One of the main stumbling blocks for many new real estate investors is under-estimating the costs of repairs and updating that a property might need prior to reselling it or even renting it out. When you are walking through and inspecting a property with an eye towards what improvements and repairs it will need, it is always a good idea to have a realistic idea of the costs involved. As you walk through any property, take along a pad of paper and a pen and take note of anything which appears to be in need of repair and leave you plenty of room to look at the associated costs involved.

One of the easiest and generally cheapest ways to update any property is with a fresh coat of paint. Thankfully, where painting is concerned, you can very easily calculate how much paint will be required for any painting job – interior or exterior. Using these simple calculations will keep the guesswork out of your paint costs.

Calculating Interior Paint Needed

To calculate how much paint you need to paint a room simply measure or estimate how long one of the main walls in a room is. For this example, we will assume you are in a bedroom with a 10’ long wall. Most homes have 8’ ceilings. So, to calculate the paint needed to paint the room you would simply use the following calculation:

Length of Wall (10 ft.) x Height of Wall (8 ft.) = Total Area of Wall (80 sq. ft.)

Then take the Total Area of Wall (80 sq. ft) and multiply that by the 4 walls in the room to arrive at your needed paint of 320 sq. ft.

A typical gallon of paint will cover 350 sq. ft., so from the calculation above you know that you can paint the room, with one coat of paint, with a single can of paint. If you will be painting the ceiling, you will need to purchase two cans of paint.

Calculating Exterior Paint Needed

To calculate how much exterior paint you will need to paint the outside of a home, you can measure the length of the outside walls and then multiply each number by 10 feet, per story. For instance, if you measure an outside wall of a single story home and it is 20 feet long, then you will need enough paint to cover 200 sq. ft. However, if the wall is 20 feet long and it is a two story home, then you will need 400 sq. ft. of paint.

As you can see, by being able to calculate the number of gallons of paint you will need, you can easily figure out how much a new paint job is going to cost you.