How much paint for a 11x11 room?
An 11x11 room needs 1.81 gallons for two coats, the same as a 10x12, because both measure 44 ft around no matter how differently they sit.
A 11x11 ft room with 8-foot ceilings needs 1.81 gallons of paint for two coats — buy 2 × 1-gallon cans. That is 352 sq ft of gross wall, 316 sq ft after deducting one door (21 sq ft) and one window (15 sq ft), covered twice against 350 sq ft per gallon. With the standard 10% waste buffer it comes to 1.99 gallons, about $80 of paint. Having it painted runs about $441 for the walls, or $771 with the ceiling and trim.
Rates and coverage figures updated August 2026. Compiled 2026 from sources last updated 2023–2026.What to actually buy
- 2 × 1-gallon cans of wall color — $80, leaving 0.01 gal spare.
- On the walls, rounding up to 2 full gallons instead costs $80 and leaves 0.01 gal you will not use.
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What a 11x11 room is, and what that means for the job
There is no long wall in an 11x11, and that decides the job before it decides the numbers. You find this room in older two-story houses where the upstairs bedrooms came out square, and in dens and home offices. With four equal 11 ft walls there is no obvious place for the bed, so the room ends up with something centered on each side, bed, dresser, desk, closet, and all four walls are partly blocked instead of one or two being clear.
That makes the prep slower than 316 sq ft suggests. Nothing can be pushed to one end; it all comes to the middle in a single pile and you work a ring around it. The reward is that a square room has no awkward reach. Eleven feet is a short run of wall from either corner, and at 8 ft you never leave the second step of the ladder. In a converted office the ceiling usually stays as it is, since the walls are taking a color the room never had.
The numbers behind the answer
| Ceiling height | Gross wall | Net wall | 1 coat | 2 coats | 2 coats + waste |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 8 ft | 352 | 316 | 0.90 | 1.81 | 1.99 |
| 9 ft | 396 | 360 | 1.03 | 2.06 | 2.26 |
| 10 ft | 440 | 404 | 1.15 | 2.31 | 2.54 |
The arithmetic is worth seeing once: 352 sq ft of gross wall comes from 2 × (11 + 11) × 8 ft. Take off 21 sq ft for the door and 15 for the window and you have 316 sq ft to cover. Two coats is 632 sq ft of coverage, and at 350 sq ft per gallon that is 1.81 gallons. Every figure on this page comes from that one calculation.
A 11x11 room needs exactly the same paint as a 10x12 (120 sq ft of floor). All of them measure 44 feet around, so all of them have 316 sq ft of wall to cover and all of them take 1.81 gallons — even though the 11x11 has 121 sq ft of floor and the 10x12 has 120. Wall paint follows the perimeter, not the floor area. Stretching a room in one direction while shrinking it in the other changes how much carpet you buy and not how much paint.
What to buy
Two gallons, and resist the third. With waste the requirement is 1.99 against the 2.00 in the cans, so the plan holds only if the waste stays theoretical: one tray, one liner, nothing poured back dirty. Buying a third gallon spends $40 to avoid that discipline and leaves a full can of a color used in exactly one room. Work the four walls in order and keep the last inch in the can for the corner you scuff moving the desk back.
Painting the ceiling and trim too
| Surface | Area | Paint, 2 coats | Buy |
|---|---|---|---|
| Walls | 316 sq ft net | 1.99 gal | 2 × 1-gallon cans |
| Ceiling | 121 sq ft | 0.76 gal | 1 × 1-gallon can |
| Trim and baseboard | 41 linear ft | 0.18 gal | 1 × quart |
What changes the answer
Texture is what breaks an 11x11, not size. On smooth primed drywall it is 1.81 gallons; orange peel drops coverage from 350 to roughly 325 sq ft per gallon and lifts the same room to 1.95, while knockdown drops it near 275 and puts you at 2.30, a third container either way. Square rooms in older houses often have one small window and one door and nothing else. Take the window out entirely and the wall grows to 331 sq ft, or 1.89 gallons. Patched bare drywall also wants primer, which is a separate can and does not come out of your two.
| Change | Paint needed | Effect |
|---|---|---|
| Baseline | 1.81 gal | the figure this page answers with |
| 9 ft ceiling | 2.06 gal | crosses two gallons |
| 10 ft ceiling | 2.31 gal | crosses two gallons |
| Orange-peel texture | 1.94 gal | +0.14 gal |
| Knockdown texture | 2.30 gal | crosses two gallons |
| Three coats | 2.71 gal | crosses two gallons |
| A second window | 1.72 gal | −0.09 gal — an opening removes wall you would have had to cover |
| No window at all | 1.89 gal | +0.09 gal |
Doing it yourself against hiring it out
| Route | What you pay | What it takes |
|---|---|---|
| Do it yourself | $80 of paint, plus roughly $16 of sundries | 2 × 1-gallon cans, one weekend |
| Hire it out | $441 for walls only | about 5.8 painter-hours |
| Hire it out, full room | $771 with ceiling and trim | walls, ceiling and 41 ft of trim |
A single room can also fall under a painter's job minimum, which runs $250–$500 whatever the square footage covers — mobilizing a crew costs the same for one room as for five. If you are pricing work rather than buying paint, the painting estimate calculator builds the full line-itemed bid.
A 11x11 room, answered
How many gallons of paint for an 11x11 room?
1.81 gallons, which means two on the receipt. Four 11 ft walls make a 44 ft perimeter; at 8 ft that is 352 sq ft, and one door and one window take it down to 316 sq ft of net wall. Two coats at 350 sq ft per gallon is 1.81 gallons, 1.99 with waste. Watch the container math people fall into at this size: a gallon plus two quarts is only 1.5 gallons, and you find that out on the fourth wall.
Do an 11x11 and a 10x12 room need the same amount of paint?
Yes, both need 1.81 gallons. They are the same distance around, 44 ft, so they have the same 316 sq ft of wall even though one is a perfect square and the other is two feet longer than it is wide. Floor area is the misleading number here: 121 sq ft against 120. If you sized paint by floor area you would call these two rooms the same by accident, and be right for entirely the wrong reason.
How much paint for an 11x11 room with a 9 ft ceiling?
2.06 gallons, up from 1.81. The extra foot runs all 44 ft around the room, adding 44 sq ft of wall for 360 sq ft total, and two coats of that is 2.06 gallons, or 2.26 with waste. Two gallons and a quart is 2.25, so it is two gallons and two quarts on the receipt. Older square bedrooms are exactly where this catches people, since the same house that gives you an 11x11 often gives you the taller ceiling with it.
How much does it cost to paint an 11x11 room?
About $80 in materials, or roughly $441 from a painter. The materials figure is two gallons of mid-grade wall paint at $40; drop to $20 paint and it is $40, go to $80 paint and it is $160, for the same 316 sq ft either way. A five-gallon pail at $150 is the one buy to rule out here, since it only pays off somewhere north of 4.3 gallons. Compare sizes on the hub page.
Sources and method
Coverage rates come from Sherwin-Williams and Benjamin Moore product data sheets; cost ranges were compiled in August 2026 from HomeGuide and Angi/HomeAdvisor, whose own pages date from 2023 to 2026. Angi owns HomeAdvisor, so those are one source and not two. Quantities on this page assume 350 sq ft per gallon per coat on smooth primed drywall, a 21 sq ft door and a 15 sq ft window; sources put windows anywhere from 10 to 16 sq ft, so change the opening counts in the calculator if yours differ. The full constants are on the paint coverage chart, and the cost basis is set out on interior painting cost per square foot.
This is an estimate for planning, not a quote. Measure your own room before buying.