Most whole-house repaints use two or three colors. This one on Great Lakes Drive used nine, plus white on everything trimmed. It came to $22,442, and the hardest part was not the painting.
The color list
This is copied straight off the signed quote, because that is where it lived before we started:
Master bedroom — PPG1164-6 Blue Cloud
Dining room — PPG1200-7 Mincemeat
Family room — PPG1037-5 Night Rendezvous
Foyer through the kitchen — PPG1055-5 Cinnamon Diamonds
The red room — SW6601 Tanager
Cabinets — SW0050 Classic Light Buff
Upstairs hall — PPG1026-4 Karma
Upstairs bathroom — Parisian Patina
Upstairs bedrooms — Breezy
Chair rails, doors and casings — white
Nine colors across two brands, and one of the rooms is identified in our own paperwork as “the red room,” because that is what the family called it.
Why the list matters more than the paint
A nine-color house is not harder to paint. It is harder to keep straight.
Nine colors means nine separate cans, nine labels, and nine chances for somebody to carry the wrong bucket up the stairs. The way you prevent that is boring and it works: every color gets written down against a specific room, on a document the homeowner signs, before anyone opens anything.
We call it color confirmation and it is its own signed page on our jobs. It exists because “I thought we said the lighter one” is the most expensive sentence in this trade. Repainting a room you already painted costs everybody money and there is no good way to split it.
What the work actually was
Walls — $8,150. All the downstairs walls except the bathrooms, and all the upstairs walls including the bathroom. PPG, flat. Closets excluded.
Ceilings — $2,900. Every ceiling except the first-floor bathrooms. Sherwin-Williams ProMar 400/200, flat.
Cabinets in Classic Light Buff.
Standard interior prep throughout — furniture moved off the walls, floors and furniture covered, blinds and drapery taken down and rehung, outlet covers off and back on, nail holes and cracks filled and caulked, glossy and rough areas sanded so the paint would bond.
The change orders, including one that went backwards
Three things got added along the way.
Accent walls — $350. Priced at $100 per wall plus the cost of the paint. That is our standard rate and it is the same whether it is one wall or five.
Removing tile baseboards — $262. Billed at $75 an hour, three and a half hours. Not guessed at — timed.
Removing eight doors — $1,560. Works out to $195 a door to take off, handle, and rehang.
And then a fourth entry: minus $3,120, described in our own records as “fixing last change order.”
We had gotten a change order wrong and overcharged. So we wrote a credit and gave it back. That is in the file permanently, which is exactly where it should be.
If you are planning a multi-color repaint
Three things worth knowing. Get every color written against a room before work starts, and sign it. Expect to pay per wall for accent walls, not per room. And ask what happens to doors — taking them off and rehanging them properly is real labor and it should appear on the quote, not surprise you.
Common questions
How many paint colors is too many for one house?
There is no technical limit. This St. Peters home used nine wall colors plus white trim and it worked because every color was assigned to a specific room in writing beforehand. The risk with many colors is not the painting, it is the tracking.
How much does an accent wall cost?
We charge $100 per wall plus the cost of the paint.
Do you charge to remove and rehang doors?
Yes. On this project removing eight doors was $1,560, or about $195 per door, covering removal, handling and rehanging. It appears as its own line so you can see it.
What if the painter makes a billing mistake?
We issue a written credit. On this job a change order was priced wrong and we credited $3,120 back to the customer. It stays in the project file alongside everything else.
Planning a repaint in St. Peters?
We are based here. Every color gets written down and signed before we open a can.
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