Interior painting cost in Portland: per room and whole house

Painting one room inside a Portland-area house usually costs $400-$1,700 with the paint included, with about $800 as the typical job, and a whole interior runs $3,000-$17,500, typically near $7,000 (November 2026 market data) . Ceilings, trim, a dark colour going light, wall repairs and a house built before 1978 swing a quote the most.

If you'd rather send photos than work it out yourself, the interior painting page explains booking and the surfaces we take on. Below is only the money side: where the figures come from, what pushes them up, and what a written quote should show. I'm Slava, and seven years on the tools in houses like these feed what's below.

How much does interior painting cost around Portland?

Two market rows sit behind those numbers; neither is our quote yet.

The room row assumes walls, ceiling and trim together. Walls by themselves tend to land in the cheaper part of that band . The house row is wide because it stretches from three bedrooms with walls only to an empty house done top to bottom, every door included.

I'll swap in my own figures once I've checked them against my invoices . Kitchen cabinets are a separate job with their own price.

Inside work is what keeps going here all winter, when rain stalls most outside jobs.

How much do painters charge per room, and for a 12x12 bedroom?

A 12x12 bedroom with an 8-foot ceiling is about as plain as rooms get. Expect the low-to-middle part of the $400-$1,700 room range for it .

Some small rooms are slow:

• Bathrooms. Little wall, but you cut in around the tub, the vanity, the toilet tank and the mirror.
• Kitchens. Cabinets and backsplash leave short strips of wall with edges on every side.
• Living rooms with a raised or sloped ceiling need longer poles and more ladder moves.
• Stairwells and two-storey entries need a tall ladder or a plank set over the steps.

Closets are often counted as extra, so check whether a room price includes them .

Across Cedar Mill and Beaverton, plenty of 1960s-70s split-levels have a short flight of stairs between floors. That stair wall eats time even in a modest house, because the ladder has to straddle the steps.

What will a 1,500 to 2,000 square foot interior cost?

Our house row carries one price per house, with no per-foot rate, and square footage misleads anyway. What a painter actually adds up is:

• wall and ceiling surface, not floor;
• how tall the ceilings are;
• the count of rooms and doors;
• how many feet of trim and baseboard;
• whether the rooms are empty or full of furniture.

Two houses of 1,500 sq ft can be very different jobs. A one-storey ranch with 8-foot ceilings is simple. A two-storey house with an open entry and a stair wall is not . At 3,000 or 3,800 sq ft it works the same way: count rooms and ceiling heights, not the number on the listing.

For a remote range, text us the room count, ceiling heights, one photo per room, the build year, and the colours now and wanted.

Houses in Bethany, mostly 1990s-2000s, are newer than the ranches south of Highway 26, but for the bill, layout matters more than age .

What are you paying a painter for, and how is it billed?

Most of the bill is hours, not paint. Moving furniture, covering floors, filling, sanding, cutting in and two coats take the time. On the market rows above, paint and supplies take only a modest share .

Ask who buys the paint. Some painters supply it at cost, some add a margin, some let you buy it; the quote should say .

Three pricing methods show up around here:

• Per room or per job for rooms and whole houses.
• By the hour for small jobs like touch-ups or a few doors.
• Per square foot, which you'll mostly see on national websites.

To judge an hourly rate, our hourly-rate guide shows how hours turn into a bill west of downtown .

Drives inside our area run 5-25 minutes, so a small job doesn't carry much travel time.

What do smaller jobs cost: touch-ups, trim, doors or wallpaper?

These rows are Portland-area estimates for labour only. Paint goes on top .

A touch-up isn't always cheaper than a wall. New paint over old, especially in satin, can show as a patch, so sometimes the fair price is the whole wall corner to corner.

Wallpaper is the row to watch. In older houses and rentals the paper sometimes hides a second layer, or the drywall's face paper tears as it's pulled, which is why the top of that range is high .

What makes an interior paint quote go up?

• Height. Vaulted ceilings, stairwells and open entries mean more ladder time.
• Colour change. Dark to light, or a strong colour over white, usually takes a primer coat or a third coat.
• More colours. Accent walls and coloured ceilings mean more cutting in and more cleanup.
• A lived-in house. Moving and covering furniture takes hours an empty house doesn't need.
• Repairs first. Dents and cracks get priced as their own lines (next section).
• Bathroom mildew. It gets cleaned and sealed with a stain-blocking primer before any paint.
• Textured ceilings. Scraping off popcorn texture is not something we take on, since old texture can contain asbestos; it's on our not-offered list .

Whether winter changes my price is still to confirm .

Our long damp winters, with windows shut for months, put mildew on bathroom ceilings and on cold outside walls behind dressers and beds. Paint over it peels, so cleaning and priming come first, and a weak bath fan is often what needs fixing.

What do wall repairs add before painting?

Fresh paint shows every dent, so repairs are priced first and separately. For bigger damage, see our drywall repair page. All rows here are labour only.

A water stain is a symptom. Whatever leaked, a roof or a pipe, has to be fixed before the patch, or the stain is back in a month. Then a stain-blocking primer goes on before the finish coat .

A fair quote folds small dings and nail holes into the room price and lists bigger repairs as their own line or as an allowance .

Will a pre-1978 house raise the price of painting inside?

Oregon assumes lead paint is present in any home built ahead of 1978, unless testing rules it out. Anything smaller per room is treated as minor repair.

The lead-safe steps (containment, cleanup, verification) add hours and materials, so a quote for that work should show each of them on its own line.

We don't take jobs that would break up lead paint. On a pre-1978 house our work stays under that minor-repair line, and you'll hear that before any quote . For the full rule, read Oregon lead paint rules, explained.

Your purchase papers show the build year, and so does the county's property listing.

Cedar Hills tract houses are mostly 1950s-60s, Cedar Mill's mostly 1960s-70s, and Beaverton's run from the 1960s into the 1990s, so many west-side homes predate that line. Bethany's newer houses mostly don't.

Is it cheaper to paint a room yourself?

In cash, yes, since paint is a small part of a painter's bill. You pay instead in weekends, ladder work and how the edges look.

DIY makes sense for:

• one bedroom with flat walls;
• a colour you already have on hand;
• a house built in 1978 or later.

Hiring pays off for:

• ceilings and stairwells;
• enamel on trim and doors;
• bigger wall repairs;
• a move-out with a hard deadline.

Oregon's lead rule covers paid work, so a homeowner painting their own place isn't covered by it. The dust is the same either way, though, so read up before you sand old paint.

Cold, damp rooms in winter slow drying, so leave more time between coats. Keep the heat on and a fan moving air.

What should an interior painting quote spell out?

Once a home project in Oregon goes over $2,000, the law asks for a signed written contract and three state notices. When a smaller job grows beyond that, the paperwork is due inside five days. A whole-house repaint always crosses that line, since the house row begins at $3,000, and two or three rooms can too. Our contract rules guide lists what goes into it.

When comparing two quotes, line them up on:

• which rooms and surfaces: walls, ceilings, trim, doors, closets;
• number of coats;
• paint line and sheen;
• who supplies the paint;
• patching included or priced separately;
• who moves the furniture;
• cleanup at the end;
• start window and days on site;
• leftover paint, labelled by room, left behind for later .

The state's codes division says painting, papering or tiling walls, floors and ceilings in a house needs no building permit, so a painting estimate has no reason to list a permit charge.