What it costs · Interior
What an interior repaint costs in Auckland
Interior painting is usually sold by the room and almost never costs by the room. The walls are the quick part. The hours are in the edges: trim, doors, jambs, scotia, cutting in, and everything that has to be patched before any of it can start.
$179 vs $596
Modelled labour for two bedrooms of identical floor area — one plain, one with sash windows, two doors, picture rail, scotia and patching. Same square metres, more than three times the hours. Hourly rate published; the hours are our judgement, and the arithmetic is shown below.
Paintwork Auckland labour model; hourly rates from Tertiary Education Commission — Tahatū Career Navigator · retrieved 2026-07-30
The unit problem
Same floor area, three times the work
This is the clearest demonstration the labour model can offer, and it is why we will not publish a price per room. Both rooms below are 12 m². Neither number is a quote.
| Room | Hours (judgement) | At median $29.81/hr | Across the pay band |
|---|---|---|---|
| Plain bedroom, 12 m² One window, one door, sound paint, walls and ceiling, light patching. | 6 | $179 | $144 – $271 |
| Detailed bedroom, also 12 m² Three sash windows, two doors and jambs, picture rail, scotia, skirting, patching after wallpaper removal. | 20 | $596 | $481 – $904 |
| Kitchen, 14 m² Cutting in around cabinetry, splashback and appliances, plus washable finish and more masking. | 12 | $358 | $288 – $542 |
| Bathroom, 6 m² Small area, almost all of it edges. Mould treatment, moisture-resistant finish, extensive masking. | 10 | $298 | $240 – $452 |
| Stairwell and landing Trestles or a small tower inside the house, high cutting-in, and a balustrade of edges. | 16 | $477 | $385 – $723 |
Hours are one painter’s time, our judgement for a room in average condition. Note that the bathroom is the smallest room on the list and not the cheapest: it is almost entirely edges, and it needs mould treatment and heavy masking. Area is a poor predictor indoors too.
Paintwork Auckland labour model; hourly rates from Tertiary Education Commission — Tahatū Career Navigator · retrieved 2026-07-30
The pay you see here is your pay before tax. When an employer pays you, Inland Revenue (IR) collects a percentage of that income. Learn more about income tax on the IR website — Inland Revenue. Pay data: Tertiary Education Commission — Tahatū Career Navigator, licensed CC BY 4.0.
The arithmetic
The two bedrooms, side by side:
Where interior hours actually go
- Trim, doors and jambs. Brush work, two coats, and drying time between them. A six-panel door is not a flat door.
- Cutting in. Every junction between two colours is a hand-cut line: wall to ceiling, wall to scotia, wall to skirting, around every architrave.
- Patching and sealing. Nail pops, cracks, old fixing holes, and sealing the patches so they do not flash through the finish coat.
- Ceilings. Overhead work is slower, and water stains need a stain-blocking sealer rather than another coat of white.
- Protection. Floors, joinery, fittings and anything that cannot be moved. In an occupied house this happens twice a day.
What to do
How to get two interior quotes that can actually be compared
Interior quotes diverge because they include different scopes, not because painters charge wildly different rates. Fix the scope and the comparison becomes real.
- Write the room list yourself, and for each room state whether ceilings and trim are in or out. Ask for walls-only and walls-plus-trim as separate lines.
- Name the preparation. Wash and sand? Fill and sand? Wallpaper removal — and who repairs the linings underneath it if they come away with the paper?
- Product and sheen per surface. Ceilings, walls, wet areas and trim usually take different products. The names let you read the datasheets.
- Occupied or empty, and who moves the furniture.
- Colour count. Every extra colour is another cut-in line and another set-up.
The method behind these numbers · the exterior is priced on entirely different drivers.
Questions people actually ask
How much does it cost to paint a room?
“A room” is not a unit of painting work. Two 12 m² bedrooms in the same house can differ by more than three times in labour hours, because one has a door and a window and the other has three sash windows, two doors, a picture rail, scotia and skirting, and walls that need patching after wallpaper came off. The paint on the walls is the fast part of both.
Anyone pricing your interior per room without walking through it is pricing an average and hoping your house is one.
Should I include the ceilings?
If you are painting the walls, usually yes. Fresh walls make an old ceiling look grey, and doing them later means masking and protecting the finished walls all over again. Ceilings are also where the awkward work lives: overhead rolling, cutting in against the scotia, and any stain-blocking needed for old water marks, which need a sealer rather than another coat of white.
Do I have to move out, and does that change the price?
It changes the price, because it changes the hours. An empty house lets a crew work room to room without protecting or shifting anything. An occupied house means daily set-up and pack-down, furniture moved and re-covered, and rooms handed back usable each evening. That is real time, and it should be discussed openly rather than absorbed silently into a rate.
Is it cheaper to do the whole house at once?
Per room, generally yes. Mobilisation, protection, mixing and clean-up are largely fixed per visit, so spreading the same rooms over three visits pays them three times. Colour matching is also easier in one run. The counter-argument is cash flow and disruption, and that is a legitimate reason to stage the work — just stage it deliberately rather than by accident.
Can I just have the walls done and keep the old trim?
You can, and it is a genuine way to reduce cost, because trim, doors and jambs are where the brush-work hours go. Two cautions. Old enamel yellows, so fresh white walls will make cream-coloured trim look dirtier than it did. And if the trim is chipped, the contrast with new walls draws the eye straight to it. Ask for the walls-only and walls-plus-trim prices separately, then decide with the numbers in front of you.
Why does interior work still need preparation if the walls look fine?
Because adhesion is not visible. Sugar soap and sanding to a key, filling nail pops and cracks, sealing patched areas so they do not flash through the finish coat — none of that shows up in a photograph, and all of it decides whether the paint is still on the wall in eight years. It is also, reliably, the first thing removed from a quote that is competing on price alone.
Next
Send the room list
Rooms, whether ceilings and trim are in, whether the house is occupied, and your suburb. We will tell you honestly whether the budget matches the list before anyone books a visit.