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Often, your paint finish is the first sign that a commercial building needs repair. Peeling, fading, discoloration, or bubbling paint can indicate moisture or just the usual elements of age and wear. This is why facility managers and directors of operation need to occasionally hire a commercial painting service to resurface both interior and exterior spaces in order to keep their properties fresh, low-maintenance, and on-brand.
Whether you are redefining your color scheme or just need to replace aging paint with a fresh new finish, your biggest question is probably how to price the repainting that your facility will need. How much does commercial building painting cost, and will working with professional commercial painters provide the quality and cost efficiency that you require?
Here’s everything you need to know about commercial building painting costs, from start to finish.
A commercial painting service is a company that specializes in painting commercial building interiors and exteriors. Commercial painters build expert teams that are skilled in achieving professional-grade painting quality to large and high-traffic areas with the greatest efficiency possible. Painting includes walls, floors, ceilings, trim, and structural details, and available finishes range from refined interior paint to durable finishes designed to last for years in extreme conditions or high-traffic environments.
Professional painters will work with the building manager to ensure that the finishing needs, color palette, and design of each area.
As a facility manager, you are responsible for maintaining your properties’ look, safety, and quality. This requires a fresh coat of paint every few years, for every section of the facility inside and out, and the job must be done right to avoid the issues of layered paint and inexpert application. Commercial painters offer several important advantages for ensuring your facility is attractive, efficient, and low-maintenance between repaintings.
Consider these benefits when choosing whether to hire professional commercial painters to refinish large sections or specific structures of your facility.
Professional commercial painters are more capable of covering large areas and working quickly compared to the DIY solutions of your on-site maintenance team. Painting teams know how to move swiftly and some, like PaintJet, work with painting robots that can refinish large areas faster than any human team.
Professional painting is not just the application of paint. It involves skillfully refinishing the space including details like trim, hardware, utility covers, and decorative patterning that is notoriously challenging for amateur painting teams. Skillful painting will leave your facility looking more professional, and the finish in better quality.
Commercial painting begins with analysis and preparation of the surface to receive paint and selecting a commercial-grade finish appropriate for the surface and environment. This can significantly extend the life of your assets. Professional commercial painting will provide a high-quality finish that does not peel and will protect your assets from water damage, rust, and corrosion over time.
Painting is inherently disruptive to a facility. Areas being repainted need to be sectioned off, which blocks traffic and can temporarily shut down essential areas. Professional painters can work quickly and efficiently so that you experience minimal disruption.
How do you calculate the cost of commercial painting? Each job is unique to the facility depending on the space that needs repainting, the conditions the paint will need to withstand, and the complexity of the job. Of course, there are a few essential factors that will contribute to the final estimate for repainting your properties.
The cost of labor is inherent to commercial painting. The amount of space to be covered and effort required determines how long the project will take and the hours in wages the tea will need to be paid. Teams like PaintJet that work with robots can significantly reduce the cost of labor by substituting the efficiency of large teams for a small team and a highly efficient painting robot to cover large spaces.
Material costs can be calculated in sanding supplies, primer, and finish. The number of coats needed and the amount of space to cover will determine how much paint is required and create a baseline cost for the job.
Naturally, the size of the job and the detail involved in your building design also play a role. Jobs that cover large areas or a large number of smaller areas will require more hours and paint to complete. Intricate design and complex areas to refinish will play a similar role.
Lastly, the functional purpose of your building may have unique requirements that influence the costs. For example, medical facilities require paint that is easily kept clean and sanitized while marine facilities require finishes that can withstand exposure to water and weather conditions. Manufacturing facilities may need paint that withstands heat better and education facilities may need finishes that are non-toxic for young children.
As you may have guessed, the cost of commercial painting can vary widely based on the needs of your facility. But you also want to be able to set a rough budget for your commercial painting needs before seeking out a stack of quotes to compare.
Commercial painting is typically quoted between $60 to $100 per hour of painting. This estimate includes setup and cleanup, as well as any scaffold-building that may be necessary for the job.
Smaller and more efficient teams that do not need scaffolding, like PaintJet, can offer competitive prices by using advanced painting robotics instead of more people to expertly refinish large commercial areas. This can shorten the overall timeline of your painting project and therefore save your refinihsing budget.
On average, commercial painters charge $2 to $6 per square foot. In commercial painting, square footage plays a role in estimation but is not the final number. For example, if your area requires stripping and several layers of finish, the material and labor costs matter more than the square feet. The same is true for complex areas that may have a number of pipes, railings, or other details that require precision work.
In fact, the cost per square foot will likely vary based on the area. Outdoor areas require more paint but take less time to cover large, flat sections of building. Indoor areas may have less square footage per section and take fewer coats, but require more precision.
If you want to determine the cost per square foot of a commercial painting quote, you can divide the total cost by the square feet to be painted. But the range usually comes out to between $2 to $6 pre square foot.
Exterior painting tends to be more affordable than interior painting due to the lack of complexity. Of course, the cost goes up with every story of your building, as height requires scaffolding or lifts and safety measures. On average, exterior commercial painting costs about $2-$6 per square foot for one and two-story buildings.
Working with a robotic commercial painting company like PaintJet, however, you gain the advantage of avoiding the need for large teams, scaffolding, or fall protection. A painting robot is capable of keeping exterior painting costs low by quickly covering sections of wall that would be dangerous and time-consuming for humans to reach. The quality of the finish is also superior as the robot uses advanced imaging and precision to determine the best surface prep and coating strategy with just a couple of minutes to cover each section of exterior wall.
How do you calculate the cost of commercial painting services? As we’ve discussed, there are many factors that play a role in costing. You can usually estimate your costs between $2 and $6 per square foot. In truth, you will be paying for the cost of materials and the labor hours necessary to complete the job. Higher-cost materials and more complex jobs will increase the price, while simple jobs that require a single coat of paint will pose the lowest cost.
We’ve developed this painting quote calculator that is absolutely free to use. You can provide inputs about the building type, its dimensions, and the coating type, and get an instant quote for your painting project. Check it out here.
We can help you understand the cost of your project with a few essential steps.
First, measure the flat square footage to be painted. This will give you a baseline way to talk about the size and scope of the space. It will also help commercial painters give you a rough estimate during your initial consultation.
Determine the material cost of the job by multiplying the square feet by the layers of work that will need to be done. Removing old paint and damage to the surface will require a sanding medium.
Most paints then require a primer, and the cost of that primer is determined by the conditions of the surface and environment that the paint will need to endure. Finally, the cost of paint will depend on the type of finish you need and whether two coats will be necessary to achieve your goals.
Large, flat swaths of wall, ceiling, and floor will take much less time to paint and therefore pose a lower cost than more complex spaces. The more detail involved in your painting project, the more labor hours will be necessary to refinish every piece of hardware, apply finish to trim, or maneuver around a complex space.
Your commercial painters will likely need to perform an in-person or video-assisted estimate to determine the number of hours and quantity of paint that a complex space will require.
The higher your painting team needs to work, the higher the cost will go. Multi-story spaces require time-consuming access and safety measures unless your team uses a lift-enabled painting robot like PaintJet which can quickly and easily handle high places with no additional time or risk.
In open spaces, painters can typically cover 150 to 200 square feet in an hour. This keeps the cost of labor relatively low except for complex areas or high-up areas. Using a painting robot, teams remain small and the work is efficient, which can significantly reduce the total time and, therefore, cost of labor over the course of your project.
PaintJet takes commercial painting services to a new level with the use of advanced painting robots instead of relying on large teams or high-risk operations. Our painting robots use advanced imaging, high-precision application, and AI-powered prediction to create the highest quality finish for your commercial building at record speeds. Requiring only small teams of operators and professional painters to handle the fine details, PaintJet can have your commercial building’s exteriors refinished without concern for the increasing cost of labor hours.
Our paint robot provides greater precision and finish quality than most human painting services because its work is flawless. Using advanced imaging, the robot first assesses the surface quality and environmental conditions. It then methodically strips the surface of previous paint and prepares it for primer adhesion. Once the primer is applied, it is treated to achieve the best adhesion with the finish. We use proprietary high-quality finishes designed to meet the specific needs of each building and surface, which is applied with perfect evenness using a high-precision sprayer system.
In addition to excellent quality commercial finishes. our painting robot then runs an AI-powered calculation of current and historical data to predict the future paint maintenance cycle of the current finish. This informs building managers about when to schedule their next refinishing and how often to have their facility paint quality inspected over time.
Lastly, robotics allow us to save you time and money with smaller teams and faster work. The robot is extremely efficient, and operated only by a small team who ensure it can handle each individual painting job. The robot can also handle high places with greater speed, safety, and precision than any human team while operators remain safely on the ground. PaintJet and our painting robots can transform a refinishing project that might have taken months into a project of days and weeks instead, with the cost savings that naturally come from far fewer labor hours per project.
If you are seeking the best possible price for high-quality commercial painting services, contact PaintJet today and meet our robots.
Previously commercial painting company owner at CertaPro Painters and Engineer at ExxonMobil. Focused on vertically integrating the commercial painting market through robotics
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