Short answer: with us, interior painting in Ontario starts at $700 for walls in two coats, $800 once the ceilings are added and $970 with baseboards, door and window casings and the first door as well. Each start covers the first 100 sq ft of floor; after that it is $2.65–3.05, $3.45–3.95 or $4.10–4.70 per square foot of floor area, depending on the package and the walls. Signature Finish, with enhanced preparation and premium coatings, is priced in writing after a visit. All before HST. Booked on its own near our base, an 11 × 13 bedroom is $814 for walls and $1,146 with the ceiling, trim and its door; a 2,000 sq ft house runs $5,735 for walls to $10,200 for the full interior with 13 doors, walls in normal condition. One number matters more than any of those: square foot of floor area, not wall area. Painting rates get quoted against different areas — wall or floor — and the two are not comparable, so the first thing to ask about any rate is which one it uses. Measure your floor, take off the first 100 sq ft, multiply, add the start, and you have the figure. Below is the full breakdown — by room, by home size, by what pushes it up or down, and how to read a quote that does not show its denominator.
What interior painting costs in Ontario
Our pricing runs on four packages, built around the decision homeowners actually make — how far up the room to go. Walls only. Walls and ceilings. Walls, ceilings and the trim. Or all of that with heavier preparation and premium coatings. The first three each have a published start and rate covering labour and all paint; Signature Finish is priced after a visit. All four carry the same two-year workmanship warranty.
| Package | What is painted | Materials | Warranty | Start (first 100 sq ft of floor) | Then, per sq ft of floor |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fresh Start | Walls, two coats | Professional-grade | 2 years | $700 | $2.65–3.05 |
| Full Refresh | Walls and ceilings | Professional-grade | 2 years | $800 | $3.45–3.95 |
| Complete Home | Walls, ceilings, baseboards, door and window casings, and the first interior door | Professional-grade | 2 years | $970 | $4.10–4.70 |
| Signature Finish | All of the above, with enhanced preparation and high-detail work | Premium coatings | 2 years | Priced in writing after a visit | |
The lower rate is for walls in normal condition. The higher rate is for walls that need extra preparation, and it applies only to the rooms that need it. Lived-in or empty makes no difference to the rate. Extra interior doors are $120 each, both sides — in any package; Complete Home already includes the first one.
The smallest project depends on the address, not on the package. Near our base in Mississauga, the package start is the smallest job — $700, $800 or $970 — and it already covers 100 sq ft. Some farther addresses have a higher smallest project, $1,000, $1,500 or $2,500 depending on the drive, and it covers more of your home. There is no distance charge. Before HST. Every package includes floor protection and masking, moving light furniture and putting it back, daily clean-up, a written specification before work starts, and leftover paint labelled with the colour code. The full package detail, with a calculator, sits on our interior painting page.
Paint is specified by grade, not by brand: professional-grade paint in Fresh Start, Full Refresh and Complete Home, premium coatings throughout on Signature Finish. Any product within a grade performs within a few percent of the others, so the grade is the fact and the brand is an implementation detail. Ceilings get dedicated ceiling paint in every case, not wall paint rolled overhead. The exact product and colour codes go on the written specification before work starts.
Two things about this rate card are worth saying plainly, because they are the reason it looks the way it does.
It is the going rate, not a discount. These are the prices this work costs when it is done properly — enough prep, two real coats, the right paint on the ceiling. We did not cut them to win the job, and if the walls turn out different from what we were shown, any change is agreed with you in writing before work begins — never added to the invoice. We are not the cheapest number you will find, and finding a cheaper one is easy. What is difficult to find is a number you can take apart.
It is quoted per square foot of floor area. This sounds like a technicality and is not. A 12 × 12 bedroom has 144 square feet of floor and roughly 380 square feet of wall. A rate of $3.00 means one thing against the first number and something entirely different against the second. A rate is only comparable once you know which of the two it is measured against. Ours says floor, means floor, and can be checked with a tape measure.
Interior painting cost by room
These are the prices for one room booked on its own near our base, walls in normal condition, before HST, rounded to the nearest dollar. Floor area is given so you can check the arithmetic against your own rooms: the package start, plus the rate for every square foot beyond the first 100.
| Room | Floor area | Fresh Start | Full Refresh | Complete Home (one door) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Powder room 4 × 6 | 24 sq ft | $700 | $800 | $970 |
| Bathroom 5 × 8 | 40 | $700 | $800 | $970 |
| Small bedroom or office 10 × 11 | 110 | $727 | $835 | $1,011 |
| Bedroom 11 × 13 | 143 | $814 | $948 | $1,146 |
| Hallway 4 × 15 | 60 | $700 | $800 | $970 |
| Primary bedroom 14 × 16 | 224 | $1,029 | $1,228 | $1,478 |
| Kitchen 12 × 14, walls between cabinets | 168 | $880 | $1,035 | $1,249 |
| Dining room 11 × 13 | 143 | $814 | $948 | $1,146 |
| Living room 14 × 18 | 252 | $1,103 | $1,324 | $1,593 |
| Stairwell, two storeys | — | Priced from photos: the floor at the package rate, the height work added on top in writing | ||
Rooms booked together share one start. The first 100 sq ft is paid for once, and every further room adds only the rate times its own floor. An 11 × 13 bedroom added to a larger Fresh Start job adds about $379, not $814. At a farther address, the smallest project is higher and covers more floor, so a single room there is usually part of a bigger job. That is worth planning around: if you were going to do the bedroom this month and the hallway in the spring, doing both together costs far less than doing them separately, because the second room carries no second start.
Now the thing that confuses most people reading a table like this: small rooms cost more per square foot than big ones. A powder room at $700 for 24 square feet works out to roughly $29 a foot; a living room at $1,103 for 252 square feet is about $4.38. The rate did not change — the start did the work. Almost everything that takes time in a room is fixed regardless of its size, and that is what the start pays for. Masking the floor, protecting and moving furniture, cutting in every edge by brush where the wall meets ceiling, trim, corners and fixtures, setting up and cleaning up: a powder room has nearly as much cutting-in as a bedroom and a fraction of the open wall that a roller covers quickly. Rolling is the fast part, and small rooms are mostly not rolling.
The same logic explains why bathrooms sit high for their size. Every edge is a fixture, a mirror, a tile line or a vanity, and none of them can be rushed.
Interior painting cost by home size
| Home | Fresh Start | Full Refresh | Complete Home (one door) | Signature Finish |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Condo, about 900 sq ft | $2,820–3,140 | $3,560–3,960 | $4,250–4,730 | after a visit |
| Townhouse, about 1,400 sq ft | $4,145–4,665 | $5,285–5,935 | $6,300–7,080 | after a visit |
| House, about 2,000 sq ft | $5,735–6,495 | $7,355–8,305 | $8,760–9,900 | after a visit |
Every figure above is the package start plus the rate times the floor beyond the first 100 sq ft — arithmetic you can repeat yourself. The lower figure is for walls in normal condition; the upper one assumes every room needs extra preparation, which is rarely the case, because the higher rate applies only to the rooms that need it. Complete Home includes one door; each extra door is $120. A 2,000 sq ft house with 13 doors adds $1,440, which brings the normal-condition figure to $10,200. Over 3,000 sq ft of painted floor, we price after a visit.
A whole home costs less than its rooms added together, and that is deliberate. Add the room table up for a three-bedroom house and you will land well above the whole-home figure. A house is one mobilisation, one masking, one paint order and one continuous run of work, and that saving belongs to you rather than to us. It is also why doing the house in three separate visits over a year is the most expensive way to paint it.
Whole-home work usually runs four to seven days for a 2,000 sq ft interior. What actually sets the schedule — drying time between coats, repairs that must cure first, whether you are living in the house — is covered in our guide to how long it takes to paint a house interior.
What moves the price up or down
Everything below that costs extra appears on the written price as its own line with its reason, agreed before work begins. None of it appears afterwards on an invoice.
Dark to light. Coverage is essentially the whole cost of painting. Taking a deep charcoal wall to an off-white can need a full primer coat before the two finish coats, and trying to do it in one is how a wall ends up looking patchy in afternoon light. That primer coat is its own line in the written price, so you can see exactly what the colour change costs.
Ceilings over 8 feet. Not a surcharge for the ambience. More height means more paint and more ladder time, and somewhere above nine feet a roller pole stops being enough and the work needs staging, which means more setup, more moving, and slower cutting-in at the top of every wall. That extra is added on top of the standard rate, in writing before you agree.
Older homes. Plaster rather than drywall, old oil-based trim that needs a bonding primer before anything will stick to it, and walls that are rarely flat. Rooms like that usually take the higher rate for their extra preparation, and only those rooms do. In a condo, the elevator booking, the loading dock and the building’s permitted hours are part of the plan, and anything they add is in the written price before you agree.
The rule that covers everything else is one sentence: additional work (major repairs, closets, high ceilings, stairwells, specialty finishes) is identified and priced in writing before work begins. Nothing is added without your approval.
Two more that are not lines of their own. Wall condition is the single biggest variable in any quote: nail pops, cracks, anchor holes and old patches that were never feathered out all get fixed before paint, because paint highlights bad patching rather than hiding it. Basic filling and caulking is inside every package; real damage is drywall repair, quoted as its own line. What belongs in which category is set out in our guide to wall prep before painting. And textured ceilings drink paint and roll slowly; if you would rather be rid of the texture than repaint it, see popcorn ceiling removal.
One safety note for older houses. Health Canada advises that a home built before 1960 probably contains lead-based paint, and one built between 1960 and 1990 may have it on the exterior. Sanding or heat-stripping lead paint releases toxic dust, so suspect paint is tested before anyone sands it, and any containment it needs is priced separately, in writing.
What it costs to paint trim, doors and ceilings
There are two steps here, not one. Ceilings are the step from Fresh Start to Full Refresh — $100 more on the start, then $0.80 more per square foot of floor area for walls in normal condition, or $0.90 where the walls need extra prep. Baseboards and door and window casings are the step from Full Refresh to Complete Home — $170 more on the start, which also covers the first door, then another $0.65 to $0.75 per square foot. Every further door is $120, because a house with fifteen doors is a different job from a house with five.
Doors are the one item outside a package with a published price:
| Item | Price | Unit |
|---|---|---|
| Standard interior door, both sides | $120, any package (the first one is included in Complete Home) | each |
| Major repairs, closets, high ceilings, stairwells, specialty finishes | Identified and priced in writing before work begins | per job |
| Wooden windows | Priced in writing from photos | per job |
| Kitchen cabinets | Not included | — |
Wooden windows only. Vinyl and aluminium frames we do not paint at any price — paint does not hold on them, and the failure shows up in a season rather than a decade.
Doors are the item most often missing from a quote that looks cheap. A door is two faces, four edges and a frame, and a six-panel door has dozens of edges to brush where a flat slab has none. Fifteen doors at $120 is $1,800 of work, or $1,680 in Complete Home, where the first is already included — and a quote that does not mention doors either is not painting them or will discover them later. Trim is the same story by the foot: sanding, priming over old oil-based enamel, then two coats of something hard enough to survive a vacuum cleaner. In the 2,000 sq ft house above, trim and doors are $2,845 of the $10,200 — more than a quarter of the total.
Sheen belongs in this conversation too, because it changes both durability and how much prep a surface needs — our paint sheen guide goes room by room.
DIY versus hiring a painter
Painting a room yourself is one of the few renovation jobs where the honest answer is often yes, do it. Materials for a single bedroom run roughly $120–200: a gallon and a half of decent paint, a roller frame and sleeves, a brush worth using, tape, filler and a drop sheet. Against an $814 Fresh Start price for an 11 × 13 bedroom booked on its own, you are buying back about $600–700 with a weekend of your own labour.
Where that arithmetic stops working:
- Ceilings. Overhead rolling is slow, physically hard, and unforgiving of lap marks under pot lights — the one surface where the difference between amateur and professional shows from the doorway.
- Anything above nine feet. Staging and ladder work is where DIY painting injuries happen. A two-storey stairwell is not a beginner’s job at any budget.
- Going dark to light. Three coats over an existing dark wall is not a weekend, and stopping at two is worse than not starting.
- Whole houses. The per-room saving is real; multiplied across a house it becomes three weeks of evenings, and most people stop somewhere in week two.
- Old trim in an older house. Paint that old can contain lead; test it before you sand it, and the testing costs more than it sounds like it should.
The pattern worth noticing: DIY saves labour, and labour is cheap on small simple surfaces and expensive on tall, detailed or damaged ones. Do your own bedroom walls. Get help with the stairwell.
How to read a painting quote
Most bad painting decisions in Ontario are made at the comparison stage rather than on the ladder, because two quotes for the same house are rarely quotes for the same work. Four questions make them comparable.
What is the denominator? If a rate is given per square foot, ask whether that is floor or wall, and do not accept “it works out the same”. It does not — the two differ by roughly a factor of two and a half in a standard room.
What surfaces are in, by name? Walls, ceilings, baseboards, window casings, doors, door frames, closet interiors. “The whole room” is not a scope, and every one of those items is somebody’s idea of an extra.
How many coats, and what prep? Two coats over prepared walls is the standard that lasts. One coat over unprepared walls is roughly half the labour and is the usual explanation for a quote that undercuts everyone else by a wide margin.
What is written down? The scope, the paint line and colour codes, each add-on as its own line, HST shown separately, and the warranty stated in years. A verbal number is not a quote; it is an opening position.
Our own answer to all four: every enquiry gets a reply the same business day. Where photographs of every wall in daylight, room dimensions, ceiling height, the current colour and its sheen, and a count of doors and windows are enough to price from — and nothing in those photographs shows damage, staining, peeling or previous repairs — the written price usually follows within 1–2 business days, firm on the condition that what we were told matches what is there. Everything else needs a walkthrough, which is free anywhere we work and carries no obligation; the same day, you get an answer and a date for it, not a promise about a price we have not yet been able to work out. Either way, if the walls are not what they were described to be, the revised price is agreed with you before work begins and never added to the invoice. A 25% deposit on signing books your dates. The balance is due on completion; projects over $5,000 are paid in stages agreed in writing. Changes go through a written change order.
Frequently asked questions about interior painting cost
How much does interior painting cost in Ontario?
Before HST, the package start covers the first 100 sq ft of floor: $700 for walls in two coats, $800 with the ceilings, and $970 with baseboards, door and window casings and the first door as well. After that it is $2.65–3.05, $3.45–3.95 or $4.10–4.70 per square foot of floor area, the lower rate for walls in normal condition. Signature Finish, with enhanced preparation and premium coatings, is priced after a visit. Extra doors are $120 each. Note the denominator: floor area, not wall area.
How much does it cost to paint a bedroom?
Booked on its own near our base, an 11 × 13 bedroom is $814 for walls, $948 with the ceiling and $1,146 with the ceiling, trim and its door, before HST, walls in normal condition. Added to a larger job, the same bedroom adds only the rate times its floor — about $379 for walls — because the start is paid once. That is why adding a second room costs much less than the first. At some farther addresses, the smallest project is higher.
Is there a minimum project?
Yes, and it depends on the address. Near our base, the package start is the smallest job — $700, $800 or $970 — and it already includes 100 sq ft of floor. Some farther addresses have a higher smallest project, $1,000, $1,500 or $2,500 depending on the drive time from Mississauga, and it covers more of your home. A painter’s day costs what it costs whether the job is one room or four — the drive, the masking, the protection and the prep do not shrink with the room. Rather than add a travel charge to a small job far away, we set the smallest job that makes the trip honest for both sides.
Do you charge for travel?
No. There is no distance charge anywhere we work, and a walkthrough, if one is needed, is free. Some farther addresses have a higher smallest project, and we tell you the figure before the quote. It is the minimum that moves rather than a separate charge appearing on your bill — there is no travel line on the invoice.
How much does it cost to paint a 2,000 sq ft house?
Before HST, $5,735–6,495 for walls throughout, $7,355–8,305 with the ceilings, and $8,760–9,900 with baseboards, door and window casings and the first door as well. The lower figure is for walls in normal condition. Extra doors are $120 each; with 13 doors, the full interior in normal condition comes to $10,200.
What is the cost per square foot to paint a room?
$2.65 to $4.70 per square foot of floor area beyond the first 100, depending on the package and the walls; the package start of $700, $800 or $970 covers the first 100. Floor area is the honest denominator because it is what you can measure without a ladder — and because a rate quoted against wall area looks about half as large for exactly the same work.
Is it cheaper to paint room by room or all at once?
All at once, by a wide margin. A 2,000 sq ft house painted throughout costs less than the same rooms priced individually, because it is one setup, one masking and one paint order. Room by room over a year also means paying the package start more than once.
Is there a warranty, and does the cheaper package get a shorter one?
There is, and it does not: two years on all four packages. Warranties that shorten with the price are common in this trade and we decided against one — a shorter term on the cheaper package is really a statement that the cheaper job gets less care, which is not how we want to work. What it covers is workmanship: peeling, blistering and chipping that come back to preparation, adhesion or coat count. What it does not cover is everything a paint film has no say in — moisture, movement and cracking in the wall behind it, normal wear, damage after the job is done, and old coatings that were already lifting when we arrived. Both lists are on the written specification before anyone starts.
Does the price include the paint?
Yes — labour and professional-grade paint, plus floor protection, moving light furniture, daily clean-up and leftover paint labelled with the colour code. The paint line and colour codes are on the written specification before work starts. A premium line on a standard package is quoted at the difference in material cost; Signature Finish uses premium coatings throughout.
Get a written price
Send the rooms, the floor area and photographs of the walls in daylight. We reply the same business day, and the written price usually follows within 1–2 business days if the photographs show enough. We paint across the GTA and Southern Ontario, including Toronto, Mississauga, Oakville and Hamilton. Owner-run: the person who quotes your job is responsible for it, with no subcontractor hand-offs. Get an interior painting quote or call (647) 558-8723.
Owner-run and liability insured. The person who quotes your job is responsible for it.