Painting Doors -- Estimated Time

Painting Doors -- Estimated Time
Painting interior doors can be quick or slow, depending on the painter, the quality of paint, and the type of door to be painted. How can you accurately estimate the time? According to the manhours listed in the 2005 National Painting Cost Estimator painting an interior flush door should take 12 to 25 minutes per coat. This is probably a good rule of thumb. Remember though most doors seem to require two coats of paint to thoroughly cover. The tack coat on a door should also be counted as a "coat" as it requires the same amount of time.

The figure of 12 to 25 minutes is for painting all six sides of the door, doesn't include prep or masking time. This figure is for painting flush doors with a brush and roller. For spraying doors, the time goes down to around 5 minutes per door. That time doesn't include the time of cleaning out the sprayer or eliminating clogs that plug the spray head. French doors it should take from 15 to 28 minutes per coat to paint by roller or brush. Louvered doors should take from 22 to 30 minutes per coat. No estimate is perfect, and everyone works at a different level of speed. These figures are supposedly actual estimates from painters who paint doors for a living and should give you some kind of a estimated time baseline as to what you can expect painting doors to actually take.