How this calculator works
Start with the 4-sides method: front, right, back, left — each side estimated like it's its own little job, so nothing gets missed. Instead of measuring every gable, use the story-length shortcut: measure the wall length at each story (round to the nearest 5 feet), count every story as about 10 feet tall, and you have a body square footage that's plenty accurate for pricing. Then production rates turn measurements into labor hours — sprayed siding runs about 200 square feet per hour on the first coat and 600 on each additional, while a window brushed out in its own trim color takes about 20 minutes for the first coat and 10 for the second.
Hours become labor cost (hours × wage × payroll burden), paint is computed the way you buy it — gallons per color group, rounded up to whole cans, with sprayed surfaces drinking well beyond their measured square footage — and sundries and tax ride on top. Divide by your labor-and-materials percentage (at the default 50%, a job that costs you $2,500 prices at $5,000) and that's what you charge. For the full method, read How to Estimate Exterior Painting.
Why you counted windows and doors per side
Here's the part every cost-per-square-foot calculator gets wrong: an opening's price depends on what's happening around it. A door in a separate trim color is its own brush-out — cut lines, careful coats, half an hour of real work. The same door on a side where you're spraying the body color is mostly masking; the spray pass paints it in minutes. Garage doors are the extreme case — sprayed with the siding they add almost no labor at all, brushed out separately they're a line item.
Flip "Same as body" in the house details above and watch the amber Smart-combo savingsbox name each opening that just got cheaper and the hours it saved. Same idea along the roofline: soffits and fascia are a package deal — when the fascia's being painted anyway, the soffit rides along much faster than it would alone. That's not a discount; it's how a real crew works, priced correctly.
Where these rates come from
These aren't numbers off a forum. They were built inside a working painting company — a full month of on-site, task-by-task timing of real painters, then years of adjustment against real exterior jobs. The same standards power the painting production rates reference and the estimates our own crews price with every week. If your crew runs faster or slower, that's what the wage and markup fields are for — the structure of the math stays right.
What a calculator can't do
This tool prices the most common exterior repaint: body, roofline, and the openings. It deliberately doesn't handle wood replacement (rotten fascia and siding is carpentry with its own per-foot pricing — price it or exclude it in writing, never silence), railings, decks and fences, primer coats, two-tone windows, spray-vs-brush choices per item, or — most importantly — your own production ratessaved and reused on every estimate. It also can't turn the number into a signed job: good/better/best options, a contract with e-signature in the driveway, a deposit collected before you leave, and work orders for the crew. That's the software: Paint Pals — $10/mo founding price, 30-day money-back guarantee.
Pricing inside work too? Use the interior painting estimate calculator — same math, room by room. Just need the gallons? The paint calculator tells you how much to buy. New to production-rate estimating? Start with How to Estimate a Paint Job.