on the tin is a laboratory figure on a smooth, sealed, non-porous surface. A bare plaster wall drinks the first coat; a mist coat on new plaster can use twice the paint of the second. If the surface is new, unsealed or patched with filler, drop the coverage figure rather than adding a fudge factor to the total.
Labour is the line that moves. It is driven by area times coats, divided by a coverage rate that varies enormously: a professional with a roller and an extension pole covers twelve square metres an hour on a prepared wall, while a careful owner working around furniture covers six. Doubling that rate halves the labour slice, which is the whole argument for hiring preparation out and doing the rolling yourself, or the other way round.
Sundries are small and absolutely necessary. Tape, dust sheets, filler, sandpaper, brushes, rollers, trays and liners are priced per job rather than per room, so they matter more on small jobs than large ones — thirty dollars is trivial on a whole house and it is a tenth of a single room. They are also the line that gets forgotten, and the line that sends someone back to the shop mid-job.
Filling, sanding, dusting and masking routinely take as long as the painting itself on a room in poor condition, and longer on a room that has been patched badly before.
A surface that is clean, dry, lightly sanded and dusted takes paint evenly and needs one coat fewer. That is where the money is.
Where quotes disagree with each other
Two quotes for the same room can differ by a factor of two and both be honest. The difference is almost always in what is included. One includes filling and sanding, the other assumes the walls are ready. One includes two coats, the other one coat and a touch-up. One includes the ceiling, the other does not. One moves furniture and takes the room apart, the other paints around it.
The cost per square metre is the only way to compare them, and it has to be compared like for like: same coats, same surface condition, same inclusion list. Once you have that figure from this page — material and labour together — you can put a quote next to it and see whether the gap is in the rate or in the scope. It is usually the scope.
| Job | Material $/m² | Labour $/m² | Total $/m² | Note |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Repaint, same colour, good walls | 4 | 7 | 11 | Best case: two coats, no prep |
| Repaint, colour change | 6 | 11 | 17 | Third coat or a tinted primer |
| New plaster, first decoration | 7 | 14 | 21 | Mist coat drinks paint |
| Ceiling included | 5 | 12 | 17 | Overhead work is slower |
| Woodwork and trim | 8 | 22 | 30 | All cutting in, no rolling |
| Badly patched walls | 6 | 20 | 26 | Preparation dominates |
A worked example
- Paint, from the tinForty-two square metres, two coats, twelve square metres per litre, plus five percent: 7.35 litres, which is eight whole litres at $24 = $192.
- Hours, from the coverage rateEighty-four square metres of coating at eleven per hour is 7.6 hours, which at $35 is $267.
- SundriesTape, sheets, filler, brushes and trays come to about $30 for a job this size.
- The total and the split$489 in total — paint 39%, labour 55%, sundries 6%.
- Cost per square metre$489 over 42 m² is $11.65 per square metre, which is the number to compare against a quote.
Now change one input: drop the painter's rate from eleven square metres an hour to seven, which is what an unhurried owner achieves around furniture. The hours go from 7.6 to 12, the labour from $267 to $420, and the total from $489 to $642 — a third more, with the paint untouched. That is the entire argument for spending the morning on preparation.
Getting the area right
The area is the multiplier on everything, so an error here is an error everywhere. Measure each wall as width times height to the ceiling, add the ceiling as length times width, and then subtract the openings only if they are large — a door is worth subtracting, a small window usually is not, because the cutting in around it costs more time than the paint it saves.
The wall area figure does the wall-by-wall arithmetic including openings, and the ceiling area figure handles the fifth surface people forget. If the room is being painted including the woodwork, that is priced by length rather than area and the trim length figure is the right input.
Do
- Measure every surface, including the ceiling.
- Reduce the coverage figure for new, unsealed or heavily patched plaster.
- Count the openings — they add cutting-in time that scales with edges, not area.
- Compare quotes on cost per square metre, and check what is included.
- Buy whole litres, and one tin rather than two small ones if the price per litre differs.
Avoid
- Assuming the tin's coverage figure applies to bare plaster.
- Budgeting paint and forgetting that labour is usually the larger slice.
- Comparing a one-coat quote with a two-coat quote on price alone.
- Leaving sundries off the list and running out of tape half way.
- Pricing a colour change as if it were a refresh.
Where the numbers stop being true
The labour model is area times coats divided by a coverage rate, which assumes the surface is prepared and reachable. Chimney breasts, stairwells, fitted furniture and anything above about three metres break it, because they add time without adding area. So does a room that cannot be emptied: painting around furniture roughly halves the achievable rate.
Nothing here accounts for drying time between coats, which on a cold damp day can push a two-coat job into a second day and add a return visit. Nor is there an allowance for the inevitable second trip to the shop. If the job is being done by someone who is charging by the day rather than the hour, the model changes shape entirely — a day rate makes the coverage rate irrelevant and the number of days decisive.
Material prices vary by brand and by finish more than any other input on this page. A cheap emulsion and a premium one can differ by three times, and the premium one may still be the cheaper job if it covers in one coat what the cheap one covers in two. The paint quantity figure handles the volume side separately, and the labour hours figure breaks the hours down by phase, which is where this number really comes from.
How the figures are produced
Litres are area times coats, divided by coverage per litre, plus the waste allowance, rounded up to whole litres because that is how paint is sold. Hours are the total coated area — area times coats — divided by the coverage rate in square metres per hour. Paint cost is litres times price; labour cost is hours times rate; the total adds sundries. The bar splits the total into those three, and the cost per square metre is the total divided by the area, which is the figure to compare between rooms and against quotes.
Questions people ask
Why is labour more than the paint?
Because paint is a material with a fixed price per litre and labour is hours, and painting a room takes hours. Two coats on forty-two square metres is seven and a half hours of work and about seven litres of paint.
Do I need a primer?
On new plaster, yes — a mist coat or a proper primer. On a big colour change, a tinted primer saves a coat of the expensive topcoat. On a like-for-like repaint, no.
How much waste should I allow?
Five percent is normal for roller work. Add more if you are using a brush on rough surfaces, or if the colour has to be mixed in small batches.
Is one coat ever enough?
Only over an identical colour on a sound surface. Everywhere else, the first coat is the one that shows the flaws and the second is the one that looks finished.
Should I include the ceiling?
If you are painting it, yes — and price it separately, because overhead work is slower per square metre and usually needs a second person.
What is a reasonable cost per square metre?
Around eleven dollars for a straightforward repaint with the paint included, rising to twenty or more once preparation, colour change or woodwork is involved. Much above that and the scope, not the rate, is usually the reason.