Pricing by trade: painting, drywall, decks, flooring, and roofing

Unit pricing: the shortcut that only works with your own data

Experienced contractors quote in dollars per square foot or per linear foot. That number is not a rate they looked up — it is their own cost stack divided by the unit, checked against completed jobs. Build yours the same way:

1. Estimate the job properly from hours and materials.
2. Record what it actually took when the job closes.
3. Divide the true cost by the units installed.
4. After five or six similar jobs you have a unit rate you can trust for quick quotes.

Until then, price from hours. Any published per-square-foot figure describes someone else's crew, market, and overhead.

Painting

Paint is a labor business. Materials are usually 15–20% of the price; everything else is time, preparation, and access.

• Rolling walls, smooth, good access: roughly 200–300 SF per hour per coat.
• Cutting in: around 60–100 linear feet per hour.
• Prep — patching, sanding, caulking, masking — regularly equals or exceeds painting time on older homes.

Traps:

• Dark-to-light colour changes need a primer coat plus two finish coats, not two coats.
• Stairwells and vaulted ceilings need staging; double the hourly allowance for those areas.
• Occupied homes are slower than empty ones — furniture moving, kids, pets, working around people.
• Trim and doors are priced per unit, not per square foot. A six-panel door takes far longer than its area suggests.

Drywall

Drywall has two distinct halves that price differently: hanging is fast and predictable, finishing is slow and skill-dependent.

• Hanging: roughly 4–6 sheets per hour for a two-person crew on open walls.
• Taping and three coats: commonly 2–4× the hanging hours.
• Materials: board, compound (about a gallon per 100 SF of board), tape, screws, corner bead.

Traps:

• Level 4 versus Level 5 finish is a real cost difference — a smooth-wall Level 5 can add 30–50% to finishing time.
• Patch and repair work is priced per patch with a minimum, never by area. A 6" hole is a two-visit job once you count drying time.
• Dust containment and clean-up in an occupied house is a line item, not a courtesy.
• Ceilings are markedly slower than walls.

Decks

Decks swing wildly on materials. The framing and labor for a 300 SF deck barely change between a pressure-treated build and a composite one; the material bill can double.

• Quote framing, decking, and railing as three separate cost blocks — railing is often 20–30% of the total.
• Stairs are expensive per square foot. Price them per riser, not as deck area.
• Footings depend entirely on soil and frost depth; get the local requirement before you bid.

Traps:

• Permits and inspections on structural work. Exclude them or price them explicitly.
• Demolition and disposal of an existing deck — dump fees plus a full day.
• Site access. Hauling lumber through a house or up a slope adds hours nobody estimates.
• Composite fasteners and hidden clip systems cost several times more than screws and install slower.

Flooring

Subfloor condition is the whole game. The visible install is the easy, predictable part.

• Click-lock LVP or laminate: roughly 100–200 SF per hour in open rooms, far slower in small or angled ones.
• Nail-down hardwood: slower, plus acclimation time on site before you start.
• Tile: the slowest by a wide margin, and layout time dominates on small floors.

Traps:

• Levelling compound and subfloor repair — always inspect and always exclude unknown subfloor damage.
• Transitions, thresholds, quarter round, and toe-kick undercuts take hours and get forgotten.
• Removing old flooring, especially glued-down tile or multiple layers, can exceed the install cost.
• Appliance and toilet removal and reset are separate line items.

Roofing

Roofing prices per square (100 SF), but the multipliers matter more than the base rate.

• Pitch: anything over 6:12 slows the crew and may require staging or harness setup.
• Layers: tearing off two or three existing layers multiplies both labor and disposal.
• Complexity: hips, valleys, dormers, skylights, and chimneys each add flashing detail work.
• Waste: 10% on a simple gable, 15% or more with cut-up geometry.

Traps:

• Deck repair discovered at tear-off — carry a per-sheet unit price in the bid so the change order is already agreed.
• Dumpster placement, driveway protection, and nail clean-up.
• Underlayment, ice and water shield, drip edge, and ventilation are code items, not upgrades.
• Weather contingency. A tear-off you cannot dry in is a liability, not a delay.

What every trade shares

Whatever you install, the pricing method does not change: real hours at your burdened labor cost, a takeoff with a waste factor, overhead allocated by hours, and margin applied by division rather than multiplication. The trade knowledge tells you the hours; the arithmetic turns them into a bid you can live with.

Bid Buddy has calculators set up per trade, and the main bid calculator handles the cost stack for any of them.