Interior painting prices
How Much Does Interior Painting Cost?
Having someone paint the inside of your house in Amador County might run anywhere from about $700 for a small bathroom to somewhere between $7,700 and $20,000 for a whole interior. An average bedroom starts around $1,200. Where your project lands inside that spread comes down to the size of the rooms, the shape the walls are in, and how many colors you want. Our real numbers are below, and none of them sit behind an email gate.
All paint will stick to your walls in the beginning. How long it lasts depends on how much the people doing the work care about the outcome.
That sentence is why two quotes for the same rooms can be thousands of dollars apart, and it’s the honest place to start a page about price.
Before the number
What Moves the Price of an Interior Paint Job
The condition of the walls.
A well maintained home costs less to paint than one that needs a lot of prep. Nail holes, cracked corners, water stains, and rough patches all get fixed before anyone opens a can, because paint over a bad surface fails early no matter what the paint cost.
How many colors you want.
For most interiors we plan on one wall color, one trim color, and one ceiling color. Every color past that means more brushes, more setup, and more paint, and the price follows.
Color changes.
One coat of paint is thinner than a sheet of paper. Going light over dark, or picking a color that covers poorly, can add a coat or two, and there’s no such thing as a guaranteed one-coat paint. Anyone who promises you one is telling you something about their prep, not their paint.
Ceiling height.
Our room prices below assume walls up to 9 feet. Add about 10% for 10-foot walls and about 30% for 12-foot walls, because tall walls mean ladder work on every pass.
Whether you’re living in it.
A sprayed finish usually looks the nicest, but in an occupied home the masking it takes can make it cost more than it’s worth. We aim for the best finish your situation actually allows, and we’ll tell you which application we’d use and why.
Furniture.
A few big pieces we work around are normal. A full room that can’t be emptied adds real time, and time is most of what you’re paying for.
Published, no email required
What Individual Rooms Might Cost
These are starting points for projects of $3,500 or more, with walls up to 9 feet. If we’re painting just one or two rooms, expect roughly 20-30% above these numbers, because dry times between coats don’t shrink just because the job did.
| Room | Starts around | What’s inside that number |
|---|---|---|
| Small full bath or powder room (up to 5'x10') | $700+ | Walls $415, ceiling $85, door and casing $120 per side, baseboard $80, window trim $35 |
| Average bedroom (10'x12' to 12'x14') | $1,200+ | Walls $715, ceiling $275, door and casing $125 per side, baseboard $140, window trim $35 |
| Living room or living/dining combo (about 15'x18') | $1,600+ | Walls $915, ceiling $440, door and casing $125 per side, baseboard $175, window trim $35 |
| Large room or primary bedroom (about 20'x25') | $2,300+ | Walls $1,200, ceiling $800, door and casing $150 per side, baseboard $240, window trim $35 |
Add about 10% for 10-foot walls and about 30% for 12-foot walls.
By square footage
What a Full Interior Might Cost
For a whole-house interior repaint, two coats on the walls with ceilings and trim color matched:
About 1,100 to 1,400 sq ft
$7,700-$12,000
About 1,500 to 1,800 sq ft
$12,000-$16,000
About 1,900 to 2,300 sq ft
$15,000-$20,000
These are honest ballparks, not your number. Your number comes after we’ve walked the rooms with you, and it arrives in writing.
Three numbers on the table
Why Are the Bids So Far Apart?
Get three interior quotes and they usually don’t land close together. The gap is rarely about the paint itself. It’s in what one bid spells out and another leaves vague: how much patching and sanding happens first, whether ceilings and closets and door casings are actually included, how many coats go on, and whether the crew is part of the company team or people found to work that week.
None of that shows up while you’re comparing totals. It shows up after the work starts, when something you assumed was included turns out to cost extra, or the prep gets trimmed to protect the number.
That’s why our written proposal spells the job out: which surfaces, which products, how many coats, what prep comes first. If something needs to change once we’ve started, you approve it in writing before anything in your house changes.
We’re rarely the cheapest bid, and we’d rather you hear that from us now than feel blindsided by it later. Sometimes it runs the other way too. If your job doesn’t need everything we bring, we’ll say so while we’re standing in it.
Straight answers
Interior Painting Cost Questions
Answered here the same way we answer them standing in your hallway.
+How much does it cost to paint a 12x12 room?
A 12x12 bedroom falls in our average bedroom tier, which starts around $1,200: about $715 for the walls, $275 for the ceiling, plus doors and baseboard. If that one room is the whole project, plan on roughly 20-30% above that, since coats still need their dry time on a small job.
+How much does it cost to paint a bedroom, walls and ceiling?
For an average bedroom with walls up to 9 feet, walls run about $715 and the ceiling about $275. A complete bedroom with the door and baseboard included starts around $1,200.
+How much does it cost to paint the trim in a house?
As part of a room, baseboard runs about $80 to $240 per room depending on room size, and a door with its casing runs $120 to $150 per side. Trim alone across a whole house depends on how much of it there is and what shape it’s in, so that one gets a written number after we’ve seen it.
+How much does it cost to paint a 1,500 sq ft house interior?
A 1,500 square foot home usually lands between $12,000 and $16,000 for a full interior, two coats on the walls with the ceilings and trim color matched. A smaller home around 1,100 to 1,400 square feet runs about $7,700 to $12,000, and a larger one from 1,900 to 2,300 square feet runs about $15,000 to $20,000. Where a particular house lands inside its range comes down to how many rooms there are, the shape the walls are in, and how many colors you want. The number that counts is the written one, after we have walked the rooms with you.
+Do painters charge by the hour?
Some do. We don’t, because an hourly rate hides the question that matters: how many hours, and doing what? Two crews can quote the same rate and deliver very different jobs depending on how much prep they intend to do. You get one fixed price for the whole project, in writing, before work starts. If the job takes us longer than we planned, that’s ours to absorb, not yours.
+Is there a house painting cost estimator I can use?
This page is the closest honest version of one: real room prices and real whole-house ranges from our actual jobs. An online calculator can’t see your walls, and the condition of the surface is what moves the number most. The estimate that counts is free, takes one visit, and comes back as a fixed written price.
The 90 second step
Get Your Number
Booking an estimate online takes about 90 seconds. We come measure, you walk us through what you want, and you get a written proposal that fixes the scope and the price. If you hire us, 10% holds your project dates, never more than $1,000.
Want a number for your own place before you book? Get an instant quote.
Michael Hines Painting · Ione, CA 95640 · (209) 256-4587
The other guides
What Everything Else Costs
Same idea, same lack of a form. Every guide we publish is here.
How Much Does It Cost to Paint a House Exterior?
About $6,000 to $22,000 or more.
Read the exterior painting guideHow Much Does It Cost to Paint Kitchen Cabinets?
About $4,000 to $11,800.
Read the cabinet painting guideHow Much Does Deck Staining Cost?
$2,400 to about $24,000.
Read the deck staining guideAll four sit under the painting cost guides hub. For how the work itself is done, see our interior painting page.