How Much Does It Cost to Paint a House Exterior in 2026?
National ranges, materials + labor, professional application · Pricing data updated · Reviewed annually
A professional exterior repaint in 2026 costs about $2,250 to $3,500 for a small one-story home, $3,500 to $5,500 for an average one-story, and $5,500 to $8,500 for a two-story — materials and labor combined. Figure roughly $2.55–$4.00 per square foot of paintable siding. The full spectrum is wide: an easy vinyl one-story in a low-cost region can start near $1,250, while a large, heavily-prepped two-story in a high-cost metro can exceed $23,250 before adding scaffolding, trim, or lead-safe work.
Four decisions set most of the price: the siding material, the prep condition of the old paint, how big the home is, and how hard it is to reach. The tables below break the national ranges down along each axis, the interactive estimator lets you combine them, and the free exterior paint calculator turns your measurements into a gallon count for body, trim, and primer.
Floor area vs. paintable siding — the number everyone gets wrong
People search “cost to paint a 2,000 sq ft house,” so we headline with whole-house totals — but contractors bid on paintable siding area, and a 2,000 sq ft home does not have 2,000 sq ft of siding. Paintable siding is only about 0.75× your floor area on a one-story and 0.85× on a two-story (gross perimeter × height, minus 15–20% for windows and doors). A 2.5× multiplier you may have seen is an interior-wall figure — it counts both faces of every partition and would roughly triple an exterior estimate. Bid on siding area; search on floor area; never mix the two rates.
| Home | Floor area | Stories | ≈ Paintable siding |
|---|---|---|---|
| Small 1-story | 1,200 sq ft | 1 | 900 sq ft |
| Average 1-story | 1,800 sq ft | 1 | 1,350 sq ft |
| Two-story | 2,500 sq ft | 2 | 2,125 sq ft |
| Large 2-story | 3,200 sq ft | 2 | 2,720 sq ft |
Exterior painting cost by home size
Whole-house repaint totals at the national average with standard prep on wood or LP lap siding, body only. Two-story homes carry more siding relative to floor area (the 0.85× factor), which is reflected here; the ladder-and-scaffold access premium is a separate toggle in the estimator below. Each cell is a low-to-high range; most real jobs cluster toward the middle.
| Home | ≈ Siding | Cost range | Likely |
|---|---|---|---|
| Small 1-story~1,200 sq ft home, 1 story | 900 sq ft | $2,250 – $3,500 | $3,000 |
| Average 1-story~1,800 sq ft home, 1 story | 1,350 sq ft | $3,500 – $5,500 | $4,500 |
| Two-story~2,500 sq ft home, 2 story | 2,125 sq ft | $5,500 – $8,500 | $7,000 |
| Large 2-story~3,200 sq ft home, 2 story | 2,720 sq ft | $7,000 – $11,000 | $8,750 |
Cost by siding material
Per square foot of paintable siding, standard prep, national average. Siding type swings the number more than home size does on a small job. Vinyl is cheapest to coat; stucco and brick cost most because of texture, porosity, a lower spread rate (more paint), and specialty masonry primers.
| Siding material | Cost / sq ft siding | Avg 1-story job | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Wood / LP lap | $2.55–$4.00 | $3,500 – $5,500 | Baseline — holds paint, moderate prep |
| Fiber cement | $2.17–$4.20 | $3,000 – $5,750 | HardiePlank-style — holds paint well |
| Vinyl | $1.91–$4.00 | $2,500 – $5,500 | Cheapest to coat — never go darker than original |
| Aluminum / metal | $2.29–$4.60 | $3,000 – $6,250 | Needs rust / self-etch primer |
| Stucco | $2.68–$5.60 | $3,500 – $7,500 | Textured & porous — more paint, may need elastomeric |
| Brick (masonry) | $2.81–$6.40 | $3,750 – $8,750 | Porous — masonry primer; irreversible once painted |
Two irreversible-decision warnings: never paint vinyl a shade darker than its original color — dark colors absorb heat, warp the panels, and void the siding warranty. And brick is a one-way door: once painted it must be repainted every 7–20 years forever, because it cannot be cleanly stripped.
Prep is the price
Labor is 70–85% of a paint job, and prep is where that labor goes — which is why prep condition moves the estimate more than the paint you buy. The rates below are per square foot of paintable siding on wood or LP lap at the national average, and the job column is that prep tier on an average one-story home.
| Prep condition | What's involved | Cost / sq ft | Avg 1-story job |
|---|---|---|---|
| Minimal prep | Sound surface — light wash + spot caulk, two coats | $2.17–$3.68 | $3,000 – $5,000 |
| Standard prep | Scrape, sand, spot-prime, then two coats — the typical repaint | $2.55–$4.00 | $3,500 – $5,500 |
| Heavy prep | Widespread peeling — extensive scrape + bare-wood priming throughout | $3.06–$6.60 | $4,250 – $9,000 |
Power washing is usually bundled into a repaint; billed separately it adds about $210–$450. Rotted trim, fascia, or siding is a separate carpentry line item at roughly $6–$25 per linear foot — not part of the paint bid.
Estimate your exterior paint job
Combine siding material, home size, prep condition, and region to see your range update live. The base range is a body-only, two-coat repaint reachable from the ground — the toggles below are the conditions that ride on top, like two-story access, contrasting trim, a dark color change, or lead-safe work on a pre-1978 home. Each shows what it adds before you commit.
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What the real-world add-ons cost
Priced against a typical project — an average one-story home in wood or LP lap with standard prep at the national average. These are the conditions and extras that ride on top of the base range. On a larger or taller home they add proportionally more.
| Factor | What's involved | Adds |
|---|---|---|
| Two-story height (ladders/scaffold) | Multi-story reach adds labor — Angi: up to 50% more. Add this on a 2-story home. | +$500 – $2,500 |
| Three-story or steep / complex access | Scaffolding, lifts, steep grade, or dense trim and rooflines | +$1,250 – $5,250 |
| Trim, shutters & doors (not body-only) | Contrasting trim, shutters, and entry doors are slow brush work | +$250 – $1,750 |
| Dark or dramatic color change | Extra coat and/or tinted primer to bury the old color | +$250 – $1,750 |
| Premium paint (vs. contractor-grade) | A durability choice — only ~3–12% of the bill because labor dominates | +$0 – $500 |
| Pre-1978 lead-safe (RRP) work | Legally required on pre-1978 homes — containment, HEPA cleanup, verification | +$250 – $1,250 |
⚠️ Pre-1978 homes: lead-safe work is legally required
If your home was built before 1978, EPA's Renovation, Repair and Painting (RRP) rule kicks in the moment the job disturbs more than 20 square feet of exterior paint — which you pass in the first hour. It requires a certified firm, containment, HEPA cleanup, and cleaning verification, adding roughly 10–20% or $500–$2,000. Lead testing runs $30–$600. This is not optional: EPA penalties now reach $46,989 per violation per day. RRP is containment during the work — it is not the same as (far costlier) lead abatement.
Cost by region
Labor is most of an exterior repaint, so local wage rates move the whole number. The same average one-story wood home with standard prep:
| Region | Typical areas | Avg 1-story | Two-story |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lower-cost region | Much of the South & Midwest | $3,000 – $4,500 | $4,500 – $7,250 |
| National average | Most metros | $3,500 – $5,500 | $5,500 – $8,500 |
| High-cost metro | Northeast & West Coast metros | $4,500 – $7,000 | $7,000 – $11,000 |
Coastal California and a few dense metros can run well above the high column because of licensing, prevailing wage, and complex housing stock — treat those as outliers, not the national norm.
Does premium paint change the budget?
Barely. Premium exterior lines cost about double per gallon, but paint is only 15–30% of the job — so upgrading changes the whole bid by roughly 3–12%. Premium paint is a longevity choice: it buys more years between repaints, not a cheaper job today.
| Paint tier | Per gallon |
|---|---|
| Contractor / builder grade | $20 – $45 |
| Premium exterior (Emerald, Aura, Marquee) | $55 – $100 |
DIY vs. hiring a pro
Materials and equipment only, a DIY exterior paint job runs roughly 40–60% less than hiring out — because you supply the labor that is most of the cost. But it is real time, and the totals below exclude yours. Ladder and scaffold work at height carries genuine fall risk: on a two-story or taller home, paint the low areas yourself and hire out the high work, or hire the whole job.
| Home | Materials + equipment | Your hours |
|---|---|---|
| Small 1-story (~1,200 sq ft) | $500 – $1,350 | 40 – 70 hrs |
| Average 1-story (~1,800 sq ft) | $700 – $1,800 | 60 – 100 hrs |
| Two-story (~2,500 sq ft) | $1,000 – $2,600 | 100 – 160 hrs |
| Large 2-story (~3,200 sq ft) | $1,300 – $3,300 | 140 – 210 hrs |
How often you'll repaint
The cheapest coating isn't always cheapest over time. How long a finish lasts depends mostly on the substrate and the quality of the prep. Shorten these intervals for high-UV, coastal, or humid climates.
| Siding material | Years between repaints |
|---|---|
| Wood / LP lap | 4–7 yrs |
| Fiber cement | 10–15 yrs |
| Vinyl | 5–10 yrs |
| Aluminum / metal | 5–8 yrs |
| Stucco | 6–10 yrs |
| Brick (masonry) | 7–20 yrs |
Field-painted fiber cement lasts 10–15 years; a factory ColorPlus finish stretches past 15. Wood is the shortest interval and the highest lifetime cost once you add periodic scraping and re-priming.
What these ranges don't include
National ranges, materials + labor combined, professional application. The base rate is for the siding (body) with two coats — power washing, trim and shutters, tall or complex access, lead-safe work on pre-1978 homes, and carpentry/rot repair are each priced separately below. Excludes full siding replacement, lead abatement, window re-glazing, and general-contractor markup. These are planning ranges, never a quote — get at least three written, itemized bids from licensed local painters.
- Siding replacement — If siding is rotting, warping, or crumbling, replace it ($3–$11/sq ft) rather than paint over failure.
- Lead abatement — Full lead removal (distinct from RRP-compliant containment) runs roughly $8–$17/sq ft.
- Carpentry & rot repair — Rotted trim, fascia, and soffit are a separate ~$6–$25/linear-foot line item, not paint labor.
- Window glazing / re-glazing — Re-puttying old sashes or replacing glass is glazing work, priced separately.
- Permits & GC markup — Permits ($200–$300 where required) and general-contractor overhead (add 13–22% if a GC supervises).
Where these numbers come from
Ranges reconcile national 2026 data on two bases that get conflated constantly. The paintable-siding basis — how contractors actually bid — draws on Homewyse's BLS-wage unit-cost method ($2.20–$4.37/sq ft), Fixr ($2.84–$5.28), Cost to Renovate ($2.50–$5.00), and DocJoist estimating examples. The floor-area basis people search on comes from Angi, HomeAdvisor, and NerdWallet ($1.50–$4.00/sq ft, about a $3,177 average) and This Old House ($4,400–$8,800 on a 2,000 sq ft project). The two are close once you apply the correct 0.75–0.85× floor-to-siding factor — not the 2.5× interior-wall figure, which would roughly triple the estimate. Where sources disagreed by more than 40% — whole-home totals, and per-square-foot rates — it was almost always a floor-vs-siding mismatch or a partial job compared to a full repaint, so we kept the bands wide rather than averaging to a false point, treated real-project medians as the center, and the unit-cost method as the high edge. Every figure is rounded to the nearest $250 on purpose: a national estimate quoted to the dollar is false precision. The model is reviewed annually; this page was last computed from data updated . For your own home, the numbers that matter more than these are the ones in three written, itemized bids from licensed local painters.
Ready to price the actual job?
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Frequently Asked Questions
How much does it cost to paint a house exterior in 2026?
A professional exterior repaint runs about $2,250 to $3,500 for a small one-story home, $3,500 to $5,500 for an average one-story, and $5,500 to $8,500 for a two-story — materials and labor combined. On a per-square-foot basis, plan on roughly $2.55–$4.00 per square foot of paintable siding. Prep condition, siding type, home size, and access drive the number far more than paint brand does. For a gallon-by-gallon materials take-off, use the free exterior paint calculator.
How much does it cost to paint a 2,000 sq ft house?
Most 2,000-square-foot homes land between the average one-story ($3,500 to $5,500) and the two-story ($5,500 to $8,500) ranges, depending on layout and access — a single-story 2,000 sq ft ranch is cheaper to paint than a two-story of the same floor area because the two-story has more wall relative to its footprint and is harder to reach (add the two-story access toggle in the estimator for the ladder-and-scaffold premium). The catch most estimates miss: a 2,000 sq ft home does not have 2,000 sq ft of siding. Paintable siding is only about 0.75× floor area on a one-story and 0.85× on a two-story, so contractors bid on roughly 1,500–1,700 sq ft of actual wall — not the floor number you searched.
What is the cost per square foot to paint a house exterior?
There are two legitimate "per square foot" numbers and they get confused constantly. Contractors bid against paintable SIDING area — about $2.55–$4.00 per square foot on wood or LP lap with typical prep. Consumer sites usually quote against home FLOOR area, roughly $1.50–$4.00. Both describe the same job; the floor-area number just looks lower because a home has more floor than siding. Never apply a siding rate to your floor square footage, and never assume the 2.5× multiplier from interior painting — exterior paintable area is well under your floor area, not over it.
Does the siding material change the cost of painting?
Yes — more than home size does on a small job. Vinyl is cheapest to coat ($2,500 to $5,500 on an average one-story), wood and LP lap are the baseline, and stucco and brick run 20–60% more ($3,500 to $7,500 for stucco) because of texture, porosity, a lower spread rate, and specialty masonry primers. Two hard rules: never paint vinyl a shade darker than the original — dark colors absorb heat, warp the panels, and void the warranty — and know that brick is a one-way door: once coated it must be repainted every 7–20 years forever because it cannot be cleanly stripped.
Why does prep cost so much of the total?
Because labor is 70–85% of a paint job (by some measures 75–95%), and prep is where that labor goes. A sound surface needs only a wash and spot caulk; widespread peeling means scraping to bare wood and priming the whole house, which our model prices as roughly 30–90% more than a light-prep job. Prep is also the single biggest driver of how long the finish lasts — paint fails at the prep line, not the paint line. That is why the prep-condition picker moves the estimate more than the paint you choose.
How much does lead-safe (RRP) work add on an older home?
On any home built before 1978, EPA's Renovation, Repair and Painting rule is mandatory once the job disturbs more than 20 square feet of exterior paint — which you pass in the first hour of a repaint. A certified firm, containment, HEPA cleanup, and cleaning verification typically add about 10–20%, or roughly $500–$2,000 ($250–$1,250 on our default estimate). It is not optional — EPA penalties now reach $46,989 per violation per day. Lead testing runs $30–$600. RRP is containment, not abatement — full lead removal is a separate, far costlier program.
Is premium paint worth it, and how much does it add?
Premium exterior lines cost roughly double per gallon — about $55–$100 versus $20–$45 for contractor grade — but because paint is only 15–30% of the job, upgrading moves the whole bid only about 3–12% (around $0–$1,000 on a two-story). So premium paint is a longevity decision, not a budget-buster: it earns its keep by stretching the years between repaints, not by being cheaper today.
Should I paint the house myself?
DIY materials and equipment run about $700–$1,800 for an average one-story and $1,000–$2,600 for a two-story — roughly 40–60% less than hiring out, because you are supplying the labor that is most of the cost. But it is real work: 60–100 hours for a one-story, 100–160 for a two-story. Ladder and scaffold work at height carries real fall risk — for a two-story or taller home, paint the low areas yourself and hire out the high work, or hire the whole job. Get a full materials list from the free exterior paint calculator.
Do these ranges include everything?
No. National ranges, materials + labor combined, professional application. The base rate is for the siding (body) with two coats — power washing, trim and shutters, tall or complex access, lead-safe work on pre-1978 homes, and carpentry/rot repair are each priced separately below. Excludes full siding replacement, lead abatement, window re-glazing, and general-contractor markup. These are planning ranges, never a quote — get at least three written, itemized bids from licensed local painters. Where sources disagree most — often because a floor-area figure was compared to a siding-area one, or a partial job to a full repaint — we keep the range wide rather than picking a false midpoint. For your project, the numbers that matter more than these are the ones in three written, itemized bids from licensed local painters.