Hey Guys,
I would like to get a little feedback on my painting prices. I don’t do much painting, but I’ve done a lot over the years and consider myself to be very skilled at this trade. I charge .50 per sq. ft for walls and ceilings (per coat) and .70 per LF for trim . This includes materials. I reduce the charge by .10 (sq. ft/LF) for each coat, and I add on for height work. (10% per 5 ft increments). So for instance a 10′ x 10 ‘room with 8’ ceilings and base molding would break down like this:
Ceiling: 100 sq ft
Walls: 320 sq ft
Total sq. ft= 420 (420 x .50= $210.00) (per coat)
Trim 40 LF @ .70 per LF= $28.00 (per coat)
I was just curious to see how you painters out there compare to these figures. Are you getting more? Less? Do my numbers seem rerasonable to you? Unreasonable? I like to check myself now and again since I go by what I feel is right for me, not what other guys are charging. I’m located in New York and these rates have worked well for me, been thinking about kickin’ ’em up a notch though lately, but we”ll see. Thanks for any feedback
Tim
Replies
Tim-
I've beat this horse to death in other threads lately, but your pricing is only "right" if it produces the desired amount of income for you at the end of the day.
If, using your numbers, you get $400 to paint a room, and use $50 in materials, that obviously leaves you $350 for salary, overhead, and profit. If that room takes 5 hours to paint, including setup, prep, cleanup after, etc., you're making a $70/hr rate. If that same room takes 10 hours, your rate is now $35/hr.
Based on your costs of doing business, you need to decide what your hourly rate must be, and price your work accordingly to cover it. Getting comparative pricing from the web is uselss unless the other contractors are in your immediate area, and even getting pricing from your "competition" only serves to see where you sit in the market- high end, lower end, etc. Do yourself a favor and don't set your prices based on what anyone else is charging- set them based on what you need to charge to stay in business- otherwise you won't be there for long.
Bob
Bob, It's a lot easier to have a set price per sq. ft. than to have to figure how many hrs. it will take to paint a room. It's to easy to make a mistake on hrs. but sq. ft. is sq. ft. plus you can make more money (in my opinion) by charging by the sq. ft. don't you agree? If you break everything down fron wall and ceiling sq ft. and trim linear ft and doors and windows you can have a simple estimate plan for each job, just measure and add and fill in the blanks-estimate done.
Tim
Tim-
Agreed, 100%. My point was that determining that square foot price should be based on your costs to produce the job. How can you set a proper "per SF" rate, without considering how long you'll be on a typical job, and what you can produce?
Most of my estimating is done based on unit costs like you've described, but I calculate the unit rates based on productivity, hourly rates, and materials costs. If you know it takes you 5 hours to paint a room with 350SF of walls/ceilings, and you need to charge $60/hr to cover salary, overhead, and profit, and it's going to take $50 in materials to do the job:
Labor: $60/hr x 5 hours = $300.00
Materials: $ 50.00
Total: $350 / 350 SF = $1/SF of wall/ceiling
If you run this calculation for a few different room sizes, you can get a proper unit cost. Once you've done this for flatwork, trim, etc., you can be sure your units costs are right, and not have to rely on the "going rate" or other contractors' rates to se where you stand.
Bob
I'm not Bob but I'll throw in my 2¢. Tim, why would it be any easier to have a "set price per sq. ft" than a
"set labor hour per sq. ft" figure. They are in reality the same thing. You paint enough typical rooms and you will find out that they will average
out to a certain amount of Labor hours per square foot to paint although...and this is sort of important you will find that if rolling primer on a smooth finish wall takes .210 Labor Hours per SF you can roll 2 coats of a finish color on in .340 Labor Hours per SF. Two coats of finish is less than 2 X Rolling the Primer Coat because that second coat of finish goes on so much faster than the first.
You want to break you work down into component groups that you can start getting some statistics for (or use some estimating data book figures) and then multiply them by what you know you need as your hourly billing rate to make money.
Yes "you can make more money (in my opinion) by charging by the sq. ft." provided you have to correct Unit Cost figure in the first place. To get that figure you have to productivity figures (SF per Hour data) and know your real cost of doing business.
"If you break everything down fron wall and ceiling sq ft. and trim linear ft and doors and windows you can have a simple estimate plan for each job, just measure and add and fill in the blanks-estimate done. " That is the right thinking but how do you know how much to charge for those Units?
Ya know you can compare a Labor Productivity figures (SF per Hour data) from anywhere in the country to anywhere else in the county but as soon as you convert those figures to $ per SF you can't compare them. It takes the same time (SF per Hour) to paint a wall in rural Texas as it does in suburban NY but since the Labor costs are so dramatically different the suburban New York $ per SF figure will be almost twice as high as Texas. Are you seeing what I'm saying?
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I see you charge per foot of wall for trim rather than per foot of trim or any formula that includes # of windows and doors ?
Phill Giles
The Unionville Woodwright
Unionville, Ontario
I don't understand what you are saying Phil, Can you explain a little better?
Tim
If you sketch out your example as described, with contiguous walls and the length of trim equal to the perimeter, you'll show a window-less, door-less room. If that were really the case, you'd just quote a single inclusive rate. And that could be transmuted into price per sq ft of floor (probably just as close). So the qustion really becomes, how do you charge for doors/windows/casing etc. ?.
Phill Giles
The Unionville Woodwright
Unionville, Ontario