What Should a Painting Pro Charge Per Hour?

Ask ten painters what they charge per hour and you will get ten different answers, and at least half of them are guessing. Here is the truth most crews learn the hard way: your painting hourly rate has almost nothing to do with what the guy across town charges. It has everything to do with your income target, your real overhead, and how many hours you can actually bill in a year. This post walks you through the math backwards, from the paycheck you want to the number you put on a quote.

Why Copying a Competitor's Rate Loses Money

The painter down the road might charge $45 an hour. Great for him, maybe. You have no idea what his overhead looks like, whether he pays himself a real wage, or if he is slowly going broke while staying busy. Copying a rate means you are inheriting someone else's bad math, and you will never know until the year ends and there is nothing in the bank.

Your costs are yours. Your truck payment, your insurance premium, your health coverage, your crew's wages, your city's cost of living: none of that matches your competitor exactly. A rate that keeps him afloat could sink you. Build your own number from the ground up and you will price with confidence instead of fear.

Start With the Income You Actually Want

Before you touch an hourly figure, decide what you want to take home in a year. Not revenue, not gross, but the money you want in your pocket after the business pays its bills. Be honest about your life: mortgage, groceries, retirement, a vacation that is not just driving to another job site.

Let's say you want to pay yourself $70,000 for the year as an owner-operator who also swings a brush. That number is your anchor. Everything else gets added on top of it so the business can both pay you and cover its own existence.

Billable vs Unbillable Hours: The Gap That Kills Rates

This is where most painters go wrong. There are 2,080 work hours in a standard full-time year, but you cannot bill all of them. You spend time driving, buying materials, writing quotes, chasing invoices, cleaning gear, and answering the phone. None of that shows up on a customer's bill, but it all eats your day.

For a typical solo painter or small crew, billable hours often land somewhere between 1,000 and 1,400 per year. That is roughly half to two-thirds of your total work time. If you set your rate assuming 2,080 billable hours, you will come up thousands of dollars short every single year.

Add Up Your Real Overhead

Overhead is every cost of running the business that is not direct job labor or materials you bill separately. These costs exist whether you paint one house or ten this month, so they get spread across your billable hours.

• Liability and workers' comp insurance
• Vehicle payment, fuel, and maintenance
• Phone, software, and admin tools
• Marketing and website
• Equipment: sprayers, ladders, drop cloths, replacement brushes
• Licenses, bonds, and accounting fees
• Small tools and consumables not billed to a specific job

Add these up for a full year. For a lean solo operation, overhead commonly runs $15,000 to $30,000 a year. A small crew with a wrapped truck and more insurance can easily land higher. Use your actual numbers, not a guess, because this figure feeds straight into your rate.

A Worked Example: From Goal to Hourly Rate

Let's put it together for a solo owner-operator. Numbers are illustrative, so swap in yours.

1. Target take-home pay: $70,000
2. Annual overhead: $24,000
3. Taxes and buffer (self-employment tax, slow seasons, surprises), roughly 25 percent on top of pay: $17,500
4. Total the business must generate from labor: $70,000 + $24,000 + $17,500 = $111,500
5. Estimated billable hours this year: 1,200
6. Minimum labor rate: $111,500 divided by 1,200 = about $93 per hour

That $93 might feel high if you have been charging $50. But notice what it includes: your pay, your overhead, your taxes, and the reality that you only bill 1,200 hours. Charging $50 against these same costs would leave you roughly $50,000 short for the year. That is the gap people do not see until it is too late.

If you run a crew, the math shifts. You price each painter's labor to cover their wage, a markup for overhead and profit, and the unbillable time they create. A common approach is to multiply a painter's hourly wage by 2 to 3 times to get the rate you charge the customer for that person's time.

Turn Your Rate Into a Range, Not a Promise

A single rate is a trap. High-prep repaints, lead-safe work, cabinets, and tight commercial deadlines carry more risk and skill, so they earn more. Simple exterior fences or volume new-construction work might run lower. Build a band around your minimum.

• Floor rate: your break-even plus modest profit, for your easiest ideal jobs
• Standard rate: most residential repaints and interiors
• Premium rate: detailed, high-risk, or rush work where mistakes are expensive

Most painters never present an hourly rate to the customer anyway. You quote a project price. But the hourly figure is the engine underneath every estimate, so your flat-rate bids actually make money instead of just winning.

Putting It to Work on the Next Quote

Your rate is only useful if it shows up in your pricing. Estimate the labor hours a job will truly take, including prep and cleanup, multiply by your chosen rate from the band, then add materials with a reasonable markup. That is your project price. When you quote this way, every job carries its fair share of your overhead, your taxes, and your paycheck.

Set the number from your own books, not your neighbor's billboard. Track your billable hours honestly, and revisit the math every year. Do that and your painting hourly rate stops being a guess and starts being the reason the business lasts.