How much paint for a 13x13 room?
Four identical 13 ft walls at 8 ft come to 380 sq ft of net wall, so a 13x13 room takes 2.17 gallons for two coats, or 2.39 with waste.
A 13x13 ft room with 8-foot ceilings needs 2.17 gallons of paint for two coats — buy 2 × 1-gallon cans + 2 × quarts. That is 416 sq ft of gross wall, 380 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 2.39 gallons, about $112 of paint. Having it painted runs about $530 for the walls, or $961 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 + 2 × quarts of wall color — $112, leaving 0.11 gal spare.
- On the walls, rounding up to 3 full gallons instead costs $120 and leaves 0.61 gal you will not use.
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What a 13x13 room is, and what that means for the job
Square rooms this size are usually not bedrooms. A 13x13 is the dining room, the den, or the bonus room over the garage: the room with a wide cased opening at one end instead of a door, and a fixture centered on the ceiling because the whole space was drawn around a table.
All four walls are the same, 13 ft by 8 ft, which makes the work easy to pace. Cut in and roll one wall, then the next, and you always know how much is left. The furniture is a table and chairs rather than a bed and a dresser, so the floor clears in one trip and comes back in one trip. The ceiling is more likely to get painted in a room like this than in a bedroom, because the light fixture is coming down anyway and 169 sq ft of ceiling is under a gallon for two coats. Sheen matters more too, since dining rooms take fingerprints, and the sheen guide covers where eggshell stops being enough.
The numbers behind the answer
| Ceiling height | Gross wall | Net wall | 1 coat | 2 coats | 2 coats + waste |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 8 ft | 416 | 380 | 1.09 | 2.17 | 2.39 |
| 9 ft | 468 | 432 | 1.23 | 2.47 | 2.72 |
| 10 ft | 520 | 484 | 1.38 | 2.77 | 3.04 |
The arithmetic is worth seeing once: 416 sq ft of gross wall comes from 2 × (13 + 13) × 8 ft. Take off 21 sq ft for the door and 15 for the window and you have 380 sq ft to cover. Two coats is 760 sq ft of coverage, and at 350 sq ft per gallon that is 2.17 gallons. Every figure on this page comes from that one calculation.
A 13x13 room needs exactly the same paint as a 12x14 (168 sq ft of floor). All of them measure 52 feet around, so all of them have 380 sq ft of wall to cover and all of them take 2.17 gallons — even though the 13x13 has 169 sq ft of floor and the 12x14 has 168. 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
The count is two gallons and two quarts, about $112. What matters more here is the tint. Quarts are tinted from their own base, so buy all four containers on one trip and have them mixed together. A quart re-mixed weeks later can read slightly off on a 13 ft wall with no furniture and no break in it. The $150 five-gallon pail is dead money at 2.39 gallons.
Painting the ceiling and trim too
| Surface | Area | Paint, 2 coats | Buy |
|---|---|---|---|
| Walls | 380 sq ft net | 2.39 gal | 2 × 1-gallon cans + 2 × quarts |
| Ceiling | 169 sq ft | 1.06 gal | 1 × 1-gallon can + 1 × quart |
| Trim and baseboard | 49 linear ft | 0.22 gal | 1 × quart |
What changes the answer
The wide cased opening a room like this often has is wall you never paint, and it belongs in the deduction: an opening the size of a door takes about 0.12 gallon off the 2.17 baseline, a window about 0.09. Go the other way and put three coats on for a drastic color change, over an old dining room red, and 2.17 becomes 3.26 before waste, a four-container job in a room that looked like a three-container job. Bare patched drywall wants its own gallon of primer on top of that.
| Change | Paint needed | Effect |
|---|---|---|
| Baseline | 2.17 gal | the figure this page answers with |
| 9 ft ceiling | 2.47 gal | +0.30 gal |
| 10 ft ceiling | 2.77 gal | +0.59 gal |
| Orange-peel texture | 2.34 gal | +0.17 gal |
| Knockdown texture | 2.76 gal | +0.59 gal |
| Three coats | 3.26 gal | +1.09 gal |
| A second window | 2.09 gal | −0.09 gal — an opening removes wall you would have had to cover |
| No window at all | 2.26 gal | +0.09 gal |
Doing it yourself against hiring it out
| Route | What you pay | What it takes |
|---|---|---|
| Do it yourself | $112 of paint, plus roughly $22 of sundries | 2 × 1-gallon cans + 2 × quarts, one weekend |
| Hire it out | $530 for walls only | about 6.9 painter-hours |
| Hire it out, full room | $961 with ceiling and trim | walls, ceiling and 49 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 13x13 room, answered
How many gallons of paint for a 13x13 room?
2.17 gallons for two coats, 2.39 with 10% waste. All four walls are the same: 13 ft by 8 ft is 104 sq ft each, 416 sq ft in total, and one 21 sq ft door plus one 15 sq ft window leaves 380 sq ft of net wall. At 350 sq ft per gallon that is 1.09 gallons a coat. Two gallons and two quarts is the buy, about $112 in paint.
Why does a 13x13 room take the same paint as a 12x14 room?
Both come to 380 sq ft of net wall and 2.17 gallons, because both measure 52 ft around. Perimeter is what walls are made of; floor area is a coincidence. Square it up or stretch it out, and as long as the trip around the room is 52 ft and the ceiling is 8 ft, the paint is identical. The 13x13 has one more square foot of floor than the 12x14 and needs not one drop more paint for it.
How much paint do I need to also do the ceiling in a 13x13 room?
About one more gallon. The ceiling is 169 sq ft, and at 350 sq ft per gallon that is 0.48 gallon a coat, so two coats fit inside a single gallon of ceiling paint with a little to spare. Popcorn texture covers at 225 sq ft per gallon instead, which pushes two coats closer to a gallon and a half. Ceiling paint is a separate can from your wall color, never part of the 2.17.
What should a painter charge to paint a 13x13 room?
Around $530, which works out near $1.40 per sq ft across 380 sq ft of paintable wall. The honest range is $1.00 to $3.00, so $380 to $1,140 depending on your market, the prep and how many colors you want. One room this size can also land under a shop's $250 to $500 job minimum, in which case you simply pay the minimum. Run your own numbers through the contractor bid estimator.
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.