How to Estimate Painting Labor Costs Accurately for Any Project
Painting costs rise or fall on labor. Materials are easy to price. Your time, crew size, production rates, and site conditions decide the real number. If you manage facilities in Edmonton or operate a warehouse in Acheson, Nisku, Sherwood Park, or on the south side near Parsons Road, a tight labor estimate keeps projects on schedule and avoids budget blowouts. This guide lays out a practical way to price labor for interior and exterior work, with examples from warehouse painting in Edmonton’s climate and construction mix.
Why labor drives the total
On most commercial paint projects, labor accounts for 60 to 80 percent of the total cost. The exact share depends on complexity, height, substrate condition, and access. A clean tilt-up concrete warehouse with 24-foot clear height might run on the low end. A steel-frame facility with extensive racking, overhead lines, and occupied operations sits on the high end. Small errors on production rates or prep time compound over thousands of square feet, so we break the estimate into measurable parts and set realistic rates based on local conditions.
Define the scope with production-driven quantities
Accurate labor estimating starts with a scope you can measure. For warehouse painting in Edmonton, the core areas are interior walls, structural steel, doors and frames, safety lines, exterior concrete, and sometimes ceilings or roof deck. Each has a different square footage, film build, and access plan. Do not rely on a single cost per square foot across the entire building. Separate assemblies and assign each a specific rate.
For walls, measure net wall area rather than gross perimeter when possible. On a 40,000 square foot warehouse with 24-foot walls and minimal office build-out, wall area might sit near 18,000 to 22,000 square feet after accounting for doors and glazing. Structural steel is linear or surface area by member type. Doors and frames are priced per opening, with a labor allowance per coat. Ceilings depend on whether you are coating the open deck, spray-applying a dryfall product, or roll-priming and finishing a flat substrate.
Establish local production rates that reflect Edmonton realities
Textbook production rates do not hold up on live sites with lifts, cold mornings, and trade stacking. We set production by substrate, height, access, and product type, then adjust for season and occupancy. Edmonton’s dry air helps curing, but cold snaps and ventilation limits affect recoat windows and night-shift productivity. Here are working ranges many contractors use as a starting point for commercial interiors:
- Roll and back-roll on smooth drywall at 8 to 12 mils wet: 250 to 350 square feet per hour per painter per coat under 12 feet, 150 to 250 square feet over 20 feet with lifts.
- Tilt-up concrete with block filler and acrylic topcoat: 80 to 150 square feet per hour per coat, depending on porosity and spray-versus-roll access.
- Open steel (joists, columns, bracing) with DTM acrylic or poly: 60 to 120 square feet per hour for brush and roll; 150 to 250 square feet per hour for spray with proper masking and fall protection.
- Door and frame sets: 0.5 to 0.8 labor hours per opening per coat for brush and roll; 0.3 to 0.5 hours if sprayed offsite or in a controlled zone.
These are ballpark numbers. You refine them based on building height, lift travel distance, obstruction, and whether the warehouse stays open during work. Occupied spaces typically cut your production by 15 to 30 percent due to staging, traffic control, and cleanup requirements.
Separate prep from finish
Prep time swings estimates more than anything else. Do not fold prep into a coat rate unless you have historical data for that exact substrate. In Edmonton warehouses, common prep tasks include pressure washing, degreasing around loading docks, hand tool cleaning of rust on bar joists, crack repairs on tilt-up, bond testing for existing coatings, and caulking joints.
A sensible way to capture prep is to set a per-square-foot or per-hour allowance by area. For example, pressure washing an exterior wall with gum, dust, and road film might sit at 200 to 300 square feet per hour including setup and water management. Rust conversion on isolated steel can run 0.25 to 0.5 hours per 10 linear feet depending on severity. Concrete crack repairs vary widely, so we often walk the site and count lineal footage. If you are painting cold storage or a high-dust facility, factor additional masking and cleaning.
Choose application methods based on site constraints
Spray moves fast, but setup, masking, and safety procedures can erase gains on smaller or heavily occupied jobs. In large empty warehouses, airless spray with back-rolling on concrete walls is efficient, especially above 16 feet. In active facilities with picking operations, brush and roll on the lower 8 to 12 feet can be safer and cleaner, with spray reserved for off-hours or upper elevations.
Lift selection influences labor rates. A 19-foot scissor may suffice for office zones, while 45-foot knuckle booms cover open warehouses with obstacles. Moving lifts costs time. In tight aisles with racking, expect a 10 to 25 percent reduction in production due to repositioning and spot work by brush. Add a spotter if traffic or uneven slab conditions warrant it.
Account for coats, dry times, and sequencing
Labor is not just square footage times a rate. It is also how many mobilizations and passes you make. A typical interior repaint might be a spot primer and one finish coat on a uniform color. New concrete often needs block filler and two topcoats. Steel elements might require a rust-inhibitive primer plus two coats of DTM. Each coat is a separate mobilization, with setup, access, and cleanup. In winter, cure times stretch in unheated shells, so add return trips or plan heaters.
If you schedule night work to avoid downtime for tenants in south Edmonton or on the west end, apply a shift differential. Night shifts commonly add 5 to 15 percent to labor to cover slower pace and limited support services. If you phase around operations, your crew may spend an hour a day moving materials and signage, which needs a line in the estimate.
Price supervision, safety, and site logistics as real hours
Commercial warehouse painting in Edmonton carries safety protocols: fall protection refreshers, daily toolbox talks, lift inspections, and hazard assessments. These are not overhead; they are on-site tasks. On larger jobs, a working foreperson usually spends part of each day coordinating with the GC or facility manager, walking the site, and maintaining QA records. Budget 0.5 to 1.0 foreperson hours per crew day, more if the project is complex. If your team sets up containment for spray or abrasive prep, add time for building and dismantling.
Weather can complicate exterior work. Edmonton wind gusts limit spray windows on tall facades. Cold mornings delay starts. If you are painting exterior concrete or metal in April or October, expect more short days and plan the labor spread accordingly. Factor a contingency for weather downtime to avoid squeezing production unrealistically.
Build a simple labor worksheet
A clear worksheet turns a site walk into an accurate number. Break the job into areas, assign production rates, calculate hours per coat, and add prep, mobilization, and supervision. Then check the total against your crew’s capacity and the schedule.
Here is a compact structure that works well for warehouse painting Edmonton projects:
- Measured quantities by area: walls, steel, doors, ceilings, floors or safety markings, exterior.
- Production rate per coat for each area based on height and method.
- Separate prep hours by task: washing, patching, priming spots, masking, protection.
- Setup and cleanup time per shift, per crew.
- Supervision and safety hours per day.
- Travel and material handling time if the site is far from your shop or requires frequent lift moves.
Keep the math transparent so a facility manager can review it. If they ask why wall coating is priced at 200 square feet per hour, you can explain lift height, spray-and-back-roll method, and daily setups.
An example from a typical Edmonton warehouse
Say you have a 30,000 square foot distribution space in north Edmonton with 22-foot tilt-up walls, painted previously, in fair condition. The scope is a light wash, spot prime, and one coat of acrylic on walls; two coats on marked up dock areas; and repaint of 40 hollow metal doors and frames. The site is active, with operations confined to half the floor each day.
You measure 14,000 square feet of wall paintable area after subtracting doors and office glazing. Dock walls account for 2,500 square feet within that. Doors and frames total 40 openings.
Set production rates: occupied environment at height, brush and roll lower zone, spray upper where clear. You choose 180 square feet per hour per coat for walls, 140 for dock zones due to extra masking and carts, and 0.6 hours per opening per coat for doors and frames. Prep includes a light wash at 250 square feet per hour and masking around electrical for 3 hours per day for two days. Setup and cleanup are 1 hour per day for a two-person crew. Supervision is 0.5 hours per day.
Compute hours:
- Wash: 14,000 at 250 square feet per hour equals 56 hours.
- Walls coat one: 14,000 at 180 equals 77.8 hours. Round up to 80 to allow for moves.
- Dock second coat: 2,500 at 140 equals 17.9 hours. Call it 18 hours.
- Doors and frames: two coats at 0.6 hours per coat equals 1.2 hours per opening. At 40 openings, 48 hours.
- Masking and protection: two days times 3 hours equals 6 hours.
- Setup and cleanup: two-person crew for five shifts equals 10 person-hours.
- Supervision: five shifts times 0.5 equals 2.5 hours.
Total labor sits around 221 hours before contingency. Add 10 percent for occupied site interruptions and lift positioning, bringing it to about 243 hours.
If your burdened labor rate averages $68 per hour in Edmonton, the labor portion prices in around $16,500. Add materials and equipment separately, but your labor estimate is now grounded in actual production and site constraints.
Adjust for height, access, and finish level
Production falls as height rises. Above 20 feet, expect more time spent moving lifts, checking overhead lines, and working around sprinklers and lighting. If the warehouse has dense racking that cannot be removed, cut your production by another 20 to 30 percent unless you can schedule complete clear-outs per bay.
Finish level matters. A single-color maintenance coat on off-white walls is faster than a dark-to-light change requiring a primer. Specified coatings also influence pace. Low-odor, fast-dry products help in occupied areas but may need thinner coats. High-build block fillers reduce topcoat consumption but add a full pass of labor. If the spec calls for elastomeric on exterior concrete, lower your square feet per hour due to viscosity and drying checks.
Factor equipment and handling into labor hours
Lifts, sprayers, and pressure washers add setup and teardown time. Moving a 45-foot boom from west Edmonton to a Nisku jobsite, unloading, and orienting for the first shift can consume a half day for two workers. Sprayer cleaning at the end of each shift might run 30 to 45 minutes. If you need to swap tips for different products or switch to rollers in tight zones, add a small allowance per day. These tasks are easy to forget and end up as unpaid overtime.
Price mobilizations and phasing cleanly
Break a large warehouse into phases with clear mobilization counts. If the client wants you to paint around inventory rather than remove it, you may face three or four mobilizations for one large space. Each mobilization has load-in, site orientation, protection, and sign-off time. Whether it is one crew moving through in waves or multiple crews for a fast turnaround, log the extra starts and stops.
Include compliance and documentation
Many industrial facilities in Edmonton request documentation: SDS binders, product data sheets, color submittals, adhesion tests, and daily QA photos. Assign a block of hours to pre-job planning, submittals, and closeout. It keeps the crew painting instead of building binders in the van. If the site requires orientations or security badges, plan for that on day one.
Align crew size with the schedule, not wishful thinking
Crew count affects production. Two painters can move efficiently in a moderate warehouse. Scaling to six without expanding the work front can cause bottlenecks at lifts and masking stations. Let the schedule and access area dictate crew size. If the client in Sherwood Park needs a fast turnaround, you may run two parallel crews on split shifts: a day crew for lower walls and doors, and a night crew for spray work at height. Price the shift differential and supervision load for both.
Reality-check your hours with a walk-through narrative
Before you finalize the number, tell the story of your job in hours. Day one, wash and protect. Day two, mask lower walls, position the lift, and spray upper bands. Day three, roll lower walls and start doors. Day four, second coat at docks and more doors. Day five, punch list, demask, move lifts out. This narrative exposes gaps like missed drying time, over-ambitious area coverage, or forgotten cleanup. If the story feels rushed, the hours probably are too.
Specific notes for exterior warehouse painting in Edmonton
Exterior seasons are short. Paint between late May and early October for best results. Cold nights and windy afternoons reduce spray windows. If your spec demands a minimum surface temperature and no precipitation for 24 hours, plan for weather holds. Again, this is labor: site visits, testing surfaces, partial days. If the building sits near busy roads like Yellowhead Trail, overspray control demands extra masking and spotters, which slows application.
Substrate checks matter. Tilt-up panels often have patchwork repairs over the years. If you see chalking, add time for chalk-binding or power washing with a cleaner that breaks down the binder, then rinse thoroughly. If there is efflorescence, price for treatment and dry-down time. Gutters, downspouts, bollards, and canopy steel are small but time-consuming; itemize them to avoid burying hours in “miscellaneous.”
How material choices shift labor
Faster is not always cheaper. A high-solids coating may cover in one pass but require more skill and slower movement to maintain an even film. A thin, forgiving acrylic can move quickly but may need two coats to hide. Discuss with your supplier and the client. If you can cut a coat on walls using a premium product, you remove a full mobilization and significant hours. If your crew is strongest with brush and roll, a brush-friendly DTM might reduce errors on steel and avoid rework.
Typical cost ranges for warehouse painting in Edmonton
While every site is different, these ranges help owners and facility managers pressure-test bids:
- Interior maintenance repaint of warehouse walls and doors with minimal prep: labor at $0.75 to $1.50 per square foot of wall area, plus per-opening rates for doors.
- New tilt-up interior with block filler and two coats: labor at $1.50 to $2.50 per square foot of wall area.
- Structural steel touch-up and repaint: labor at $2.00 to $4.00 per square foot of steel surface area equivalent, or by time-and-materials when rust and access are uncertain.
- Exterior tilt-up repaint: labor at $1.25 to $2.25 per square foot, heavier if there is chalking, cracks, or significant masking near traffic.
- Safety lines and floor markings: labor often at $2.00 to $4.00 per linear foot depending on layout, prep, and curing windows.
Rates tighten when the space is empty, power is ample, and the schedule is linear. They climb with occupancy, height, winter constraints, and complex substrates.
Common pitfalls that inflate labor after the job starts
The quickest way to blow an estimate is to ignore site constraints. Underestimating lift time, assuming spray is always faster, skipping a moisture or adhesion test, or glossing over prep on stained concrete can add days. Another risk is color change. A dark-to-light shift needs a primer, sometimes a gray-tinted one, or the finish will streak and you will chase coverage with a third coat. On exteriors, wind and sun can dry the film too fast, causing lap marks that need re-coating. Build time for test areas and approvals before full production.
How Depend Exteriors builds dependable labor numbers
We price warehouse painting Edmonton projects by walking the site with you and breaking the job into production-based units. We measure, test, and talk through operations. We set rates based on height, access, and product choice. If the facility is busy near 99 Street or out in the Leduc corridors, we schedule phasing that keeps freight moving. Our crews are local, so we plan around Edmonton weather and supply timelines. We document prep and protection so you know what you are paying for, and we keep the crew size matched to the actual work front to avoid standing time.
We also protect your schedule. If your client wants a quick refresh before a lease inspection, we can prioritize lower walls and doors first, then come back for upper bands on off-hours. If you need color matches for brand standards, we get sample drawdowns on your actual substrate and dial professional commercial painting providers in coverage, so the labor count reflects the real number of coats, not hope.
A simple checklist to tighten your estimate
- Confirm substrate condition with a site walk, including adhesion and moisture tests where needed.
- Split the scope by area and method: walls, steel, doors, ceilings; spray, roll, or both.
- Assign coat counts and production rates by height and access, and separate prep time.
- Add daily setup, cleanup, supervision, and safety hours; include mobilizations and phases.
- Stress test the schedule against occupancy, weather, and recoat times; adjust crew size accordingly.
Ready to price your warehouse, plant, or distribution centre?
If you are comparing quotes or building a budget, we can walk your site and provide a transparent, production-based labor estimate. Whether you manage a logistics hub in south Edmonton, a fabrication shop in St. Albert, or a cold storage facility near Ellerslie, we’ll show you how the hours break down and where you can save time without compromising the finish.
Call Depend Exteriors to schedule a site visit, or send drawings and photos for a quick takeoff. For warehouse painting Edmonton projects, we can usually provide a preliminary labor range within 24 to 48 hours and a firm proposal after a walk-through. If you are under a tight window, ask about evening or weekend shifts and phased work plans that keep your operations running.
Depend Exteriors provides commercial and residential stucco services in Edmonton, AB. Our team handles stucco repair, stucco replacement, and masonry repair for homes and businesses across the city and surrounding areas. We work on exterior surfaces to restore appearance, improve durability, and protect buildings from the elements. Our services cover projects of all sizes with reliable workmanship and clear communication from start to finish. If you need Edmonton stucco repair or masonry work, Depend Exteriors is ready to help.