What interior painting costs in New York City

Painting looks like the easiest job in a renovation to price. A room has a certain amount of wall, paint covers a certain amount per can, and a painter works at a certain speed. Every cost guide online is built on that arithmetic, and it is why the numbers they print rarely survive contact with an older New York apartment.

The reason is what is under the paint. Plaster over masonry, hairline cracks from a century of movement, patches from earlier work, and trim carrying so many old coats that the detail has gone soft. Paint does not hide any of that. Preparing the wall so it can is often the larger half of the job, and it is the half a per square foot figure never sees.

What moves the number

The condition of the plaster. Loose material has to come off until what is left is sound, the edges cut clean, and each patch keyed in and worked flat. Hairline cracks are opened, filled and taped where they need it. A room with sound walls and a room with tired plaster can be the same size and a very different number of hours.

How many coats, and what colour you are covering. Going from a dark or strong colour to a pale one takes more coats than refreshing like with like. A change of sheen does too. Coats are hours, and hours are the price.

Trim, doors and ceilings. Woodwork is slow, careful work by the metre rather than by the square metre, and a door is painted on both faces and all four edges. Ceilings add height, and height adds set up. A room with plain walls and a room with deep skirting, panelled doors and a high ceiling are not the same job.

Containment in an occupied home. Sanding old plaster makes fine dust that travels. In an apartment you are living in, the work area is sealed, the route in and out is protected, and the common parts are cleaned at the end of each day. That is labour, it is on the quote, and it is the part that makes the job something you can live through.

The hours your building allows. Weekday construction in New York runs from 7am to 6pm, and buildings usually allow less. Paint also needs time to dry between coats, so a crew that can only work a few hours a day spreads the same work over more days.

Why per square foot is the wrong unit

Two rooms of identical size can be a straightforward job and a difficult one, and the difference is entirely in the preparation. That is why we price preparation and decoration as separate lines. You can see what your walls need before they take paint, what the paint itself costs, and how the two compare. A quote that gives you one number per square foot has averaged the two together, and the average is right for nobody.

What a painting quote should show

Preparation by room. Decoration by room. Trim, doors and ceilings as their own lines. Containment and daily clean up. The paint specified by product and finish, so you know what is going on the wall. If a quote does not separate preparation from paint, ask for it to be separated before you compare it with another.

Where you can save

• Paint the whole apartment in one run rather than a room at a time. The protection goes down once and the crew sets up once.
• Stay in the same colour family and sheen where you can. Fewer coats, fewer hours.
• Clear small items and furniture from the rooms yourself before the crew arrives.
• Deal with plaster repair now, while the room is already protected, rather than painting over it and paying twice.

The preparation stays in the quote even when it makes the figure higher. A wall that needed repair and got paint instead shows the repair it did not get within a year, in the first low sun that crosses it.

For how the preparation is actually done, and how we keep the dust inside the room being worked on, see the interior painting page. If you would rather describe the walls and hear what they need, get in touch.

Questions people ask about painting cost