Painting Prices in NJ by Service

Straight answer: a professional interior repaint in New Jersey runs $2 to $6 per square foot of floor area. The national average for a whole-home interior sits around $2,022, with most projects landing between $350 and $5,800 (Angi, 2026), and This Old House puts a full interior at $1,800 to $10,000 (2026). New Jersey lands in the upper half of that band. Labor here costs what labor here costs, and labor is most of the bill.

Those per-square-foot numbers assume walls only. Add trim, doors and ceilings and you move toward the top of the range — roughly $4.70 per square foot for walls, trim and ceilings together versus about $2.75 for a plain wall repaint (Angi, 2026). That distinction explains most of the gap between two bids on the same house. Check that both cover the same surfaces.

What a room costs

Room	Typical size	Price range
Bathroom	40–70 sq ft	$150 – $650
Bedroom	10 x 12 ft	$300 – $850
Primary bedroom	200+ sq ft	$650 – $1,400
Kitchen walls	varies	$150 – $750
Dining room	150–200 sq ft	$600 – $1,000
Living room	340 sq ft	$600 – $2,000
Hallway and entry	varies	$300 – $1,000
Stairway	per linear foot	$15 – $30

To build the number yourself: trim and baseboard run $1 to $3 per linear foot, interior doors $40 to $150 each, ceilings $1 to $2.50 per square foot, and walls alone $1 to $2. A gallon of quality interior paint covers 350 to 400 square feet.

What drives the price up

• A house built before 1978. Federal lead-safe rules apply to any paid work that disturbs more than six square feet of painted surface in a room of a pre-1978 home. Work under that rule has to be carried out by an EPA-certified renovator, with plastic containment, HEPA vacuums and a cleaning verification at the end, so the same room costs more in a 1960s Colonial than in a house built last decade. Ask any bidder on an older house how they are handling it.
• Walls that need work before paint. Patching and sanding runs about $0.50 to $0.75 per square foot on its own. Heavy texture can add up to half again to the budget, and wallpaper removal runs near $3 per square foot — roughly $535 to strip a 12 x 12 bedroom.
• Popcorn ceilings. Scraping runs $1 to $2 per square foot, plus skim coat and sand. On a pre-1978 ceiling it also has to be tested first, because that texture is a classic place for asbestos.
• Going dark to light. A deep red or navy under a soft white needs tinted primer plus two finish coats, sometimes three. Nobody publishes a clean figure for it, so we will not invent one — but it is an extra pass over every wall.
• Height and reach. Two-story foyers, cathedral ceilings and open stairwells price closer to $6 per square foot, because a man on a ladder over a stair rail works at a fraction of floor-level speed.
• Accent walls and multiple colors. Each extra color is another cut line to keep straight and another bucket to stage. Accent work typically adds 20 to 30 percent.

What is included in our price

• Furniture moved to the center and covered, floors papered and taped, fixtures and hardware removed.
• Nail holes, dents and cracks patched and sanded; gaps at trim and ceilings caulked.
• Spot priming on every patch and stain, full primer where the color change or the substrate needs it.
• Two finish coats of Benjamin Moore or Sherwin-Williams, cut in by hand at every edge.
• Daily cleanup, a final walkthrough with you, and a two-year workmanship warranty.
• A free written estimate with an in-home color consultation.

Why the cheapest bid usually costs the most

Labor is 75 to 95 percent of an interior painting job. So when one bid comes in thirty percent under the others, almost none of that discount comes out of the paint — it comes out of hours, and the hours that get cut are always prep. You will not see it on day one. You will see it in eighteen months, when the caulk lines split, the patches telegraph through, and the trim chips at the first knock. Then you pay a second crew to sand off the first crew's work.

We have painted homes in Monmouth, Middlesex and Ocean counties for more than twenty years, and we would rather lose a bid than win it by pricing out the prep. See how we handle interior painting, look through the gallery, check that we cover your town, then ask for a free written estimate.

Straight answer: exterior painting in New Jersey runs $1.50 to $4.50 per square foot of paintable surface. The national average is about $3,178, with most jobs between $600 and $7,700 (Angi, 2026). A typical 2,000-square-foot home comes in around $4,400 to $8,800 (This Old House, 2026).

New Jersey prices above the national middle, and there is data behind that rather than just local grumbling: for the same 1,500-square-foot house, the Mideast region that includes New Jersey averages about $4,300, against $2,300 on the Plains and $2,400 in the Southwest (Angi, 2026). Our winters, our salt air along the shore, and our labor market all show up in that number.

What it costs by home size

Home size	Typical total
1,000 sq ft	$2,200 – $4,400
1,500 sq ft	$3,300 – $6,600
2,000 sq ft	$4,400 – $8,800
2,500 sq ft	$5,500 – $11,000
3,000 sq ft	$6,600 – $13,200

Stories matter as much as square footage. A single-story ranch generally runs $1,500 to $3,500, a two-story $3,000 to $6,200, and a three-story $4,500 to $10,000 or more (Angi, 2026). The cleanest way to think about height is as a multiplier on the labor: surfaces above eight feet add roughly thirty percent, above thirteen feet sixty percent, and above seventeen feet ninety percent. That is not a markup, it is staging, ladder jacks, planks, and a crew that has to reset every twelve feet instead of walking the wall.

What it costs by siding

Siding	Price per sq ft
Vinyl	$1.50 – $4.50
Wood and cedar	$1.50 – $5.00
Stucco	$2.00 – $5.00
Aluminum	$2.00 – $4.50
Brick	$2.50 – $5.00

What drives the price up

• A house built before 1978. Federal lead-safe rules kick in on the exterior of a pre-1978 home once more than twenty square feet of paint is disturbed — which any real scrape job does immediately. That work has to be carried out by an EPA-certified renovator, and ground sheeting, contained scraping and a verified cleanup all take hours a quick sand-and-shoot does not, so ask any bidder on an older house how they are handling it.
• Failed caulk and rotted wood. This is the honest one. Caulking and sealing a house perimeter runs $200 to $500, and siding in poor condition can add sixty percent to the prep. Nobody enjoys finding soft sill noses behind the old caulk. Rotted wood is carpentry rather than painting, so we price the paint and tell you what needs a carpenter first — paint over rot is a two-year job, not a ten-year one.
• Scraping and stripping. Scraping and sanding runs $0.50 to $2.50 per square foot, chemical or heat stripping $0.50 to $2. On a cedar-sided house in Middletown with three failing coats on it, this is the single largest line on the estimate.
• Three-story access and staging. Shore colonials with a walk-out basement are functionally three stories on the back elevation. Add pump jacks or scaffold on a slope and the height multipliers above compound quickly.
• A big color change. Going from a dark stain to a light body color, or covering a strong accent, means a full prime coat plus two finish coats across the whole envelope.
• Power washing. Runs $240 to $400 on a typical home and is not optional. Paint does not bond to chalk, mildew or pollen, and the shore gets all three.

What is included in our price

• Full power wash, scrape, and sand of every failing surface before anything else happens.
• Bare wood spot-primed the same day it is exposed, and full primer wherever the substrate or the color change calls for it.
• Caulking at joints, window and door perimeters, and trim intersections with a quality exterior sealant.
• Two finish coats of 100 percent acrylic Benjamin Moore or Sherwin-Williams exterior paint.
• Shrubs, walkways, decks and driveways covered; the site cleaned every evening, not just at the end.
• A two-year workmanship warranty and a free written estimate with a color consultation.

Why the cheapest bid usually costs the most

A proper exterior lasts six to ten years. Price the job by the year instead of by the invoice and the math turns over fast: a $9,000 job that holds for nine years costs $1,000 a year, while a $6,000 job that fails in three costs $2,000 a year — and the second one leaves you paying someone to strip the failure before the real work can start. Cheap exterior bids are almost always a shorter prep phase wearing a lower number.

Twenty years of Jersey weather has taught us where houses fail first. Read more about our exterior process, see finished homes in the gallery, confirm we work in your town, and get a free written estimate.

Straight answer: cabinet painting is quoted by the door and drawer front — roughly $70 to $125 per door and $30 to $110 per drawer front, or $30 to $70 per linear foot of cabinetry. A typical New Jersey kitchen lands between $2,500 and $6,500, with a national average near $4,000 (Fixr, 2026).

Compare that with the alternative. New cabinets average about $7,000 installed and range from $4,000 to $14,000, plus $350 to $1,000 to tear out and haul away what is there. Refacing runs $3,000 to $13,500. Painting is the cheapest of the three by a wide margin, and on sound solid-wood boxes it changes the room most for the money.

What it costs by what you are counting

What you are counting	Unit	Price
Cabinet door	each	$70 – $125
Drawer front	each	$30 – $110
Cabinet box and face frame	each	$75 – $150
Priced by the run	per linear foot	$30 – $70
Small kitchen	70–100 sq ft of cabinet surface	$1,000 – $3,500
Medium kitchen	100–200 sq ft	$3,500 – $7,000
Large kitchen	200+ sq ft	$5,000 – $10,000+
Bathroom vanity	whole unit	$200 – $2,000

Count your doors and drawer fronts before you call anybody. It takes two minutes, and it is the one number that lets you compare three cabinet bids honestly. A kitchen with thirty doors and twelve drawers is a different job from one with eighteen and six, however similar the rooms look.

What drives the price up

• Oak, and its grain. Open-grain red oak telegraphs straight through paint unless the pores are filled and sanded first — an extra full cycle of grain filler, sand, prime and sand across every door face. No cost guide publishes a reliable premium for it, so we will not quote one, but it is the most common reason a cabinet estimate on an older Jersey kitchen runs above the national range. A bid that does not mention it has not planned for it.
• Stripping an existing finish. Runs $600 to $1,500 when a previous coat has to come off rather than be scuffed and coated over. Factory catalyzed finishes in good shape can be degreased and abraded; peeling or heavily worn ones cannot.
• Repairs before finish. Loose joints, blown-out hinge screws, delaminated veneer and swollen sink-base bottoms run roughly $130 to $470 to put right. Paint will not fix a door that no longer closes square.
• Sprayed versus brushed. Spraying means doors come off, get labeled, and get finished flat in a controlled space, with the boxes masked and sprayed in place. It is the only way to get a finish with no brush texture. No published source puts a clean figure on the difference, but it is days of extra setup, not hours.
• The coating you specify. A wall latex at $12 to $25 a gallon and a cabinet-grade alkyd at $20 to $55 are not interchangeable. Kitchen doors get fingernails, grease and cleaner daily; wall paint stays soft and marks within weeks.
• New hardware. Swapping knobs and pulls runs $50 to $500, and changing hole spacing means filling and re-drilling every door.

What is included in our price

• Doors and drawer fronts removed, numbered, and finished flat in a masked spray area.
• Full degrease, because every kitchen has cooking oil on the uppers whether you can see it or not.
• Sand, bonding primer, and sand again between coats on every surface, faces and edges.
• Two sprayed finish coats of a cabinet-grade enamel, not wall paint.
• Boxes, face frames and interiors of open shelving painted to match; hinges adjusted on rehang.
• Roughly four to five working days for a typical kitchen, plus a two-year workmanship warranty.

Why the cheapest bid usually costs the most

Labor is about 85 percent of a cabinet job, and cabinets are the least forgiving surface in a house. A crew that skips the degrease gets fisheyes in the finish. A crew that skips the bonding primer gets a finish you can peel off with a fingernail in a year. A crew that brushes wall paint onto oak gets a kitchen that looks worse than before, and the only fix is stripping it and starting over at full price. The bid at half of everyone else's is not a better deal on the same job; it is a different job.

See how we refinish cabinets, look at real before-and-afters in the gallery, and get a free written estimate with a door and drawer count you can hold every other bid against.

Straight answer: a professionally installed epoxy floor runs $3 to $12 per square foot nationally (This Old House, 2026). In New Jersey expect $6 to $12 per square foot in Central Jersey and $7 to $13 in the north (2025), and one national calculator puts installed garage coatings at $7.78 to $12.71 per square foot (2026). The spread is wide because "epoxy floor" describes six different systems.

What it costs by system

System	Price per sq ft	Where it belongs
Standard two-coat epoxy	$3 – $5	Light-duty, storage
High-build 100% solids	$5 – $8	Garages, warehouses
Flake or quartz broadcast	$5 – $9	Garages, showrooms
Polyaspartic and polyurea	$5 – $12	Fast turnaround, cold slabs
Metallic	$6 – $12	Lobbies, finished basements
Urethane mortar	$8 – $15	Commercial kitchens, food plants

What it costs by garage size

Garage	Approx. area	At Central NJ rates
One car	240–300 sq ft	$1,440 – $3,600
Two car	400–500 sq ft	$2,400 – $6,000
Three car	560–700 sq ft	$3,360 – $8,400

Those totals are the Central New Jersey rate of $6 to $12 per square foot multiplied by the floor area, so you can redo the math for your own slab. A DIY kit runs $2 to $5 per square foot in materials, which is the honest comparison most people are weighing.

What drives the price up

• Moisture in the slab. This is the one that decides whether a floor lasts. Vapor driving up through concrete pushes a coating off the slab from underneath, and no amount of surface prep stops it. Two standard tests exist: ASTM F1869, the calcium chloride test, which measures vapor coming off the surface over 60 to 72 hours, and ASTM F2170, which reads relative humidity from probes set into holes drilled to 40 percent of slab depth and needs a minimum 24-hour equilibration. Either one adds a day or three to the schedule before work starts. Skipping them is how a floor delaminates a year later.
• Surface preparation. Diamond grinding runs $0.75 to $1.50 per square foot and shot blasting $0.50 to $1, with overall concrete prep at $1.50 to $5. Stripping an old sealer or a failed previous coating runs $1 to $3 per square foot. A slab that was power-troweled smooth and sealed at construction needs every bit of that profile opened up, because epoxy bonds mechanically, not magically.
• Cracks and spalling. Concrete repair runs roughly $14 to $16.65 per square foot of repaired area. Salt-damaged spalling at the garage door line is almost universal on New Jersey slabs that see winter road brine.
• Cold weather. Below 50 degrees most epoxies never fully cure. Cure time roughly doubles for every 18-degree drop below 70, so an eight-hour epoxy takes around eighteen hours at 50 degrees. In an unheated Jersey garage from November through March that means temporary heat for the full cure window, not just application day — or a polyaspartic system that tolerates the cold instead.
• The topcoat. A clear sealer or wear coat adds 20 to 30 percent to the final price and is the layer that actually takes the abrasion, hot tire pickup and UV.

What is included in our price

• Moisture testing before we quote a system, not after we have already started.
• Mechanical grinding of the full slab, with old coatings and sealers removed rather than coated over.
• Cracks routed and filled, spalled edges rebuilt, and control joints treated to the system's spec.
• The coating system you actually chose, installed at the manufacturer's specified mil thickness.
• A clear cure schedule in writing: when you can walk on it, and when you can park on it.
• A free written estimate and a two-year workmanship warranty.

Why the cheapest bid usually costs the most

Almost every failed garage floor we are called to fix failed the same way: somebody rolled a thin coating over an unground, untested slab on a cold day. It looks perfect for a season. Then the first winter puts a wet, salted car on it, and the coating lifts in sheets the size of a placemat. Removing a failed coating costs $1 to $3 per square foot before the new floor can even be quoted, so the bargain price becomes the deposit on a more expensive job. Grinding, moisture testing and cure temperature are the three things worth paying for, and they are the three things a low bid leaves out.

See our epoxy flooring systems, look at finished floors in the gallery, confirm we cover your town, and get a free written estimate.

Straight answer: commercial painting is quoted per square foot, and most interior work lands between $1 and $4 per square foot. Published 2026 contractor rates put commercial interiors near $1.08 per square foot of painted surface and exteriors near $0.82, with hourly painter labor at $55 to $65 and after-hours labor around $90. Priced by building floor area instead, the ranges run higher because you are covering walls, ceilings and trim together.

What it costs by building type

Building type	Price per sq ft
Warehouse and industrial	$1.00 – $2.00
Office	$2.00 – $3.50
Retail	$2.50 – $4.00
Hotel and hospitality	$2.50 – $4.50
Restaurant	$3.00 – $5.00
Medical and healthcare	$3.50 – $6.00
Building exterior	$3.00 – $6.00

Within an interior, scope moves the number as much as the building does: walls only runs about $1.50 to $2.50 per square foot, walls and ceilings $2 to $3.50, and a full interior including trim and doors $2.50 to $4. Make every bidder quote the same scope or the comparison is meaningless.

What drives the price up

• Working around your operations. This is the biggest single variable in commercial work. Evening work from six to midnight typically adds 15 to 20 percent, overnight from midnight to six adds 25 to 35 percent, and weekend-only work adds 20 to 30 percent. Painter labor itself runs 1.15 to 1.35 times the day rate at night. Night crews are also smaller and 15 to 25 percent slower for the same scope, because you are staging and de-staging around furniture and fixtures every single shift.
• Ceiling height. Anything above about fifteen feet means scissor lifts or scaffold, which typically adds $500 to $2,000 or more to a project. Warehouse deck and structural steel is lift work from the first square foot.
• Surface preparation. Prep typically accounts for 10 to 25 percent of a commercial project's cost. Block filler on CMU, rust treatment on steel, and patching a tenant space that has had twenty years of anchors in the drywall all live here.
• Coating specification. Commercial-grade coatings run 20 to 40 percent above residential products, and quality commercial paint is $40 to $60 a gallon covering roughly 300 square feet a coat. Scrubbable epoxy in a kitchen or a clinic corridor is not the same product as a warehouse dryfall, and neither is the same as office latex.
• Schedule compression. A rushed timeline adds roughly 10 to 25 percent. Adding crew past a certain point stops buying speed and starts buying congestion.
• Public work. New Jersey prevailing wage applies to public projects above statutory thresholds, and the rate is set per county and per project. We quote that separately against the current determination rather than carrying a blended number.

What is included in our price

• A written scope naming every surface, the product and sheen for each, and the number of coats.
• A shift schedule agreed before we start, with the crew size for each shift stated.
• Full masking and containment of merchandise, equipment, flooring and electronics, reset every shift.
• Prep appropriate to the substrate: patching, block filler, degreasing, or rust treatment as required.
• Lifts, scaffold and staging included in the quoted number, not billed as an extra later.
• Certificates of insurance to your requirements, a single point of contact, and a two-year workmanship warranty.

Why the cheapest bid usually costs the most

Commercial bids have a cost that never appears on the estimate: your downtime. Take a realistic example — an 8,000-square-foot retail repaint quoted at about $22,000 on day rates against roughly $30,800 overnight. The overnight premium is around $8,800. If closing the floor for a week costs you more than that in lost trade, the cheaper bid is the expensive one, and it is not close. Run that number for your own space before you compare prices.

The other thing a low commercial bid usually buys you is an unclear scope. When the specification does not say how many coats, on which surfaces, in which product, the difference between two bids is not price — it is work that one of them has not agreed to do.

See our commercial painting services, look through the gallery, check the counties we serve, and ask for a free written estimate and a shift schedule.