Painting Production Rate
Gallons, crew hours, crew days, and labor cost for a paint job from area, coats, coverage, and the production rate your crew actually holds.
Production rate counts painted square feet per painter hour on the finished wall, including taping, cutting in, and prep. 100 to 150 sq ft per hour is a typical interior crew.
How the math works
- Coating area: wall and ceiling area × coats. Two coats on 1,800 sq ft is 3,600 sq ft of coating work, and the crew rate applies to the coating, not to the room.
- Gallons: coating area ÷ coverage × 1.10. The 10% is surface absorption, two-coat overlap on patches, primer sopping into repaired drywall, and the paint left in the bucket. New drywall takes 15 to 20% more than a sound painted wall.
- Production rate: painted square feet per painter hour. 100 to 150 is a typical interior range in 2026; empty rooms with furniture moved out run near 150, occupied homes with moving, masking, and trim work run 80 to 110, and textured ceilings and high walls drop it further.
- Crew hours: coating area ÷ (painters × production rate). Crews do not scale linearly: the second and third painter add taping, cutting-in, and clean-up time, so a four-painter crew on a small house rarely doubles a two-painter crew.
- Prep is the schedule: patching, sanding, masking, and caulking run 15 to 30% of total labor on a repaint and 40 to 60% on new drywall. Add it to the labor line, do not pretend the coating day absorbed it.
- Cost per square foot: labor ÷ wall area, which is the number that shows up in a paint quote. 2026 interior painting quotes run $2 to $6 per sq ft of wall surface all-in with materials.
How many gallons for a 1,800 square foot house?
Two coats on 1,800 sq ft of wall and ceiling is 3,600 sq ft of coating: 11 gallons at 350 sq ft per gallon with waste. A 3,000 sq ft single story with 200 sq ft of trim is usually 14 to 16 gallons for two coats.
What production rate is realistic?
100 to 150 sq ft per painter hour for interiors in 2026. A crew painting empty, one-color walls with taped edges holds the top of that range; an occupied home with colour changes, trim, and furniture moves 80 to 110.
How long to paint a 1,800 sq ft house interior?
Three painters at 120 sq ft per hour, two coats, 1,800 sq ft: 15 crew hours, two days of coating. Add one to two days of prep and the job is four working days, which is the schedule a customer should be quoted.