Running short mid-turnover stalls a unit; overbuying leaves half-used buckets freezing in the basement. Here is how Chicago owners and managers estimate paint accurately for vintage walls, tall ceilings, and color changes.
Ask three painters how much paint a two-bedroom apartment needs and you will get three different answers. That is not incompetence. Coverage depends on things a quick walkthrough does not reveal, and a 900-square-foot unit in a 1920s Logan Square two-flat can need four more gallons than a 900-square-foot unit in a 2005 Lakeview mid-rise.
Getting the number right matters in both directions. Come up short on a Friday afternoon and the crew stops, the store is out of your tint base, and the turnover slips past the weekend. Overbuy and you are storing half-used five-gallon buckets in a back porch or garage that will freeze them solid by February. Across a portfolio, both mistakes cost real money every year.
The number that matters is wall surface area, not the square footage on the lease. Measure the perimeter of each room and multiply by the ceiling height. A 12-by-14 bedroom has a 52-foot perimeter; at 9 feet, that is 468 square feet of wall.
Then subtract openings. A standard door is roughly 21 square feet and a typical double-hung window 15 to 20. Most estimators only deduct openings larger than about 20 square feet, because cutting in around small windows consumes about as much paint as the glass saves.
A gallon of quality interior latex covers 350 to 400 square feet on a smooth, sealed surface. Divide your net wall area by 350 for a conservative first pass, and treat that figure as a floor rather than a target.
Vintage Chicago housing stock runs tall. Greystones and two-flats in Ravenswood and Andersonville commonly have 9-foot ceilings, and plenty of pre-war courtyard buildings in Rogers Park run 10 feet or more.
That is not a rounding error. Going from an 8-foot ceiling to a 10-foot ceiling adds 25 percent to your wall area in every room. On a four-room apartment that is often an extra gallon and a half of wall paint before you have accounted for anything else.
Tall rooms also change labor. You are adding staging, extension poles, and slower cut-in time at the ceiling line. When you compare a bid on a Rogers Park courtyard unit against one on a Lakeview mid-rise with 8-foot ceilings, make sure you are comparing wall area, not floor plans.
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