What painting a house costs in Canada

Two quotes, one house, and the week that separates them

A painter who is washing the walls, scraping the failed patches back to a sound edge, filling, caulking the joints and spot-priming the bare spots is selling you a week. A painter who is putting two coats over whatever is there is selling you two days. Both quotes will say "two coats".

The difference does not show on the day the scaffold comes down. It shows in the third summer, when the paint lifts along exactly the seams it lifted along last time. Ask for the preparation listed as tasks — washed, scraped, sanded, filled, caulked, primed — and ask how much of the quoted time goes to it before a colour is opened.

Coats are a number, so get the number

Two coats over a similar colour is the normal job inside and out. Going pale over dark, or painting over a wall that has been patched, means a primer coat first and sometimes a third finish coat to even out the sheen. That is not an upsell, it is arithmetic about how much a film can hide.

Choose the colours before the quote if you can. A painter pricing an off-white and a painter pricing a deep blue-green on stucco are pricing two different jobs, and the second one finds out on site.

Before 1990, the prep method is a health decision

Health Canada is plain about the timeline. A home built before 1960 probably contains lead-based paint. Built between 1960 and 1990, the exterior may contain it. Houses built after 1990 should not, because consumer paints made in Canada and the United States were virtually lead-free by then. On method it is equally plain: do not use sanders, heat guns or blowlamps to remove paint in older homes, because that creates dust and fumes containing lead.

So on an older house the real question is not what goes on, it is what comes off and how. A crew that arrives at a 1950s bungalow with a disc sander and nothing on the ground is proposing the one thing Health Canada names — in the garden, where the dust stays.

Asbestos belongs in the same conversation. Health Canada's list of where it may still be found in a home includes house siding, cement and plaster, and floor and ceiling tiles, and it names the activities that release fibres: drilling, sawing, sanding, scraping, removing, breaking apart. It also says there is no significant risk while the material is left undisturbed and tightly bound in products in good condition. Painting is the trade that turns the second sentence into the first one. Scraping chalky asbestos-cement siding is the disturbance.

What is in the can now is not what was in it

Federal regulation sets volatile organic compound limits for 53 categories of architectural coating, running from 100 to 800 grams per litre, and it binds manufacturers, importers and sellers. The consequence for your house is that the solvent-heavy oil enamel that used to flow itself flat on a handrail is not what comes off the shelf. Painters use waterborne products in its place. They skin over faster, they are less forgiving of a slow brush hand, and they want a light sand between coats to lie down properly.

It is worth knowing because it changes what "the same as last time" means. A house last painted in the early nineties was painted with materials that are no longer sold.

Outside, the calendar is the constraint

Every can carries a temperature range for application and cure, and on a Canadian exterior that leaves a stretch of the year rather than a season. Inside that window the weather still has rules: dew on siding at seven in the morning is water under the first coat, full sun on a south wall skins the film before it can flow, and rain inside the cure time can leave streaks that have to be washed off before the second coat.

That is why exterior crews book out and why a March phone call gets a June date. It is also why the last house of the season is the one painted in a hurry.

Inside is a different job on the same invoice

Interior work is priced by what has to be cut in, not by floor area. Count the doors, the window casings, the baseboard runs and the stairwell — that is where the hours are. A bedroom with one door and no ceiling change is the fastest thing in the house.

Settle these before anyone arrives: who moves and covers the furniture, who takes off the switch plates and the curtain hardware, whether ceilings are in the price, whether closets are in the price, and where filling stops and wall repair starts.

Get it on paper, and make it name the paint

Ontario's rules are the clearest in the country and the posture travels: a home renovation contract worth more than 50 dollars has to be in writing, the final price cannot come in more than 10 per cent over a contract estimate unless you have agreed in writing to new work or a new price, a down payment is recommended to stay at no more than 10 per cent, and a contract signed in your home carries a 10 calendar-day cooling-off period you can use for any reason.

Add one painting line to that. "Premium paint" is not a specification. The quote should name the brand, the product line and the sheen for walls, for trim and for ceilings, because otherwise two quotes cannot be compared at all.

Job Bank puts painters and decorators in Canada between 20.00 and 40.99 CAD an hour with a median of 28.00, updated 19 November 2025. That is the wage the painter earns. The rate you are quoted also carries the ladders or the lift, insurance for working at height, the drop sheets, and the morning they come back to fix the two spots you found once the furniture went home.