A practical guide to building a painting estimate from project information through customer-ready pricing.
A useful estimate starts with enough project information to explain what is being priced. Capture the contractor, customer, project, address, date, scope notes, cost assumptions, and proposed price.
Start with the area you intend to paint. Your estimating model can then translate area into an approximate paint quantity using a coverage assumption.
Direct costs typically include paint, other materials, and labor. Keeping these components separate makes the calculation easier to review.
Overhead can be represented as a percentage of direct cost in a simple estimating model. The correct percentage depends on the contractor's actual business economics.
Markup can be applied to total cost to reach a proposed selling price. Always review the result against the actual scope and market conditions.
Check the customer name, project, address, calculations, payment terms, notes, and final price before delivering the estimate.