Every painter answers this with “it depends,” which is true and completely useless when you are trying to work out whether to budget three thousand dollars or nine.
So here are real Edmonton numbers, how we arrive at them, and the four things that genuinely move the total. Read the rates first, then read why your house might sit at one end of the range.
The rates, up front
These are our actual published rates, paint included, excluding GST. Most painters will not put numbers on a page at all, which is precisely why comparing quotes is so hard.
- Walls: $1.10 per square foot under 1,000 sq. ft., dropping to $0.90 at 5,000+
- Ceilings: $1.00 per square foot under 500 sq. ft., dropping to $0.75 at 1,500+
- Baseboards and casing: $2.25 per linear foot, or $1.85 over 300 feet
- Doors and frames: $100 flat slab, $125 panel, $200 French — both sides
- Minimum job: $600
Why measured wall area matters more than square footage
This is the single biggest difference between quotes, and almost nobody explains it. Some painters price off your home's floor area — a 1,500 square foot house times some dollar figure. That is a shortcut, and it is why two quotes for the same house can differ by thousands.
We measure the actual wall surface: the perimeter of each room times the wall height. A 14 by 14 bedroom with eight-foot ceilings has 448 square feet of wall, regardless of the fact that its floor is only 196. Normal doors and windows are not subtracted, because the cutting-in around them takes longer than the paint they displace.
That bedroom works out to roughly $490 for walls, or about $690 with the ceiling included. You can do that arithmetic yourself before anyone visits, which is the point.
What a whole-home repaint actually lands at
A full interior package — walls, ceilings, baseboards, and doors — typically comes in between about $3,000 and $9,000 depending on the size of the home.
For a concrete example: a home with 3,200 square feet of measured wall, 1,200 square feet of ceiling, 450 linear feet of baseboard, and eight doors comes to $5,693. Booking it as a complete package takes 5% off, bringing it to $5,408 before GST.
Single rooms cost far less, subject to the $600 minimum job.
The four things that move your number
- Ceiling height and stairwells. Nine-foot, vaulted, and open-to-above spaces need staging, and carry a higher rate for the access involved.
- Wall condition. Sound walls paint fast. Cracks, nail pops, and old patch jobs add hours of repair before any colour goes on.
- Colour change severity. Dark-to-light, or a deep saturated colour, can need a third coat for even coverage.
- Whether you are living there. Occupied homes need more masking and a daily reset, which adds 10 to 15 percent.
How to read a painting quote
A quote worth trusting tells you what is being prepped, which products and sheens are going on, how many coats each surface gets, and what is excluded. If it is a single number with the words “interior painting” beside it, you have no way to compare it to anything.
Ask what the prep includes. Standard filling and sanding should be in the price, not an extra. Ask what happens if they find something worse behind the furniture — the honest answer is that it gets quoted separately, not absorbed silently or sprung on you at the end.