The rooms
One row per room. Length × width × height makes the walls; check ceiling when you are hanging it. Openings come off the total below — do not pre-subtract them here or you will double-count.
The job
Finish levels follow the Gypsum Association idea (0 hang-only through 5 full skim) as a time budget you can edit — not a specification, inspection, or a finding that any wall is fire-rated, permitted, or paint-ready. Waste covers cuts and damaged sheets. Height over 8 ft multiplies hang, finish, and texture hours on that room.
Your costs
Payroll burden covers employer taxes, workers’ compensation (stilts, lifts, and tear-out are not cheap), liability insurance, and paid time off. A hanger paid $34 often costs more than $44 on the wall. Underestimating that is how a $1.50-a-foot special loses money.
Your quote
- Net hung / billable / sheets
- Finish level
- Hang hours
- Finish hours
- Texture + tear-out + openings
- On-site hours
- Travel hours (round trip)
- Total labor hours
- Loaded labor cost
- Board material
- Tape, mud, texture
- Add-on parts
- Dumpster + trip
- Overhead
- Total cost
- Profit
- Price per hung sq ft
- Effective hourly rate
- Walk-away price
Where the hung area goes
Transparent arithmetic from your own inputs. The starting hours and material figures are common ballpark numbers, not a Gypsum Association table, a code specification, or a guarantee — time your own crews and replace them. This is not a finding that any wall is fire-rated, permitted, or paint-ready.
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
What does this drywall estimate include?
Each room’s wall and optional ceiling area net of openings, a waste percentage rolled into a sheet count, hang labor by board type, finish labor by level, texture labor and material, tear-off of existing drywall when you flag it, add-ons like stilts or extra corner bead, and overhead and margin on top.
What’s the difference between finish level 4 and finish level 5?
Level 4 is the typical paint-ready residential job; level 5 is a full skim coat used where critical or raking light would otherwise show joint lines. The tool applies more finish hours and more mud per 100 square feet as the level goes up — these are ballpark starting hours, not a production standard.
Does choosing Type X board mean the wall is fire-rated?
No. Type X is priced here only as a material choice with its own waste percentage and hours. The tool does not evaluate or certify any fire rating, which depends on the full wall assembly and a building inspector’s sign-off, not on the board alone.
Why does ceiling height matter if I’m not hanging the ceiling?
Taller walls take longer to hang and finish even at the same square footage, so rooms over 8, 10, and 12 feet get a labor multiplier applied room by room. A 12-foot great room will not inflate the hours for an 8-foot closet in the same job.
Is my data uploaded anywhere?
No account and no network requests — the calculator runs entirely in your browser. Inputs and business details are optionally saved in this browser’s local storage, and a share link encodes only the quote fields in the page’s URL hash, not sent to us.
How is the sheet count estimated?
Net hung area — walls plus any ceiling, minus openings — gets your waste percentage added, and that billable area is then divided by the sheet size you pick and rounded up, so the estimate is always a whole number of sheets you can actually order.