Painting Contractor Estimating Software

Scan the room with your iPhone's LiDAR. Get exact paintable wall area — automatically subtracting doors and windows. Build an AI-powered painting estimate with prep, primer, and finish coats. Send the proposal before you leave the driveway. One app. One workflow. Transparent per-seat pricing — no hidden fees.

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If you're a painting contractor looking for estimating software that actually fits the way you work, most options fall short. General contractor estimating apps weren't designed for the room-by-room, surface-area-by-surface-area complexity of a painting bid. TradePilot is a painting estimating software built specifically for painters — combining LiDAR room scanning, automatic paintable surface area calculation, AI-powered estimating, and invoicing in a single mobile-first app.

Why Most Estimating Software Fails Painting Contractors

Painters live and die by accurate paintable surface area. Walls plus ceiling minus doors and windows — for every room, every level, every wing of the house. A 5-bedroom whole-house repaint can have 30+ surfaces to measure, each one with its own height, length, and door/window cutouts to subtract.

Manual measurement is slow and error-prone, especially in homes with lots of rooms or unusual ceiling heights. You're walking room to room with a tape and a notepad, calling out numbers, jotting them down, and trying to keep track of which measurements went with which room. By the time you sit down to build the bid, you're squinting at half-legible scribbles trying to remember if "12 x 9" was the master bedroom or the den.

And generic estimating tools don't understand painting. They don't separate prep work (patching, sanding, caulking, priming) from finish coats. They don't handle multi-coat pricing. They don't know coverage rates by paint type. Underbid by 10% on a $6K interior repaint and you've worked the last day for free.

That's exactly what TradePilot was built to fix.

How Painters Estimate Jobs With TradePilot

Scan each room with FieldScan

Walk into each room, open FieldScan, and slowly pan your iPhone around the space. LiDAR captures every wall, the ceiling, the floor, every door, and every window — all in about 30 seconds per room. No tape measure. No notepad. No "wait, did I measure the closet?"

Get paintable wall area automatically

FieldScan calculates paintable surface area for you — walls plus ceiling minus the doors and windows it captured during the scan. No more doing the math on a calculator and second-guessing yourself. Each room's paintable area is a clean, verified number ready to plug into the estimate.

Mark which surfaces get what treatment

Walls one color, ceiling white, trim semi-gloss, doors a different color than the trim. Specify per-room or apply the same scheme across the whole house. Note any prep work needed — patching nail holes in the family room, caulking the trim in the master bath, priming the kid's room because it has crayon all over the walls.

Generate an AI estimate

Tell Pilot AI what the project is — "interior repaint, 5 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms, walls 2 coats, ceiling 1 coat, trim semi-gloss, prep includes patching and caulking." The AI generates a detailed estimate using your scanned dimensions, coverage rate by paint type, prep hours, primer, finish coats, and labor at YOUR rate. Every line item, every gallon, every hour.

Send the proposal with the room-by-room breakdown

Review the estimate, adjust anything, and send a professional proposal with a clear room-by-room breakdown. The client sees exactly which rooms cost what, what prep is included, and what they're paying for — all before you leave their driveway.

From Walk-Through to Painting Estimate in 15 Minutes

Scan the rooms. Build the estimate. Send the proposal. All from your iPhone. That's the TradePilot workflow for painting contractors.

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Painting Estimating Features in TradePilot

LiDAR room scanning (FieldScan) — Capture every wall, ceiling, door, and window in 30 seconds per room. Paintable surface area calculated automatically.
Door and window subtraction (automatic from scan) — No more manual math. The scan captures every cutout and subtracts it from the paintable area.
Per-surface treatment — Walls, ceiling, trim, doors, and windows priced as separate line items with their own paint type, coverage rate, and labor.
Prep work line items — Patching, sanding, caulking, priming all available as discrete line items with hours and materials.
Coverage rate calculation — Square feet per gallon by paint type (flat, eggshell, satin, semi-gloss, primer). Stop overordering or running short.
Multi-coat support — 1 coat vs 2 coat pricing handled automatically per surface.
AI estimating (Pilot AI) — Generate detailed painting estimates from a project description and scanned dimensions. Labor, materials, markup — all using your rates, not national averages.
Editable post-scan measurements — LiDAR isn't perfect. Edit any dimension after the scan so your estimate is based on the right numbers.
Room-by-room PDF breakdown — Send a proposal that shows the client exactly what they're paying for in each room.
Rate calculator — Figure out what you should charge per hour for painting labor based on your actual overhead, costs, and profit target.
Invoicing — Convert the accepted estimate to an invoice with one tap. Same line items, same pricing.
Scheduling — Book the job, manage your calendar, and keep the client informed.
Interior and exterior workflows — Same scan-and-estimate flow whether you're painting a bedroom or a whole house exterior.
Transparent per-seat pricing — no hidden fees — Starting at $29/month founder pricing.

Why LiDAR Changes How Painters Bid Jobs

Painters historically measure every wall manually, then subtract doors and windows, then sum it all up by room. For a single room that's maybe 5 minutes of work. For a 5-bedroom whole-house repaint with bathrooms, hallways, stairwells, and a finished basement, you're looking at 2 hours of measuring before you can even start to build the estimate.

LiDAR captures all of it in 30 seconds per room. A 5-bedroom whole-house walk-through goes from 2 hours to 30 minutes — and the measurements are more accurate than what you'd get with a tape measure trying to capture an 18-foot vaulted ceiling from the floor.

That's not a small efficiency gain. That's the difference between bidding 2 jobs a day and bidding 5. That's the difference between a quote being in the client's inbox before you leave the driveway versus three days later when they've already signed with someone else.

What TradePilot Replaces in Your Workflow

Most painting contractors are currently using some combination of:

Tape measure + notepad for measurements
Calculator for paintable surface area math
A spreadsheet for room-by-room pricing
An estimating tool or pen and paper for the proposal
QuickBooks or FreshBooks for invoicing
Google Calendar for scheduling
Notes app for client info and prep notes

That's seven tools. Seven logins. Seven places where data gets lost, retyped, or forgotten. TradePilot replaces all of them with one app that connects scanning to estimating to invoicing to scheduling. One workflow. One source of truth.

Best Estimating Software for Painting Contractors

Most contractor estimating software treats every job the same — a blank form where you add line items. That works for a faucet swap. It doesn't work for a $6K interior repaint with 30+ surfaces, multi-coat pricing, prep work, and per-room color schemes.

Painters need estimating software that calculates paintable surface area accurately, separates prep work from finish coats, supports per-room breakdowns for whole-house jobs, uses real coverage rates per paint type, and generates a clean room-by-room proposal the client can actually understand.

TradePilot is the only estimating app that combines LiDAR room scanning with painter-aware AI estimating. The scan captures the rooms. The AI builds the estimate with prep, primer, and coats. The estimate becomes the proposal. No other tool connects these steps in a single app at $29/month.

Who TradePilot Is Built For

TradePilot works for any contractor who does painting work, including:

Interior painting contractors — residential repaints, new construction, color consultations
Exterior painting contractors — siding, trim, decks, fences, soffits
Cabinet refinishers — kitchen cabinets, built-ins, vanities
Handymen doing smaller paint jobs — single rooms, accent walls, trim touch-ups, ceiling repaints

Why TradePilot vs. Other Tools

vs. Handoff ($149/mo) — Handoff has AI estimating but no LiDAR scanning, no automatic paintable surface area calculation, and no door/window subtraction. You still need a tape measure and a calculator. Full comparison →
vs. Jobber ($49-169/mo) — Jobber is built for recurring service businesses, not project-based painting. No AI estimating, no LiDAR, no per-surface coverage rate calculation. Per-user fees add up fast. Full comparison →
vs. RoomScan LiDAR — RoomScan makes great floor plans but has zero estimating, invoicing, or scheduling. The scan is a dead end — you still have to build the bid somewhere else. Full comparison →
vs. magicplan ($50/mo) — Same problem as RoomScan. Good scanning, no business management. Your floor plan doesn't connect to your estimate.

See all features on our Features page or check Pricing.

One App for Your Entire Painting Business

LiDAR scanning, automatic paintable surface area, prep work line items, multi-coat pricing, room-by-room PDFs, invoicing, scheduling, and CRM — all in a native iOS app. Transparent per-seat pricing — no hidden fees. Starting at $29/mo.