The run
Pick a common job to start, then replace every rate with a millwork invoice and a crew you have timed. Changing grade, profile, ceiling, or height fills starting hours and material only when you have not already edited that field.
Hours and material rates
These start from the grade, profile, ceiling, and height you picked. They are ballpark crew figures, not a millwork catalog or a guarantee.
Your costs
Payroll burden covers employer taxes, workers’ compensation, liability insurance, and paid time off. Underestimating it is how an $8/ft crown that looked profitable was not.
Your bid
- Run
- Corners
- Travel
- Crew hours
- Loaded labor
- Molding and finish
- Foyer, LED, extras
- Travel & other
- Overhead
- Total cost
- Profit
- Price per lf
- Effective hourly rate
- Walk-away price
A bid link carries your own rates — wage, burden, overhead, and target margin — so the page reopens exactly as you left it. Send it to yourself or your crew. The numbers ride after the #, which is never sent to a server, so copying a link uploads nothing. The customer should get the price, not the link.
Same run, three profiles
| Profile | Hours | Price |
|---|
Where the hours go
Transparent arithmetic from your own inputs. The starting hours and material rates are common ballpark figures, not an industry standard, a benchmark, or a guarantee — time your own crews and replace them.
Hand the customer a proposal
The price above is for you. This is the page you print or save as a PDF and give to the customer — your details, their details, the scope, the deposit split, and a line for them to sign. Your business details are saved on this device so you only type them once; the customer’s details are never saved.
Everything on the printed page is text you typed or a number this calculator worked out. It contains no warranty, lien, or cancellation wording — those depend on your jurisdiction and your contract, and this tool is not the place to invent them.
Common questions
Why can a competitor advertise “$8 a foot installed”?
Usually because the special is written around one specific job, and that job is a preset here: 80 linear feet of paint-grade simple cove, 8 inside corners, one flat 8-ft room. It really does price low. What the per-foot number cannot see is grade, profile, ceiling type, ceiling height, corners, and extras like demo, blocking, an LED cove, or matching existing casing. Price your actual room beside the special and the gap becomes a list of line items instead of an argument about who is honest.
Why does stain-grade cost more than paint-grade for the same linear footage?
Because caulk can hide a rough miter and paint-grade relies on it. Stain-grade crown has to be coped at every inside corner — cut to fit the exact profile of the adjoining piece — because there is no caulk line to hide a gap once it is stained instead of painted. Coping takes longer per corner than caulking a mitered paint-grade joint, and that time is billed per inside corner, not folded into the linear-foot rate.
Why does a two-story foyer change the price so much for similar linear footage?
Because the access, not the crown, is the job. A standard 8-ft ceiling only needs a ladder. A 9–10 ft ceiling needs stilts or a rolling scaffold. A two-story foyer needs scaffolding built and moved around the room, which adds hours that have nothing to do with how many feet of crown are going up once the crew is finally standing at the right height.
Why are inside and outside corners counted separately from linear feet?
Because coping or mitering a corner takes a fixed amount of time per corner, independent of how long the runs on either side of it are. A short run with 14 corners can take longer than a long run with two. Cathedral and tray ceilings add their own hours on top — a cathedral ceiling changes the spring angle at every cut, and a tray or coffered ceiling adds extra returns and steps that a flat-ceiling rate does not include.
Is my data uploaded anywhere?
No account and no network requests — the calculator runs entirely in your browser. Your bid is saved in this browser’s local storage so it is still here next visit, and the optional usage counter records only which features were used and the day, never your room dimensions, wages, or prices.
What’s the difference between the bid price and the walk-away price?
The bid price already includes your target margin on top of labor, materials, and overhead. The walk-away price is the total cost underneath it — linear feet, corners, ceiling and height extras, demo, blocking, LED cove, and casing match — the point below which the job stops being profitable at all. Typing a price you are considering shows you the margin or the loss before you send it.