One gallon of paint covers approximately 400 square feet. To estimate how much paint your project requires, enter your room measurements—rounded to the nearest foot—into our pop-up calculator. To ensure you will have enough paint, do not worry about excluding areas not to be painted, such as windows and doors. Additionally, a 10 percent waste allowance is automatically added to the total.

 Tips on Measuring for Paint

Before you begin, take the room measurements in the list below. If you have cathedral ceilings that create sloping walls, follow the special case instructions on how to derive this square footage.

1. Wall height
   Measure from floor to ceiling.

2. Wall perimeter for areas you plan to paint
   Measure the length of each wall. Add all these figures together to obtain the total horizontal distance, or perimeter.

3. Ceiling width and length
   Omit if you do not plan to paint your ceiling.

4. Sloping walls form a triangular wall space
   To calculate a triangle’s square footage, multiply the length or base of the wall by the highest wall height and divide by 2.

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