Paint Quantity Calculator
The surface you are covering, not the floor size.
From the tin. Interior 10 to 12, exterior 7 to 9.
Your answer
Paint you need
12 litres
Buy 4 at 3.6 litres, which is 14.4 litres in total.
Always round up to whole tins. Half a litre short in the middle of a wall is a problem you cannot fix that day.
This is the short version. If you already know how many square metres you are painting, put the number in and this tells you the litres.
It also tells you how many tins that is, and how much paint is left over in the last tin.
Use it when somebody has given you an area, or when you have measured already with one of the area tools.
Area times coats, divided by coverage. That is the whole thing.
If you are painting 60 square metres with two coats, and the tin says one litre covers 11 square metres, then 60 times 2 is 120, and 120 divided by 11 is about 11 litres.
Add ten per cent for what stays in the tray and on the roller, and you are at roughly 12 litres. That is four gallons, or a drum with some left over.
Everything else on this page is about the three numbers you put in, and how to get them right.
This is the number that goes wrong most often.
Painted area, not floor area
A room with a 20 square metre floor can easily have 50 square metres of wall. If somebody says the flat is 100 square metres, that is the floor, not the paint.
Count every side
A wall painted on both sides is twice the area. A door painted front and back is twice the area.
Rough surfaces are bigger than they look
Textured render, rough block or a heavily patterned wall has more real surface than the flat measurement. Use the 20 per cent waste option.
Take off the big openings only
A sliding door is worth taking off. A light switch is not.
Coverage is printed on every tin, usually as square metres per litre or square metres per gallon. It is the number the paint maker measured on a smooth sealed surface in a lab.
Your wall is not a lab. So treat the printed number as the best case and be honest about the wall in front of you.
Interior emulsion in the UAE is normally 10 to 12 square metres per litre. Exterior paint is thicker and rougher, so it drops to 7 to 9. Primer is around 8 to 10. Gloss and enamel on wood is about 12 to 14 because you put it on thin.
New plaster or fresh putty is the big one. It can cut the first coat coverage in half. That is what primer is for, and it is a separate sum.
The tool lets you pick up to four. Here is when you need each.
One coat
Only when you are refreshing the same colour on a clean sealed wall. It rarely looks as good as people hope.
Two coats
The normal answer for any repaint in a similar colour. This is what most quotes assume.
Three coats
Light over dark, or a strong colour like a deep red or yellow, which cover badly no matter the brand.
Four coats
Rare. Usually a sign the wall needed a primer or a base coat first, which would have been cheaper.
Paint here comes in 1 litre tins, 3.6 litre gallons and 18 litre drums. The drum is much better value per litre, so for a whole flat it is usually the right buy.
Do not buy a drum for one bedroom. You will use six litres and store twelve, and paint that sits open for a year is not the same paint when you come back to it.
Whatever is left, seal the lid properly, wipe the rim, and store it upright somewhere that does not bake. A store room is fine. A balcony in July is not, because heat ruins paint faster than time does.
Write the room name and the colour code on the lid with a marker. In two years you will not remember which tin was the living room.
Need the job done
Use the numbers above to plan, then let us quote the real thing.
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