EXTERIOR PAINTING COST CALCULATOR
Find out what it really costs to paint a house exterior. Siding type, stories, prep condition, and your regional labor rate all move the number — this builds the range the way an estimator builds a bid.
EXTERIOR PAINTING COST CALCULATOR
Loaded with a 2-story, 2,200 sq ft vinyl house needing a scrape-and-sand. Change anything and the range moves with you.
THE HOUSE
≈ 149 lin ft of perimeter · 3,049 sq ft of wall to coat
Smooth and fast, but colors must be vinyl-safe or the panels warp.
Trim & shutters
THE JOB
Priced as — Performed by: A hired crew — the crew rate carries overhead and profit. Condition of the existing finish: Scrape + sand (Chalking, some flaking, spot prime). Coats over the body: 2. Paint tier: Better (100% acrylic, 10-15 yr warranty, $55–$68/gal). Regional cost index: National average (Most suburban markets, $50–$68 per billed crew hour).
THE JOB
Who's holding the gun
Crew-hour rates below already carry the contractor's overhead and profit.
$55–$68/gal as of 2026
$50–$68 per billed crew hour
ESTIMATED PROJECT RANGE
$5,676 – $7,705
midpoint $6,691 · 3,049 sq ft of wall
Per wall sq ft
$1.86 – $2.53
Per home sq ft
$2.58 – $3.50
$1,894 – $2,575
37.9h coating the body
$1,748 – $2,372
33h washing, scraping, masking
$1,301 – $1,766
17 gal body paint
$734 – $992
12.4h detail work
Where the money goes
22
Gallons
5.2
Crew-days
83.3h
Total hours
Days assume 2-painter crew-days at 8 hours, with no rain-outs. Gallons include 3 primer and 2 trim.
VS THE NATIONAL TYPICAL RANGE
Measured against home floor area — the way published exterior painting averages are quoted.
Right in the band
This is what a mainstream repaint costs in 2026. A bid within a few hundred dollars of the midpoint is a fair bid, not a haggling opportunity.
Your midpoint
$3.04
National typical
$3.00
WHAT THIS EXTERIOR PAINTING COST CALCULATOR DOES
It builds an exterior painting estimate the way an estimator does: turn the house into square feet of wall, apply the spread rate and production rate for that siding, add the prep the finish actually needs, then price the hours at a regional crew rate. What comes back is a low-to-high range with the labor, paint, prep, and trim lines broken out — plus gallons, crew-days, and both versions of cost per square foot.
It is built for two people: the homeowner holding three wildly different bids who wants to know which one is honest, and the painter who needs a fast sanity check before writing a real proposal. If you only need gallons, the paint calculator is the lighter tool.
HOW TO GET AN ACCURATE NUMBER OUT OF IT
Give it the footprint, not the listing size
Enter the ground-floor footprint and the number of stories. A 2,200 sq ft two-story house has an 1,100 sq ft footprint. The tool turns that into perimeter and wall surface — or switch to the measured-walls mode if you have already walked each elevation with a tape.
Pick the substrate honestly
Siding sets both the spread rate and the crew's pace. Stucco and brick soak up nearly twice the paint of vinyl per square foot, and that difference alone can move the total by $1,500 on the same house.
Be brutal about the condition
Prep is where exterior bids separate. Walk the house and look at the south and west elevations — if you can flake paint off with a thumbnail, you are in scrape-and-sand, not light wash. Guessing low here is the most common way an estimate comes in wrong.
Read the range, not the midpoint
The low end assumes cheap-side paint pricing and the fast end of the crew rate; the high end assumes the opposite. Three honest bids on the same house should land inside that band. One far below it is buying the job on prep.
Worked example
The default load — 1,100 sq ft footprint, two stories, vinyl, scrape-and-sand, two coats of a mid-tier acrylic, 340 lin ft of trim and eight shutters at national-average crew rates — works out to roughly 3,050 sq ft of wall, 17 gallons of body paint, and about 83 crew hours spread over five working days. Swap vinyl for stucco without touching anything else and the body paint jumps to 31 gallons, because coverage falls from 380 sq ft per gallon to 200.
HOW THESE NUMBERS ARE DERIVED
Nothing here is a lookup table of national averages. The estimate is built the way a bid gets built — surface area first, then spread rate, then production hours, then the crew rate that covers them. Every assumption is listed below so you can argue with it.
| LINE | WHAT THE TOOL ASSUMES | WHY |
|---|---|---|
| Wall surface | Perimeter × 9.5 ft per story, +8% for gables and band board | Perimeter estimated as 4·√footprint × 1.12 — real plans are never square |
| Window & door openings | Not deducted | Cutting a window costs more minutes than the field it replaces |
| Spread rate | 180–380 sq ft per gallon depending on substrate | Vinyl 380 · fiber cement 340 · wood 300 · stucco 200 · brick 180 |
| Coating production | 120–190 sq ft per painter-hour, per coat, spray with a backroll | ×1.18 on two stories, ×1.35 on three — ladder and staging moves |
| Prep | 500 / 120 / 55 sq ft per hour for wash, scrape+sand, heavy peeling | Plus masking at 400 sq ft per hour on every job |
| Primer | 0% / 25% / 60% of the wall spot-primed by condition, at 300 sq ft/gal | Bare and scraped areas only — sound film does not get primed |
| Trim & shutters | 45 lin ft per hour, 0.6 hr per shutter, 250 sq ft per gallon of enamel | Shutter hours cover the take-down, both faces, and the rehang |
| Sundries | $0.12–$0.20 per wall sq ft, $120 minimum | Caulk, masking film, tape, paper, sandpaper, spray tips, plastic |
| Crew rate | $38–$92 per billed crew hour by region | Billed rate, so overhead and profit are already inside it |
| DIY mode | Hours ×1.8, labor $0, $260–$620 of gear | Sprayer rental plus ladders or a weekend staging rental |
Two different “per square foot” numbers
Published exterior painting averages are quoted against the home's floor area. Contractors price against wall surface. A 2,200 sq ft two-story house has roughly 3,000 sq ft of wall, so the same job reads as $2.60/sq ft to a homeowner and $1.90/sq ft to the painter. The calculator shows both so you are never comparing the wrong pair of numbers. Our guide to pricing painting jobs works the same math from the contractor's side.
EXTERIOR PAINTING COST PER SQUARE FOOT BY SIDING
Substrate is the single biggest driver of both material and labor cost. A gallon that stretches 380 sq ft across vinyl gets swallowed in 180 sq ft of brick, and the crew slows down to match. These are pro all-in bands per square foot of wall surface as of 2026.
| SIDING | $/SQ FT | SQ FT/GAL | SQ FT/HR |
|---|---|---|---|
| Vinyl siding | $1.60–$3.20 | 380 | 190 |
| Fiber cement (HardiePlank) | $1.90–$3.60 | 340 | 165 |
| Wood / clapboard | $2.20–$4.60 | 300 | 130 |
| Stucco | $2.10–$4.20 | 200 | 145 |
| Brick / masonry | $2.40–$5.00 | 180 | 120 |
Vinyl siding
Smooth and fast, but colors must be vinyl-safe or the panels warp. See the vinyl siding guide.
Fiber cement (HardiePlank)
Factory-primed board drinks less paint; butt joints need caulk.
Wood / clapboard
Lap edges, end grain, and old failing film make this the prep hog.
Stucco
Texture eats paint — plan on a 3/4 in. nap roller and elastomeric if cracked. See the stucco guide.
Brick / masonry
Porous and one-way: masonry primer first, and it can never come back off. See the brick & stone guide.
Cross-check any bid against the whole-house numbers in our cost to paint a house guide, and if the inside is on the list too, run the interior painting cost calculator room by room.
WHAT ACTUALLY DRIVES AN EXTERIOR BID UP
Two houses on the same street with the same square footage can be $4,000 apart. It is almost never the paint. Six things move the number, roughly in this order of impact.
Scraping runs about 55 sq ft per hour against 500 for a plain wash. On a 3,000 sq ft wall that is roughly 48 extra hours before a drop of finish goes on. Fix the moisture source first or it comes back — here is how to stop peeling paint for good.
Above about 24 feet, ladders stop being enough and the crew rents pump jacks or staging. The paint does not change; the setup, the moves, and the insurance rider do. Steep or cut-up rooflines add the same way.
Going from dark brown to off-white is a three-coat job on any substrate. Deep bases also cost $8–$15 more per gallon than white or pastel bases, which stacks with the extra coat.
Most exterior acrylics want 50°F and rising with no dew that night. In northern markets that is a five-month window, so fall and spring bids carry a scheduling premium — the cold-weather rules are here.
Spraying next to a neighbor's car, mature landscaping, or a pool means full plastic and a shift to brush-and-roll on windy elevations. The sprayer guide covers when spraying stops paying.
Soft fascia, rotted sills, and failed glazing surface once the scraping starts. A good bid names an hourly carpentry rate up front instead of pretending it will not happen. Lock it into the paperwork with our painting estimate template.
DIY VS HIRING A CREW
Flip the calculator to DIY and the labor line disappears — that is real, and on a single-story ranch it is the right call for a lot of people. On two or three stories the math gets less friendly, because the hours you are saving are the ones spent on a ladder.
DIY makes sense when
- · One story, or a walkable roofline you can reach safely
- · The old finish is sound — a wash, not a scrape
- · Vinyl or fiber cement, where coverage is forgiving
- · You already own or can borrow ladders
Hire it out when
- · Two or more stories, or any staging is involved
- · Widespread peeling, chalking, or bare wood
- · Pre-1978 construction and lead is possible
- · You need it done inside one dry stretch of weather
| FACTOR | DIY | HIRED CREW |
|---|---|---|
| Out of pocket, 2,200 sq ft vinyl | $1,700 – $2,700 | $5,600 – $7,700 |
| Calendar time | 8–10 weekends | 5–6 crew-days |
| Hours on the wall | ~150 solo | ~83, split by two |
| Second-story access | Extension ladder, alone | Ladder jacks or staging |
| Spray equipment | $80–$120/day rental | Owned, in the rate |
| Warranty on the work | None | 2–7 years, in writing |
| If the film fails in year 2 | You redo it | Callback under warranty |
| Ladder liability | Yours | Their GL policy |
The lead paint line you cannot cross
If the house went up before 1978, sanding or scraping the exterior falls under the EPA RRP rule for anyone paid to do the work. Homeowners working on their own house are exempt, but the containment practices exist for a reason. Read the lead paint certification rules before anyone touches a scraper.
EXTERIOR PAINTING COST FAQ
RELATED TOOLS & GUIDES
Interior Painting Cost Calculator
Same build-up math, room by room, for everything inside the walls.
Cost to Paint a House
Whole-house numbers for 2026, inside and out, with real bid ranges.
Paint Calculator
Gallons only — coverage math without the labor and pricing layer.
How to Paint Vinyl Siding
Vinyl-safe colors, cleaning, and why the wrong shade warps panels.
Painting Estimate Template
Turn this range into a proposal a client can sign.