How much does interior painting cost in Jackson MI?
If you are anything like me, when you consider hiring a professional to do something around your house, the first stop is Google. When I first started in this business, that is what I would often do when I was considering branching into a new area, be it flooring, exterior painting, tile work, or something else. Most of the time, I would get a range of possible cost. It might be based on square footage. It might be based on man hours. But it would be something along the lines of $15-25 a square foot, or $60-75 an hour for labor.
What I am attempting to do in this blog is to give you an idea of what factors go into my interior painting bids. But in case you couldn’t care less about these factors, and all you want is my price, here it is. My price ranges from about $2.00 a square foot to $8.00 a square foot. That is a wide range of pricing, so let me give you the more specific number you are probably seeking. For the average paint job where I am painting the ceiling, trim/baseboard/ and walls, I would charge approximately $5.00 a square foot. And without belaboring it, this is what that includes.
I feel most of the surfaces for imperfections. You can feel a lot more than you can see. I do a combination of caulking, sanding, and spackling. I use a shellac primer to prime all of the spots that I spackled to ensure a uniform finish. I put two coats on all of the surfaces. All of this is typically done with high-end products, i.e. Zinsser BIN primer, Sherwin William, Benjamin Moore, etc. When I leave, the room will be completely clean with no splatter, and all the painted surfaces will look incredible.
Okay, so if that’s all you wanted, then thank you for visiting the website and have a great day. If you are curious about the details, then please read on. Here are the factors that I take into consideration when bidding on a paint job.
WHAT DO YOU WANT PAINTED?
Do you just want a fresh coat on your walls? Does your trim need a fresh coat? Did you have everything done at an earlier date, and you are realizing that your ceilings are dingier than you thought they were? This all plays a part. Before I go too far, I want to clarify what I mean by square foot. I mean square feet of floor space, i.e. a 10’x10’ room is 100 square feet. I also want to state that these prices typically include the primer and paint as well. That said, here is a general breakdown of these factors.
Just walls - $3.00 per square foot
Just ceilings - $2.50 per square foot
Just baseboard/trim - $3.00 per square foot
Ceiling, trim/baseboard, and walls - $5.00 per square foot
Doors - $100-150 per door (both sides)
There are other things that could play into a room’s cost as well. Some clients need hearths, mantles, or fireplace surrounds painted. That’s not typically going to be a huge added cost, but it would be in the neighborhood of $50-500 depending on the size and how much fireplace soot is present.
Perhaps there is wood paneling that is going to require special preparation and multiple primer coats? Another big one would be built-in shelves. There are a lot of beautiful built-ins out there that require a lot of taping and preparation.
So what are some practical examples of how all this pricing affects you? Let’s say that you have a living room that is 15’x20’. That is 300 square feet to factor into our equation. This living room is straightforward. It just needs fresh coats of paint on the ceiling, trim/baseboard, and walls as well as 2 doors. You take the 300 square feet, and you multiply it by the $5.00 per square foot that I mentioned above. That comes out to $1,500. Add the 2 doors to that, which adds another $300, and you have your total of $1,800. That includes all labor and materials for that job from the minute we walk in, to us helping to move your belongings around, to us leave you with a completely clean, repainted area.
Or let’s say you have a very simple job. Your 37-year-old just moved out, and you are wanting to convert their room into a guest room. It is a 10’x10’ room, and you really only need to get some walls freshened up. That would be $300 for all labor and materials for that job.
Okay, last example. You just moved into your forever home. It’s 2,000 square feet of space. You want all the ceiling, trim/baseboard, walls, and doors repainted. Here’s the breakdown:
2,000 square feet X $5.00 per square foot = $10,000
20 doors X $100 = $2,000
TOTAL = $12,000
Something I will cover later is that the bigger the job, the lower the square footage cost would be, and the more doors, the less it may cost as well. This job may actually be closer to $10,500, but this at least gets you a ballpark idea. And keep in mind that this is all the labor and materials for this job from beginning to end.
WHAT IS THE CONDITION OF THE SURFACES THAT NEED PAINT?
In this industry, you could be walking into a brand-new house that was drywalled and finished by professionals, or you could be walking into a house that needs to be flipped where the previous renters took out their frustrations on the walls and took it upon themselves to remove the copper for scrap metal. There are a lot of variables such as holes in the drywall, staining, pet damage, wallpaper that needs to be removed, etc.
Most jobs that I go to are normal. There are some regular dings and dents in the walls. Maybe their kids are like mine and wanted to draw a life-sized Sonic the Hedgehog on the wall. That is all work that would be included in the pricing that we just talked about.
However, maybe the kids were playing ping pong in the basement, and one of them slipped, and put their heel through the wall. That’s not a big deal. It might cost an extra $100 to cut away the uneven hole, patch it with drywall, and finish it with a couple of coats of fast-dry mud.
Pets, specifically dogs, really enjoy trim boards. Maybe they look like bones. I have had dogs chew all the way through trim boards surrounding doors. Again, not a big deal, but because of a little more involved process, that might cost $200 to pull off the old trim, put on new, caulk the edges where necessary, and fill in the nail holes.
Lastly, for those who heat with wood, there is going to be some more cleaning and priming involved to ensure we get good adhesion with the paint and we’re not having stains show through.
That being said, most jobs are going to be straightforward. If we have full sheets of drywall needing to be replaced, that is obviously going to change things, but in general, the pricing from the previous section is going to stand most of the time.
WHAT IS THE CEILING HEIGHT?
Most of my experience has been with houses that have 8-10’ ceilings. Most of the pricing from the first section (What do you want painted?) is going to apply to 8’ ceilings. The 9’ and 10’ ceilings may bump the price up $0.25 a square foot or so.
But then you have vaulted ceilings or big open concept spaces with big LVL beams spanning large gaps, and interesting ceiling designs. I once did a huge open concept house with 22’ ceilings. That obviously changes the job a lot. One of the contractors on the job already had scaffold there and was fine with me using it, so that saved the client some money. But even so, that is a lot of climbing up and down 3 levels of scaffolding and repositioning it to all the different areas that need to be painted.
That is the kind of job that would be closer to the $8.oo per square foot that I mentioned in the very beginning of the blog. It’s just a lot more logistics.
So if you had a 40’x20’ great room with 22’ ceilings and you wanted all the ceiling, trim/baseboard, and walls painted, you would be looking at approximately $6,400 for that room.
HOW BIG IS THE JOB?
The size of the job really plays a part. If I am coming to your house to paint 1 door, it needs to make sense to me financially. I have to drive to your house for the estimate, create the estimate, set up a time to do the job, and then do the job. That means I am driving there at least twice. Depending on what type of paint I use (different dry times), I may be driving there 3 times. All that to say, I can’t charge $100 for that door.
What I would do in this situation is ask the client if there is any other work they need done. I’m not trying to upsell them. That’s not really my style. I want to make it worthwhile for both of us. For that 1 door, I might have to charge them $300, but what if I could do 3 doors for $300. I’m not in this just for the money. I want people to love looking at their homes and feel good about the money that they gave to me.
Or, on the other side of the spectrum, if I am painting 10 rental properties that are each 1,500 square feet (15,000 square feet), I may bring my pricing for ceiling, trim/baseboard, and walls down to $3.50 or $4.00. That would make the job $52,500-$60,000 instead of $75,000.
HOW FAR AWAY IS THE JOB?
Is this job in my general service area (Rives Junction, Jackson, Parma, Spring Arbor, Napoleon, Michigan Center, Vandercook Lake), or is it in Jerome, Eaton Rapids, Mason, Ann Arbor, or Detroit. I have to take into account mobilization costs. Am I driving 15 minutes each way (no real additional cost), or am I driving 90 minutes each way ($50-75 extra a day)?
If you combine this section with the previous section regarding job size, you can see that a client will pay a premium for a small job that is a long drive away. On the other hand, a client could expect to get the best price for a large job that is right in Jackson.
WHAT KIND OF PAINT DO YOU WANT TO USE?
There is a variety of different paint available, and I am going to write a blog on my preferred paints in the future, but let’s just cover some general categories for now. The paints that I use most often are Sherwin Williams HGTV Showcase ($48) sold by Lowe’s (the brightest ceiling paint I have ever seen), Sherwin Williams Duration ($85), Benjamin Moore Regal ($82), and Behr Dynasty ($66). There are also primers to be considered. PVA drywall primer ($17) is very inexpensive, but Zinsser BIN primer ($82) is very expensive.
This can obviously have a pretty big effect on the price of the job, especially if it is a large job that requires a lot of paint. If you are buying 1 or 2 gallons for one bedroom, it doesn’t matter very much. But if you are purchasing 200 gallons, it can make a huge difference. You could get cheap $30 a gallon paint, or you can get $120 a gallon paint. That is going to change your price significantly.
CONCLUSION
As you can see, there are a lot of factors that go into estimating a paint job. Hopefully this has given you an idea of what your job may cost. And hopefully you consider calling me for your next job. Thank you for taking the time to read this, and I hope that it helped educate you in your decision.