What the ranges are
The site publishes 12 price ranges, for exterior, interior and cabinet work, first in the cost guide and then reused, unchanged, on the cost hub, the city pages, the service pages and the calculator. They are editorial estimates of what a licensed painter in the Portland metro typically charges for the work described, with standard prep. They are not collected quotes, not a survey, and not a price any painter has agreed to.
Every page reads them from one file, so the calculator cannot drift from the cost guide. If a range changes, it changes everywhere at once, and the change is recorded on the corrections page.
What they assume
- A painting contractor licensed by the Oregon CCB, or registered with Washington L&I for Clark County.
- Exterior: pressure washing, scraping and sanding failed areas, spot priming, and two coats of a mid-grade exterior paint.
- Interior: normal patching, walls in one color per room, and trim, doors and ceilings only where the row says so.
- Cabinets: degreasing, sanding, priming and two coats of cabinet finish.
What they leave out
- Carpentry beyond small repairs: rotten siding, sills and fascia are priced separately when found.
- Full lead abatement. Lead-safe work practices on a pre-1978 house are a separate line, shown as such.
- Deck, fence and commercial work, for which the site publishes no range.
- Permits, HOA review, and anything the painter cannot see until the work starts.
How the calculator uses them
Pick a row and the calculator shows that row. Enter a square footage and it multiplies floor area by the per-square-foot range the cost guide derives from its own tables: about $2.90 to $5.40 for a one-story exterior, $2.20 to $5.00 for a two-story exterior, and $1.75 to $4.00 for a whole interior, rounded to the nearest $50. It applies no other multipliers.
Limits worth knowing
Painters measure paintable wall area, not floor area, so a per-square-foot figure is a rough check, not a way to compare two bids. Two houses of the same size can differ by thousands of dollars on prep alone. A range tells you which questions to ask at the estimate visit; it does not tell you whether a specific estimate is right. The bid checker is built for that second question.