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Painting costs in Maryland
What interior painting costs in Maryland
Per room, per square foot, whole house, cabinets. And the reason the cheapest quote and the most expensive quote are usually pricing two different jobs.
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Quick answer
How much does painting cost in Maryland?
Interior painting in Maryland typically costs $2.00 to $6.00 per square foot of floor area, or $400 to $900 for an average bedroom including walls and ceiling. A whole-house interior repaint commonly lands between $4,500 and $12,000 depending on size and ceiling height. Prep work — patching, caulking, priming and how many colours are involved — accounts for most of the difference between quotes.
The numbers
Maryland pricing, broken down.
Almost no contractor site in this market publishes a number, which is exactly why the question has so much search demand and so little honest supply. These are the ranges we price to in Maryland, with the reason each one is a range and not a price.
Typical in Maryland
Average bedroom, walls and ceiling
$400 – $900
Interior, per square foot of floor area
$2.00 – $6.00
The whole-house planning number. It assumes walls, ceilings and trim; walls only sits well below it.
Average bedroom, walls and ceiling
$400 – $900
Two coats on 8-foot walls, one colour, minor patching included. A vaulted ceiling or an accent wall in a second colour moves it up.
Walls only, per room
$300 – $600
The cheapest useful unit. Leaving the ceiling white and untouched genuinely saves money — ceilings are slow.
Ceiling only, per room
$150 – $400
Priced separately because it is separately unpleasant. Furniture out or covered, everything overhead, cutting in at every wall.
Trim, doors and baseboard, per room
$200 – $600
Trim is all cut-in work and it is slow. Doors alone typically run $75 to $150 each including both faces and the edges.
Stairwell or two-storey foyer
$600 – $1,800
Priced on staging, not area. Ladders on stair treads and planks over a stairwell are a genuine safety and time cost.
Whole-house interior repaint
$4,500 – $12,000
Occupied house, walls, ceilings and trim. A vacant house between owners runs meaningfully cheaper — no furniture to move, no daily set-up and pack-down.
Kitchen cabinet refinishing
$2,500 – $7,000
Doors removed, degreased, sanded, sprayed and reinstalled. Priced per door and drawer front rather than per kitchen — count yours before comparing quotes.
Colour change from dark to light
+$0.40 – $1.20 per square foot
A primer coat plus two finish coats instead of two coats. Red and deep navy walls occasionally need more than that, and no reputable painter will promise coverage in two.
Wallpaper removal
$1.50 – $4.50 per square foot
Wildly variable, and honestly unpredictable until a corner is pulled. If it was hung over unprimed drywall, the paper takes the paper face with it and the wall needs skimming.
Ranges, not quotes. Published 2026 and reviewed against work we are actually pricing in Maryland. What your job costs comes from a walkthrough — access, condition, height and finish level move a price more than square footage does. Estimates are free and in writing.
Why the cheap quote and the expensive quote are not the same job
Three quotes on the same house can differ by a factor of two, and it is almost never the paint. Ask each of them four questions and the gap usually explains itself: how many coats, is primer included, is caulking included, and what happens to the nail holes and hairline cracks.
One coat over a similar colour looks fine on the day and looks thin within a year, particularly on a wall that gets sun. Two coats is the standard, and any colour change involving a dark base or a strong red needs a tinted primer under it — which is three passes, not two, and should be priced as such.
Caulking is the other tell. Every joint where trim meets wall opens slightly as a house moves through Maryland's humidity swings, and a painter who caulks and tools those joints before painting produces trim that looks new. One who does not produces trim with a hairline shadow along every edge. It is a full day of work in an average house, and it is entirely visible in the result.
Where to spend and where to save
Save on ceilings. If they are white and clean, leaving them is the single largest saving available in a repaint and nobody looks at a ceiling. Save by painting before you move in. Save by doing whole floors at once rather than one room a year — set-up is close to fixed.
Spend on prep. Spend on trim, because trim is what the eye reads as "freshly painted" and it is also where a bad job is most obvious. And spend on the right sheen: flat hides wall imperfection and is a nightmare in a hallway with children; eggshell is the sensible default for living space; semi-gloss on trim and in bathrooms.
One genuine warning about saving on paint itself. Cheap paint covers in three coats what good paint covers in two, so the labour eats the saving, and it wears differently — a scrubbed patch in a hallway will burnish. Paint is a small fraction of the job cost. It is a bad place to economise.
Before you sign anything
What a real written quote should itemise
Ask every contractor for these in writing. Quotes only compare once they do — and Maryland law requires home improvement work over $500 to be under a written contract anyway.
- Number of coats, stated per surface
- Whether primer is included, and on which walls
- What "prep" specifically covers — patching, sanding, caulking, spot-priming
- Which surfaces are in scope: walls, ceilings, trim, doors, closet interiors
- Paint product and sheen, per surface
- Who moves the furniture, and what protection goes down
- Touch-up policy after the job, and whether leftover paint stays with you
Want the number for your house?
Call and describe the job. You’ll get a straight answer on whether it’s something we do and roughly what it runs, before anyone books a visit.
(301) 524-1729
Priced by us, not a calculator
Interior & Exterior Painting
What moves the number
Why two quotes on the same job land far apart.
Usually not because one contractor is expensive. Usually because they are pricing different work. These are the variables that actually move it.
01
Prep, which is most of the job
Rolling paint on a wall is fast. Filling nail holes, sanding, caulking every trim joint, spot-priming stains and taping off is not, and it is where 60 to 70 percent of the hours go on a good job. When one quote is dramatically cheaper, this is almost always the line that was shortened.
02
Number of colours
One colour through a house is fastest. Every additional colour means another cut line, another set of brushes, and a cut-in edge that has to be dead straight because two colours meeting is the most scrutinised line in the room. Accent walls are not free.
03
Ceiling height and staging
Eight-foot ceilings are ladder work. Nine and ten feet slow everything down; a two-storey foyer or an open stairwell needs planks and scaffolding, and that is a set-up cost before a single brush moves.
04
The condition you are starting from
Fresh drywall takes primer evenly and is the easiest surface there is. A wall with twenty years of picture holes, a patch someone spot-primed, crayon, or grease above a stove is a repair job with paint at the end of it. Walk your own house honestly before you read a quote.
05
Occupied or empty
An empty house paints 20 to 30 percent cheaper than the same house with furniture in it. If you are painting before moving in, that window is worth real money — and it is the one time a whole-house repaint prices near the bottom of the range.
On the job
What you are paying for.
Trade photography, stage by stage — the work these numbers buy. Photos of our own recent jobs come out at the walkthrough, on the actual house.
Straight answers
Painting cost questions
Not covered here? Call and ask — you’ll get a real answer, not a “depends on the job”.
A whole-house interior repaint typically runs $4,500 to $12,000 for walls, ceilings and trim in an occupied home. Painting an empty house between owners commonly lands 20 to 30 percent below that, because no furniture has to be moved and there is no daily set-up and pack-down.
Significantly, and it is the easiest saving on this page. No furniture to move or wrap, no working around a family, no protecting a floor that is about to have flooring laid on it anyway, and the crew can work the whole house at once instead of room by room.
Typically $2,500 to $7,000, and it is priced per door and drawer front rather than per kitchen — so count yours. Done properly it means removing every door, degreasing, sanding, priming and spraying rather than brushing, and reinstalling with new hardware if you are changing it. Brushed-in-place cabinets are cheaper and look brushed in place.
Most residential work in this market is quoted by the job after a walkthrough, which is better for you — it puts the risk of a slow wall on the contractor rather than on your budget. Be cautious of an hourly number given over the phone without anyone seeing the condition of your walls.
Two, on almost everything. One coat is acceptable only when refreshing an identical colour on a wall in good condition, and even then it usually looks thin within a year. Going from dark to light, or onto new drywall, needs a primer coat first — that is three passes and should be priced as three.
While the crew is there
The trades that usually come with it
Talk to the people doing the work
Get a straight number for the whole job.
Tell us what needs doing. We’ll walk it with you, sequence every trade it touches, put the price in writing, and leave you to decide.
Get a quote
Let’s price your project.
Two short steps. No obligation, no pressure — just a clear number and a straight answer about what the job involves.
Tick as many as you like. Most jobs are two or three of them at once, and I sort out the detail when I come and look. Nobody gets turned away for choosing the wrong box.
