How much paint for a 15x15 room?
A 15x15 room has 444 sq ft of paintable wall after one door and one window, which comes to 2.54 gallons for two coats.
A 15x15 ft room with 8-foot ceilings needs 2.54 gallons of paint for two coats — buy 3 × 1-gallon cans. That is 480 sq ft of gross wall, 444 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 2.79 gallons, about $120 of paint. Having it painted runs about $620 for the walls, or $1,163 with the ceiling and trim.
Rates and coverage figures updated August 2026. Compiled 2026 from sources last updated 2023–2026.What to actually buy
- 3 × 1-gallon cans of wall color — $120, leaving 0.21 gal spare.
- On the walls, rounding up to 3 full gallons instead costs $120 and leaves 0.21 gal you will not use.
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What a 15x15 room is, and what that means for the job
At 225 sq ft of floor, a 15x15 is a primary bedroom in most houses and the living room in a small one. Either way the furniture stays. A king bed and a sofa both take longer to break down than the job takes, so they move to the middle of the floor under plastic and you paint around them. Plan on a weekend, not an evening. Two windows is the realistic count at this size, and since an opening removes wall, the second one means slightly less paint, not more.
Check the closet before you buy anything. A primary this size often has a walk-in carved out of the footprint, so the wall run you actually paint is not the clean 60 ft around the outside. The ceiling is the other call. You look at a bedroom ceiling from the bed, so it usually gets rolled while the room is empty: 225 sq ft, or 450 sq ft of coverage over two coats, which is a gallon and two quarts of flat ceiling paint rather than your wall color.
The numbers behind the answer
| Ceiling height | Gross wall | Net wall | 1 coat | 2 coats | 2 coats + waste |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 8 ft | 480 | 444 | 1.27 | 2.54 | 2.79 |
| 9 ft | 540 | 504 | 1.44 | 2.88 | 3.17 |
| 10 ft | 600 | 564 | 1.61 | 3.22 | 3.55 |
The arithmetic is worth seeing once: 480 sq ft of gross wall comes from 2 × (15 + 15) × 8 ft. Take off 21 sq ft for the door and 15 for the window and you have 444 sq ft to cover. Two coats is 888 sq ft of coverage, and at 350 sq ft per gallon that is 2.54 gallons. Every figure on this page comes from that one calculation.
No other common room size shares a 60-foot perimeter, so the 15x15 sits on its own in the chart. What it does share is the rule underneath it: wall paint tracks the distance around the room, not the area of the floor. That is why a 15x15 at 225 sq ft of floor needs 2.54 gallons while a room with more floor and a tighter perimeter can need less.
What to buy
Three gallons, $120 at $40 a can. With waste you need 2.79 gallons, so stopping at two would mean adding four quarts, and four quarts at roughly $16 each cost $64 to deliver the same gallon you can buy for $40. The other tempting wrong turn is the $150 five-gallon pail; it does not pay off until about 4.3 gallons, so you would spend $30 extra on paint you cannot return.
Painting the ceiling and trim too
| Surface | Area | Paint, 2 coats | Buy |
|---|---|---|---|
| Walls | 444 sq ft net | 2.79 gal | 3 × 1-gallon cans |
| Ceiling | 225 sq ft | 1.41 gal | 1 × 1-gallon can + 2 × quarts |
| Trim and baseboard | 57 linear ft | 0.25 gal | 2 × quarts |
What changes the answer
Three gallons is a thin buy: 2.79 with waste against 3.00 in the cans, about a fifth of a gallon of slack. A 9 ft ceiling, common in newer houses with a primary this size, runs an extra foot around all 60 ft and asks for 2.88 gallons, 3.17 with waste, which is a fourth container. Three coats for a drastic color change is 3.81 gallons before waste and 4.19 after, still just under the 4.3 gallons where that five-gallon pail starts beating single cans.
| Change | Paint needed | Effect |
|---|---|---|
| Baseline | 2.54 gal | the figure this page answers with |
| 9 ft ceiling | 2.88 gal | +0.34 gal |
| 10 ft ceiling | 3.22 gal | +0.69 gal |
| Orange-peel texture | 2.73 gal | +0.20 gal |
| Knockdown texture | 3.23 gal | +0.69 gal |
| Three coats | 3.81 gal | +1.27 gal |
| A second window | 2.45 gal | −0.09 gal — an opening removes wall you would have had to cover |
| No window at all | 2.62 gal | +0.09 gal |
Doing it yourself against hiring it out
| Route | What you pay | What it takes |
|---|---|---|
| Do it yourself | $120 of paint, plus roughly $24 of sundries | 3 × 1-gallon cans, one weekend |
| Hire it out | $620 for walls only | about 8.1 painter-hours |
| Hire it out, full room | $1,163 with ceiling and trim | walls, ceiling and 57 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 15x15 room, answered
How many gallons of paint do I need for a 15x15 room?
A 15x15 room takes 2.54 gallons for two coats, so you buy three. The walk: 60 ft of perimeter times an 8 ft ceiling is 480 sq ft, minus 21 sq ft for a door and 15 for a window, which leaves 444 sq ft of paintable wall. Two coats is 888 sq ft of coverage, and one gallon covers 350 sq ft on smooth primed drywall. Add 10% for what stays in the roller and tray and you are at 2.79.
How much does it cost to paint a 15x15 room?
Materials come to about $120, three gallons at $40, before rollers, tape and drop cloths. A pro repainting the same 444 sq ft of wall bids around $620, toward the lower end of the $1.00 to $3.00 per sq ft range for interior repaint work. The difference is labor you would otherwise do yourself: masking, 60 ft of ceiling cut-in, and working around a bed nobody can carry out. Here is how that rate is built.
Is 2 gallons enough for a 15x15 room?
No. Two gallons leaves you 188 sq ft short. Two coats over 444 sq ft of wall is 888 sq ft of coverage, and two gallons buys 700 at 350 sq ft per gallon. The shortfall lands where it hurts most, on the second coat of the last wall and a half, with the room already emptied and taped and the light going. The third gallon is $40 and ends the question before it starts.
Do I need extra paint for the ceiling in a 15x15 room?
Yes. The ceiling is another 225 sq ft, roughly 1.3 gallons for two coats at 350 sq ft per gallon, and ceiling paint is a separate product from your wall color. If it is popcorn, coverage drops to about 225 sq ft per gallon and the same two coats run near 2 gallons. Trim is different again at 250 sq ft per gallon. The coverage constants are here.
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.