Cost to Paint a Room in NJ: Per Room, Per Square Foot, Time and Paint

The cost to paint a room in New Jersey starts around $450 for the walls of a standard bedroom and runs to $700 to $1,300 once the ceiling and trim are included. Those are the figures from our own price tables. National cost guides land in the same area: This Old House (April 2026) puts an average bedroom at $300 to $800, and Homewyse (September 2026) puts a small room with prep, two coats and door trim at $4.26 to $8.29 per square foot. A living room, a kitchen and a two-story stairwell each price differently, and the reasons are wall area, height, trim and prep.

We are a family-owned painting company in Morganville and have painted homes across Monmouth, Middlesex, Ocean, Mercer, Somerset and Burlington counties for more than 20 years, using Benjamin Moore and Sherwin-Williams products. This guide answers the single-room questions we hear most: how much it costs, how the price is built, how long it takes and how much paint to buy. Every New Jersey number comes from our own NJ painting cost guide or our published room table. Every national number is attributed to the guide it came from, and the dry times and coverage figures come from the manufacturers' data sheets. For a full interior or exterior, see our guide to what it costs to paint a house in NJ.

The Short Answer: How Much Does It Cost to Paint a Room?

• A standard bedroom in NJ: about $450 to $750 for walls only, and $700 to $1,300 for walls, ceiling and trim, per our room table.
• A living room (15x20): about $800 to $1,500 for walls, and $1,200 to $2,400 with ceiling and trim.
• A powder room or small bath: about $375 to $600 for walls, and $500 to $900 with ceiling and trim.
• National average cost to paint a room: Fixr (January 2025) gives $990 to $1,320 with a national average of $1,200. This Old House (April 2026) gives $300 to $800 for a bedroom and $600 to $2,000 for a living room.
• Per square foot: our cost guide prices walls at $1 to $2 per square foot of wall and ceilings at $1 to $2.50 per square foot. A full interior runs $2 to $6 per square foot of floor area.
• Labor vs materials: on our estimates labor is usually 80 to 85 percent of the total. Paint for one bedroom is two gallons for the walls and one for the ceiling.
• Time: a crew of two paints a standard bedroom in most of a day. The paint is dry to the touch in about an hour, and the data sheets ask you to wait two weeks before washing the walls.

Cost to Paint a Room by Room Type

The table below is the room table from our whole-house guide. These are the ranges we quote most often for occupied homes with average prep. We price by surface area and by how much preparation the room needs, not by a flat fee per room, so read each row as a range and not a quote.

For comparison, here is what the national guides we could fetch say. They do not agree with each other, and none of them is a New Jersey quote.

Bedrooms

A bedroom is the simplest room to price. The walls are flat, the ceiling is usually eight feet and the trim is baseboard, a door and two windows. What changes the number is the closet (a walk-in is a small room of its own), how much furniture has to be moved and covered, and the color. This Old House prices closets, nooks and pantries at $50 to $150 each nationally.

Living rooms and dining rooms

Living rooms cost more because there is more wall and often more height. Open floor plans add a second question: where does the color stop? A wall that runs from the living room into a hallway has to be painted to a corner, so one "room" can include more wall than its floor area suggests. Dining rooms carry more trim per foot than any other room, with chair rail and crown molding in many central New Jersey colonials.

Kitchens

A kitchen has little open wall, and most of the time goes to cutting in around cabinets, backsplash tile, windows and appliances. Kitchen walls also need washing first, because paint does not bond well to cooking residue. Sherwin-Williams' data sheet for Duration Home says existing painted surfaces "must be thoroughly washed clean and allowed to dry" before any finish is applied. The prices above are for walls and ceiling. Cabinets are a separate job at $3,000 to $9,500, covered in our cabinet painting cost guide.

Bathrooms

A small bath has the least wall of any room and still starts at $375, because the setup, protection and cutting in around a toilet, vanity, mirror and tile take the same time whatever the square footage. Bathrooms also call for a paint made for moisture. Sherwin-Williams describes Duration Home Interior Latex as offering "durability in moist environments like bathrooms," and Benjamin Moore's guide to choosing a paint finish points to its Aura Bath & Spa line for "high-humidity environments."

Hallways and stairwells

Hallways and stairwells have the widest range in the table, $800 to $2,000 for walls alone, and height is the reason. Our cost guide prices two-story foyers, cathedral ceilings and open stairwells closer to $6 per square foot, because work from a ladder over a stair rail goes at a fraction of floor-level speed. A flat single-story hallway sits at the bottom of the range.

Ceilings, trim and doors

These are priced as separate lines, and they explain most of the gap between a walls-only price and a full-room price.

• Ceilings: $1 to $2.50 per square foot in our cost guide. Homewyse's national figure for September 2026 is $1.38 to $2.98 per square foot. A textured ceiling runs about $0.50 to $1.00 per square foot more than a flat one in our pricing, and our popcorn ceiling removal cost guide covers taking the texture off.
• Trim and baseboard: $1 to $3 per linear foot in our cost guide. This Old House gives the same range nationally.
• Interior doors: $40 to $150 each in our cost guide. This Old House gives $40 to $100 and Fixr $35 to $50 per door nationally.

In our whole-house article we note that adding trim to a walls-only quote typically adds 50 to 80 percent. Trim is slow, detailed brushwork in a harder finish, and it is the part of the room people look at closest.

The 12x12 Room, Worked Out Line by Line

A 12 by 12 room with an eight-foot ceiling is the example most people search for, so here is the arithmetic. Our assumptions: one door opening of 3 by 7 feet and two windows of 3 by 5 feet.

• Gross wall area: the perimeter is 12 + 12 + 12 + 12 = 48 feet. 48 feet x 8 feet = 384 square feet.
• Openings: door 3 x 7 = 21 square feet. Windows 2 x (3 x 5) = 30 square feet. Total 51 square feet.
• Net wall area: 384 - 51 = 333 square feet.
• Ceiling: 12 x 12 = 144 square feet.
• Baseboard: 48 feet less the 3-foot door opening = 45 linear feet.
• Casing: the door is 7 + 7 + 3 = 17 linear feet on the room side. Each window is 3 + 3 + 5 + 5 = 16 linear feet, so 32 for two. Baseboard and casing together are 45 + 17 + 32 = 94 linear feet.

Now apply the unit prices from our cost guide:

That lines up with the bedroom row in our room table: $700 to $1,300 for an 11x12 with ceiling and trim. A 12x12 has one more foot of width, so expect that row or slightly above it. The low end of the unit-price sum, $611, is below what a single room really costs, and the next section explains why.

Labor cost to paint a 12x12 room

On our estimates, labor is usually 80 to 85 percent of the total. Applied to the $700 to $1,300 bedroom range, that is about $560 to $1,105 in labor and about $105 to $260 in paint, primer, caulk, tape, plastic and other supplies (15 to 20 percent of the same range). Nationally, Fixr (January 2025) puts a 12 by 12 room at $215 to $505 for the walls and $430 to $575 with ceiling, trim and baseboards, and says painters charge $25 to $100 per hour or $1.50 to $3.50 per square foot. Bob Vila's guide (August 2022) gives roughly $400 to $900 for a 12 by 12 room and a labor range of $170 to $680. New Jersey labor costs more than the national middle, which is why our range sits above both.

A higher ceiling changes the arithmetic directly. At nine feet, the same room has 48 x 9 = 432 square feet of gross wall and 381 net, which is 48 square feet, or about 14 percent, more wall to prep and paint twice.

Per Square Foot, Per Room or Hourly: How Painters Price a Room

The three ways of pricing describe the same job. Knowing how each works helps you compare quotes.

Per square foot

Be clear which square foot is meant. Wall prices ($1 to $2 in our cost guide) are per square foot of wall. Whole-interior prices ($2 to $6 per square foot in our cost guide, and $1 to $4 nationally according to This Old House) are per square foot of floor. Homewyse's September 2026 estimate of $4.26 to $8.29 per square foot is for a small room measured by floor area, and covers prep, caulking, spot priming, two coats and up to two doors with their trim. At the 129 square feet its calculator assumes, that works out to about $550 to $1,070.

A whole-house rate does not carry over to one room. Our whole-house article gives $2.75 to $5.00 per square foot of floor area for a full interior. Multiply that by 144 square feet and you get $396 to $720, well under the $700 to $1,300 a single bedroom with ceiling and trim actually runs. The difference is fixed cost. Travel, setup, floor protection, cleanup and waiting for coats to dry are the same for one room as for the first room of ten, and on a whole house they are spread over every room.

Per room

A per-room price is a square-foot price that has already been worked out for a typical room. It is useful for budgeting and risky for comparing bids, because "a bedroom" does not say whether the ceiling, closet, door and trim are in. Two quotes of $500 and $900 for the same room are often a walls-only price and a full-room price.

Hourly

This Old House puts painters at $30 to $60 per hour for standard work and $75 or more for specialty jobs. Fixr gives $25 to $100. We price by the job and not by the hour. A fixed price for a written scope means a slow day is our problem and not yours. Hourly pricing makes sense for small repair visits and touch-ups where the scope cannot be known in advance.

What Moves the Price of a Room

• Ceiling height. More wall, and above eight or nine feet, ladders and staging. Stairwells and two-story foyers are the expensive version of this.
• Repairs. Ordinary nail holes, dents and small cracks are included in our interior price. Heavier patching and sanding runs about $0.50 to $0.75 per square foot in our cost guide. See our drywall repair cost guide for holes, nail pops and ceiling cracks.
• Color change. Going from a dark color to a light one needs a primer and sometimes a third coat. Sherwin-Williams' Duration Home data sheet says that when repainting "involves a drastic color change, or coating over heavily stained areas, a coat of primer will improve the hiding performance of the topcoat color." Staying in the same color family is the cheapest repaint there is.
• Sheen. Flat paint hides wall flaws. Eggshell, satin and gloss show them, so they need more prep. Benjamin Moore's finish guide warns that a gloss finish "can accentuate blemishes." Our paint sheen guide compares the options room by room.
• Trim, doors and closets. Each is a separate line. Six-panel doors, crown molding, chair rail, wainscoting and built-ins all add brush time.
• Accent walls and extra colors. Each color is another cut line and another setup. Our cost guide puts accent work at 20 to 30 percent more.
• Wallpaper. It has to come off first. Our cost guide puts removal near $3 per square foot, roughly $535 to strip a 12 by 12 bedroom. Our wallpaper removal cost guide goes into the detail.
• Furniture and occupied rooms. We move furniture to the center, cover it and paper the floors. A full room takes longer than an empty one, and a room that has to be usable again each night takes longer still.
• The age of the house. The EPA's Renovation, Repair and Painting program requires that "anyone paid to perform work that disturbs painted surfaces in homes, childcare facilities and preschools built before 1978 be certified." Sanding and scraping in an older room has to be set up lead-safe. Our guide to lead paint in older NJ homes explains what that involves.

Painter, Handyman or DIY?

All three can produce a good room. They differ in price, speed and who carries the risk.

How much does a handyman charge to paint a room?

Fixr's handyman cost guide (January 2025) puts handyman rates at $50 to $100 per hour, with most charging around $65 and a minimum charge of about $130 for short visits. For painting, it lists a 10 by 10 room at $400 to $1,000, not including paint and supplies. That overlaps the range a painting company charges, so the hourly rate alone does not make a handyman cheaper.

A handyman is a reasonable choice for one small, simple room, a single accent wall or touch-ups combined with other odd jobs. The points to check are the same ones you would check with a painter: whether prep, primer and two coats are in the price, who supplies the paint, and whether the person is insured. A painting crew usually finishes faster because two or three people work the room at once with the equipment already on the truck, and a company should put the scope and a workmanship warranty in writing. Our guide to choosing a painting contractor in NJ lists what to ask for.

Painting a room yourself

DIY is the cheapest route in cash. Bob Vila's guide (August 2022) says homeowners can buy paint and supplies for around $200 to $300, and at the paint quantities worked out below that is believable for one bedroom. What you spend is time. A room is a fair weekend job for a careful first-timer: one day for moving furniture, patching, sanding, caulking and priming, and one for two coats.

The honest pros and cons:

• For DIY: low cash cost, your own schedule, and walls are forgiving in a flat or matte finish.
• Against DIY: cut lines at the ceiling and trim are where an untrained hand shows, ceilings are hard work, tall stairwells are a fall risk, and you have to buy brushes, rollers, a pole, drop cloths and a ladder if you do not own them.
• For a professional: speed, straight lines, proper repairs, and someone to call if something fails.
• Against a professional: cost, and you work to the crew's schedule.

A sensible split, if the budget is tight, is to paint the bedrooms yourself and hire out the stairwell, the ceilings and the trim.

How Long Does It Take to Paint a Room?

For a professional crew, a standard bedroom is a one-day job. In our whole-house article we describe a 12 by 14 bedroom with smooth walls as taking a crew of two most of a day, and the same room with a popcorn ceiling, four windows, crown molding and a closet as a day and a half. The work divides into prep, coats and waiting.

Prep

Prep is moving and covering furniture, protecting the floor, removing switch plates and hardware, washing where needed, filling holes, sanding, caulking gaps at the trim and spot priming the patches. Benjamin Moore's Regal Select data sheet asks that surfaces be "clean, dry, and free of dirt, dust, grease, oil, soap, wax, scaling paint, water soluble materials, and mildew," and adds that "drywall surfaces must be free of sanding dust." In a room in good condition this is the first part of the morning. In a room with real wall damage it can be longer than the painting.

Dry time and recoat time, from the data sheets

How long to paint a room depends heavily on how soon the second coat can go on. These are the manufacturers' own figures, all measured at 77 degrees F and 50 percent relative humidity:

Three things follow. First, two coats on the walls fit in one day with either wall paint, which is why a bedroom is a one-day job. Second, trim painted in a hard-drying enamel such as Advance needs 16 hours between coats, so a room with two coats on the trim runs into a second day. Third, these times stretch in a cold or damp room. The Regal Select data sheet says "high humidity and cool temperatures will result in longer dry, recoat and service times," and both wall paints set a minimum application temperature of 50 degrees F.

When you can use the room

Dry is not the same as cured. You can usually move furniture back the same evening or the next morning, taking care not to lean anything against the walls. Benjamin Moore says painted surfaces "can be washed after two weeks," and Sherwin-Williams says to "wait at least 14 days before washing" Duration Home. For trim, the Advance data sheet notes that "it could take up to 30 days to reach optimum hardness and final sheen," so go easy on freshly painted doors and windowsills for the first few weeks.

How Much Paint Do I Need to Paint a Room?

The formula is wall area, times the number of coats, divided by the coverage per gallon.

Coverage is printed on the data sheet. Benjamin Moore lists Regal Select at 400 to 450 square feet per gallon. Sherwin-Williams lists Duration Home at 350 to 400 square feet per gallon. This Old House and our own cost guide use the same 350 to 400 figure as a rule of thumb. Benjamin Moore's sheet adds that the real spread rate depends "on surface texture and porosity," so new drywall, patched walls and textured ceilings take more.

For the 12x12 room above:

• Walls: 333 square feet x 2 coats = 666 square feet. At 350 to 400 square feet per gallon that is 1.7 to 1.9 gallons. Buy two gallons.
• Ceiling: 144 square feet x 2 coats = 288 square feet, or 0.7 to 0.8 gallons. Buy one gallon.
• Trim and door: a quart of trim enamel covers a room like this.

How much paint to paint a room of another size follows the same steps. The table uses gross wall area at an eight-foot ceiling, before doors and windows are deducted, so the real need is a little lower than the range shown.

Do not plan on one coat to save paint. Benjamin Moore's sheet says that although one-coat coverage is sometimes achievable, it "recommends two coats to achieve full color development and to optimize performance." Its paint calculator also assumes two coats. On price, This Old House puts mid-tier paint at $35 to $50 per gallon and premium paint at $50 to $60 or more, so the three gallons for a bedroom's walls and ceiling run roughly $105 to $180 at those prices and more for top-of-the-line products. Our Benjamin Moore vs Sherwin-Williams comparison covers which lines are worth the money.

What a Room Painting Estimate Should Itemize

A written estimate for one room should let you see exactly what you are buying. Look for:

1. Surfaces, by name. Walls, ceiling, baseboard, window and door casing, doors (one side or both), closet interior. If it is not listed, it is not in the price.
2. Prep. What gets patched, sanded, caulked and primed, and what counts as extra repair.
3. Product and sheen. The manufacturer, the product line and the finish for walls, ceiling and trim, not just "premium paint."
4. Number of coats on each surface, and whether a primer coat is included for a color change.
5. Protection and furniture. Who moves what, and how floors and furnishings are covered.
6. Schedule. Start day, number of days and working hours.
7. Price, payment terms and warranty, in writing.

Give every painter the same list. Most of the spread between room quotes comes from different scopes, not different prices for the same work.

Ways to Spend Less on Painting a Room

• Do several rooms in one visit. The setup cost is paid once. Three bedrooms on one job cost less per room than three separate visits.
• Skip the ceiling if it is still clean and white. Ceilings do not wear the way walls do.
• Keep the trim color, or leave sound trim alone and paint only the walls.
• Stay close to the existing color. Two coats in a similar color cost less than primer plus two or three coats over a dark wall.
• Empty the room. Clear shelves, take down pictures and curtains, and move small furniture out before the crew arrives.
• Paint before you move in, when the rooms are empty.

What we would not cut: prep, primer on patches and the second coat. Those are what make the job last.

Get a Price for Your Room

The ranges here are for planning. The real number comes from measuring your walls and looking at their condition. NJ Painting Co. is a family-owned, licensed and fully insured painting company at 36 Church Rd, Morganville, NJ 07751, working on New Jersey homes for more than 20 years with Benjamin Moore and Sherwin-Williams products. Every estimate is free, includes an in-home color consultation, and spells out the surfaces, prep, product and number of coats; our work carries a two-year workmanship warranty. We paint single rooms as well as whole houses. See our interior painting service and the full cost guide, check coverage on our Monmouth County, Middlesex County and Ocean County pages, or call (732) 239-0932 and request a free estimate.

Frequently Asked Questions

How much does it cost to paint a room?

In New Jersey, our price tables put a standard bedroom at about $450 to $750 for walls only and $700 to $1,300 with the ceiling and trim, and a 15x20 living room at $800 to $1,500 for walls or $1,200 to $2,400 with ceiling and trim. Nationally, Fixr (January 2025) gives $990 to $1,320 per room, and This Old House (April 2026) gives $300 to $800 for a bedroom.

What is the average cost to paint a room?

Fixr puts the national average at $1,200 per room (January 2025). Averages hide a lot: a powder room and a two-story stairwell are both "a room." A better guide is the room type and whether the ceiling and trim are included.

How much to paint a room that is 12x12?

A 12x12 room with an eight-foot ceiling has about 333 square feet of wall after one door and two windows are deducted, and a 144-square-foot ceiling. Priced from our cost guide's unit prices, walls, ceiling, trim and one door add up to roughly $611 to $1,458. Our bedroom range of $700 to $1,300 with ceiling and trim is the realistic figure for a single room.

What is the labor cost to paint a 12x12 room?

Labor is usually 80 to 85 percent of our price, so on a $700 to $1,300 room it is about $560 to $1,105. Nationally, Fixr says painters charge $25 to $100 per hour or $1.50 to $3.50 per square foot, and Bob Vila's 2022 guide gives a labor range of $170 to $680 per room.

How much does a handyman charge to paint a room?

Fixr's handyman guide (January 2025) gives $50 to $100 per hour, with most around $65, and $400 to $1,000 to paint a 10 by 10 room, not including paint and supplies. That is close to what a painting company charges, so compare the scope, the insurance and the warranty as well as the price.

How long does it take to paint a room?

A crew of two paints a standard bedroom in most of a day, and a room with a textured ceiling, crown molding and a closet in about a day and a half. Wall paint is dry to the touch in about an hour and ready for a second coat in one to four hours at 77 degrees F, according to the Benjamin Moore and Sherwin-Williams data sheets. Trim enamel can need 16 hours between coats.

How much paint do I need to paint a room?

Multiply the perimeter by the ceiling height, subtract doors and windows, double it for two coats and divide by 350 to 400 square feet per gallon. A 12x12 bedroom needs two gallons for the walls and one for the ceiling. A 15x20 living room needs about three gallons for the walls.

Is it cheaper to paint a room yourself?

In cash, yes. Bob Vila's guide puts DIY paint and supplies at around $200 to $300. You pay in time, usually a weekend for one room, and the hard parts are the cut lines, the ceiling and anything high. Many homeowners paint bedrooms themselves and hire out stairwells, ceilings and trim.

Does the price include the ceiling and trim?

Only if the estimate says so. A walls-only price and a full-room price for the same bedroom can differ by several hundred dollars. Ask for the ceiling, baseboard, casing, doors and closet to be listed by name.