Welcome to Romanov Painting, we are really excited that you have landed on this page, because you are about to discover how we estimate your paint job with our handy painting contractor cost code.
You’ll be hard pressed to find our competition willing to share this information with you for the simple fact that by doing so it leaves hardly any room for price increases, which generally come from change of orders.
You see, contractors work with very small margins. Perhaps around 1.5% when working with painting contractor cost and that is why we here at Romanov painting are meticulous with our measurements of square footage.
In order to get the best painting contractor cost for you, several factors need to be considered. Although there are many parts to cost estimating they pretty much break down into two categories:
- Labor: Employee’s, office, vehicles, etc.
- Materials: Paint, paper, caulks, primers, etc.
While most contractors satisfactorily work with round numbers (basic walk through by square foot) knowing that a gallon of premium paint will cover approximately 400 square feet. Where primers may go a little further and finish coats not as far.
Finding the painting contractor cost per area
Here is how to find the painting contractor cost by number of gallons. First, you will need to find the square feet of the area. Let’s say for instance that in order to find the number of gallons for a ceiling we just need to multiply its length by its width in feet and divide the product by 400 or by the number the manufacture’s suggested coverage, before we can get anywhere near the actual painting contractor cost.
To find the quantity of the walls in your room, if the opposing walls are parallel, we measure the length of two adjacent walls double this figure, multiply it by height of the room, and subtract the area of any doors and large windows. Again divide your figure by 400 to find the number of gallons that you need.
If your walls are irregular then you will have to measure the length all the way around; then multiply by the height of the room and continue as before.
The procedure for wood work is pretty much the same. Find the area of the windows, doors, paneling, and so on. One important thing to remember is there are two sides to a closet door.
How many coats do you need?
In order to find the proper amount of gallons of paint you will need in any given room just use our painting contractor cost code in 3 easy steps:
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- Always get your measurements in square feet
- When you have divided by 400, you will know the number of gallons of paint needed for one coat.
- Multiply this figure by the number of coats you are going to put on. Now you will know the amount of paint that you will need.
I know, that is a lot of figuring to do. Why not just guess?
That’s a good question and many homeowners and some painting contractors do guess. The problem we have with playing the guessing game is you will have either not enough paint or too much.
That adds up fast to a lot of waste, either in time or money.
As we mentioned before, the painting contractors cost does not have a lot of margin for error.
Let me give you another example of the math, just to make sure we are on the same page.
Example:
Take a bedroom 10’ x 14’ x8’ with 2 windows, 2 doors and one closet.
The parameter of the room is 48 feet and the height 8 feet. The total wall are of the room is 384 square feet.
The area of each window is 16 ½ square feet. Total for both windows is 33 square feet.
The total of the 2 doors is 42 square feet. The total area to subtract from the wall area is 75 square feet.
This leaves 309 square feet.
Divide this figure by 400 (which is the amount of coverage from a gallon of paint). We now know that each wall will take approximately ¾ of a gallon of paint per coat.
The area of the ceiling equals 140 square feet. This means you will need 1/3 of a gallon per coat. The woodwork is composed of 2 windows totaling 33 square feet and 3 sides of doors, each of which is 21 square feet; The total of all of these is 96 square feet.
If you allow one foot in height for the base board, which is probably 8 inches or less, you will have 48 square feet to add to the 96 and a total woodwork area of 144. This means ½ gallon of paint per coat.
Assuming that you are doing a two coat job and that you will use the same wall flat for the ceiling and walls, you will need a total of 2 gallons and one quart.
1½ gallon for the walls and 1/3 gallon for the ceiling.
The best practice of painting contractor cost is to do the woodwork with one of the interior semi-glosses, and you will need 1/3 gallon for that. Buying a half gallon and a quart is only slightly less expensive than buying a whole gallon, so you will probably do well to buy the full gallon of semi-gloss.
By using our painting contractor cost code before hand, we can purchase the right amount of paint and have only a little left over for any touching up and that may eventually become necessary.
All of our employees here at Romanov painting are trained professionals. They double check all of our square feet measurements as they are preparing the interior and exterior. By doing this we eliminate waste and find any hidden space that may have been over looked.
We encourage you to check out our testimonial section and read from our happy clients. Join them and click on the contact us tab at the top of the page and fill out the form on the right for a free estimate!
If you would like we can even show you how to use our Painting contractors cost code in person.
