Apartment Painters in NYC

There is no official price list for painting in New York, so the best evidence is what contractors and cost guides publish for the city. A survey updated in March 2026 by the cost site AskDoss puts a studio at $1,200 to $2,500, a one-bedroom at $1,500 to $3,500, a two-bedroom at $2,000 to $5,000 and a three-bedroom at $3,000 to $7,000, with labor at $55 to $85 an hour in Manhattan and $45 to $75 in Brooklyn and Queens. A New Jersey contractor's 2025 guide to the city gives a similar one-bedroom range of $1,500 to $3,000 and prices a 700-square-foot apartment at about $2,500. National figures from Thumbtack, $200 to $2,700 for interior work, are not city prices and run well below what Manhattan quotes.

What Moves the Quote

• Wall condition. Cracked plaster, old nail holes and water stains add prep time. A skim coat to flatten a damaged wall is quoted per room on top of the paint.
• Ceilings and trim. A walls-only quote is cheaper than one that includes ceilings, doors, baseboards and radiator covers.
• Color changes. Covering a dark or saturated color takes a primer coat and sometimes a third coat.
• Sales tax. Painting labor in New York City is taxable at 8.875%, and some quotes leave it off until the invoice.
• Building access. Walk-up floors, freight elevator windows and doorman sign-in all add time a painter will price in.

Published ranges disagree with one another because they come from marketing pages rather than audited data, so treat them as a sanity check on a quote rather than a price you can hold a painter to.

In a building with three or more apartments the landlord, not the tenant, is responsible for repainting. Section 27-2013 of the Housing Maintenance Code requires the owner to repaint or re-cover the walls and ceilings of an occupied apartment every three years, and HPD's tenant rights page repeats the duty in plain terms. The owner and tenant can agree to stretch that cycle by up to two years, but only in the month before the three years run out, and a tenant who damaged the walls within the cycle can be asked to pay for that repair. In a one- or two-family house the standard is looser: the apartment must be painted as necessary.

Getting a Landlord to Paint

Ask in writing first and keep the request. If the landlord refuses, peeling or flaking paint is a condition you can report to 311, and HPD can inspect and issue a violation. Our guide on peeling paint in a rental walks through that route, and the building's violation record shows whether paint or plaster complaints are already on file. The dispute that comes up most often is the reverse one: a landlord billing a tenant for the painting the law already requires. A tenant leader raised exactly that at the January 2026 announcement of the city's rental fee hearings, and it remains a charge worth refusing in writing.

Painting Your Own Apartment

Most leases allow painting only with the landlord's consent, and many require the apartment to go back to its original color before you leave. Read the lease clause before you buy paint, and if you do change a color, budget for the repaint at move-out so it does not come out of your deposit. Under General Obligations Law 7-108 a landlord cannot deduct for ordinary wear, but a bright accent wall is a change, not wear. Our guide on painting a rental in NYC covers the lease language to look for.

Any building built before 1960 is presumed to have lead paint under Local Law 1 of 2004, and buildings from 1960 to 1978 are covered where the owner knows lead is present. Two sets of rules follow from that. Federally, the EPA's Renovation, Repair and Painting rule requires anyone paid to disturb painted surfaces in a pre-1978 home to work for an EPA-certified firm, with a minor-work exception of six square feet or less per interior room. Locally, HPD requires the owner of a pre-1960 building to complete lead-based paint work every time an apartment changes tenants, whether or not a child lives there, using an EPA-certified firm for the correction work and a separate certification for full abatement, followed by third-party dust clearance testing.

Checking a Painter's Certification

Ask for the firm's EPA certificate number and look it up on the EPA lead-safe firm search. A painter who proposes to dry-sand or scrape old paint in a pre-1960 apartment without plastic containment, wet methods and HEPA cleanup is breaking the rule, and the EPA has fined New York contractors for it: a Queens remodeler paid a $103,000 penalty in October 2024 for lead-safe violations at three Upper Manhattan properties. If a child under six lives in the apartment, the owner also owes annual inspections and, under Local Law 123 of 2023, full abatement on a deadline that runs to July 1, 2027 for units with a child as of January 2025. The rights that follow are set out in our guide on lead paint rights with a young child.

New York City licenses home improvement contractors through the Department of Consumer and Worker Protection for work over $200, but the Administrative Code excludes painting and decorating from that definition unless it is incidental to other home improvement work. A painter doing only painting is not required to hold the license; a painter who also patches walls, replaces trim or does any remodeling is. DCWP's Wall of Shame lists contractors cited for working unlicensed, and its contractor tips are worth following for any size of job: a written contract with a separate notice of cancellation, and no more than 25% of the total paid before work starts.

Before You Request a Quote

• Count rooms and note ceiling heights, since a pre-war ten-foot ceiling adds wall area.
• Say whether ceilings, trim, doors and radiator covers are included.
• Photograph cracks, stains and patched areas so prep work is in the quote, not a change order.
• Confirm the year the building was built. Pre-1960 means lead-safe practices and a certified firm.
• Check your building's freight elevator hours and whether it requires a certificate of insurance from the painter. The same paperwork applies to any outside crew.
• Decide who buys the paint. Contractor-supplied paint is marked up but comes with the right primer for the job.

Latex paint is dry to the touch in about an hour and ready for a second coat in roughly four, so a one-bedroom is usually a one- to two-day job and a larger or heavily patched apartment two to three. Plan the move-in so furniture arrives after the final coat, not during it.