See how painting contractors are using Bolster to win 20% more jobs annually, 15% more often. Create detailed estimates, present to customers, give them selections, and then automate your project management.
Short answer
A residential painting estimate should start from the paintable area, the number of coats and your production rate, then go out as a proposal the client can sign. Bolster turns wall and ceiling quantities into labour, paint and prep on the quote, and that quote is the proposal.
Painting contractors using Bolster are, on average, winning 15% bigger jobs, 20% more often.
"The software is a huge upgrade to the customer experience. Bolster allows me to book more jobs with accurate costs while providing excellent customer experience for ongoing projects."
Save time, win more jobs, increase profit, and get paid faster with Bolster.
Get startedPainting estimating software calculates paintable area, paint quantities, labour hours and prep work from your measurements, then turns the result into a professional quote. Instead of rebuilding a spreadsheet for every house, you measure, pick the scope and send a proposal the same day.
For painting contractors, speed wins jobs. Homeowners usually request several bids, and the first clear, itemized quote often sets the bar the others are judged against. Accuracy keeps the job profitable once you win it.
Most painting contractors price in one of three ways: per square foot, per room, or by labour hours plus materials. Square foot and per room pricing are fast to communicate, but they hide the real cost drivers. The most reliable approach builds the price from production rates, then converts it into whatever format your client prefers.
Here is an illustrative example for one bedroom. Walls of 12 ft by 14 ft with 8 ft ceilings give a perimeter of 52 ft and 416 sq ft of wall. Subtract about 40 sq ft for a door and window and you have 376 sq ft. Two coats need about 752 sq ft of coverage, or roughly two gallons. If your crew paints 150 sq ft per hour per coat including cutting in, that is about 5 hours. At an assumed $55 per hour loaded rate, labour is $275, plus paint and sundries. Ceilings, trim and doors are priced as separate lines on top.
The point of the example is the structure, not the numbers. Use your own rates, and keep them current.
Interior and exterior jobs share the same method, but the cost drivers are different.
Keep separate production rates for each surface type, and update them from your job records every few months. Accurate production rates are the single biggest lever on whether a painting job makes money.
Homeowners often struggle to compare painting bids because each contractor describes the scope differently. Make yours the easy one to understand:
Not every bid needs a tape measure on day one. For new construction and larger repaints, you can take off wall, ceiling and trim areas from the drawings. For exteriors, satellite imagery and photos give you a fast first measurement of elevations, which you can confirm on the walk-through. The key is linking each measurement to the right item, so a wall area drives both the paint quantity and the labour hours at once, and a change in one dimension updates the whole quote. That is the difference between a painting takeoff tool and a calculator: the numbers flow straight into a priced estimate instead of being copied across by hand.
Painting contractors who also do exteriors can pair this with our roofing and siding templates. Ready to see it on a real job? Book a demo and bring the measurements from your last bid.
The best painting estimating software calculates paint and labour from your measurements and production rates, keeps material prices current, and produces a professional proposal the client can sign online. It should also handle scheduling and payments so you are not re-entering the job elsewhere.
Measure the paintable area of each surface, work out paint quantity from coverage and number of coats, convert area to labour hours using your production rates, add prep and sundries, then apply your markup for overhead and profit.
Build the price from hours and materials so you know your real cost, then present it per square foot or per room if that is what your market expects. Pricing only by square foot hides prep and access costs.
Check the product data sheet. Many wall paints cover roughly 350 to 400 sq ft per gallon per coat on smooth surfaces. Rough or porous surfaces need more.
Yes. Bolster's takeoff lets you measure from plans, photos or satellite imagery and link those measurements straight to your estimate items.
Yes. Exterior painters use takeoff for wall and trim areas, assemblies for prep, primer and coats, and options for paint grade or additional surfaces.
