Drywall repair cost dataset
This is the complete dataset behind the repair calculator, at national rates. It is priced by patch and by visit rather than by area, because that is how the cost actually behaves: a hole four times bigger is nowhere near four times dearer, and two holes on separate days cost nearly twice two holes on the same day. Last reviewed 2026-08-23.
Patch size classes
National figures, one patch on a wall, smooth finish, no repainting. Hours and disturbed areas are our estimate.
| Class | Disturbed | Hours | One, on a visit | What it involves |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nail hole or anchor | 0.1 sq ft | 0.15 | $217 | Up to about six inches. Filled, sanded, done. |
| Medium | 1 sq ft | 0.7 | $253 | Up to two square feet. A doorknob through the wall, or a fist. |
| Large | 4 sq ft | 1.6 | $318 | Two to six square feet. Needs a backer and a piece of board cut in. |
| Section | 16 sq ft | 3.2 | $441 | Over six square feet. Cut back to the framing and reboarded. |
Read down that fourth column and the point of the page appears: a section is 16 times the area of a medium patch and nothing like 16 times the price. Most of a small repair is the visit itself. Six nail holes in one trip are $266, against $217 for one — so the sixth hole costs about $10 once someone is already there. Save them up.
The 6 square foot threshold, and what crosses it
In housing built before 1978, this is the line between an exempt minor repair and a renovation that a certified firm has to perform. The threshold is per room, and the area counted is the whole surface removed rather than the original damage.
| Job, in one room | Disturbed | Built 1978 or later | Built before 1978 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Six nail holes | 0.6 sq ft | $358 | $358exempt, no change |
| Three medium patches | 3.0 sq ft | $443 | $443exempt, no change |
| One large patch | 4.0 sq ft | $410 | $410exempt, no change |
| Two large patches | 8.0 sq ft | $524 | $854+$330, certified firm |
| One section | 16.0 sq ft | $533 | $863+$330, certified firm |
The definition is in the regulation itself: 40 CFR 745 subpart E, Residential Property Renovation describes minor repair and maintenance activities as those disrupting 6 square feet or less of painted surface per room for interior activities, or 20 square feet or less outside. Retrieved 2026-08-23. The disturbed areas in the table are our estimate of what each class of repair actually removes.
Repainting, which is usually the bigger half
| Scope | Painted | Total | Why you would |
|---|---|---|---|
| No painting | — | $274 | The repair is left primed and bare. Fine if the whole room is being repainted afterwards by somebody else. |
| Spot prime and paint the patch | 4 sq ft | $299+$25 | Cheapest, and it will be visible. New paint over old does not blend: the sheen differs even with the same tin, and in raking light you see the rectangle. |
| Repaint the wall, corner to corner | 120 sq ft | $366+$92 | The honest minimum for an invisible repair. A wall breaks at its corners, so that is where a paint change can hide. |
| Repaint the whole room | 384 sq ft | $509+$236 | What you end up doing when the patch is in the middle of an open plan, or when the original colour cannot be matched at all — which is common after a few years of sunlight. |
The default job on this page — two nail holes and one medium patch, wall repainted — comes to $366 nationally, and 25% of that is the paint rather than the drywall. Nobody quotes it that way round, which is why the number surprises people.
Texture and surface
| Texture | Extra hours per patch | Why it is hard |
|---|---|---|
| Smooth | — | Nothing to match, and therefore the easiest to make invisible — provided the finishing is good, because a smooth wall hides nothing. |
| Orange peel | 0.35 | Sprayed and left. Matchable with a can or a hopper, and the match depends on getting the droplet size right rather than on skill with a trowel. |
| Knockdown | 0.60 | Sprayed and then flattened with a blade while it is still wet. The timing of that second pass is the whole match, and it is why two patches by the same person can look different. |
| Popcorn or acoustic | 0.90 | ⚠️ Popcorn ceilings sprayed before the early eighties may contain asbestos. If the house is of that vintage the ceiling should be tested before anything is scraped, and that is not what this page prices. |
- Wall — ×1 on every labour hour
- Standing up, working at chest height. The baseline for every rate on this page.
- Ceiling — ×1.45 on every labour hour
- Everything overhead takes longer and shows more: a ceiling is lit by its own light, so a patch that would pass on a wall is visible from the doorway.
Line items
| Line item | Unit | Material | Equipment / hr | Trade | Data |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Minimum call-out1 per visit | visit | $95 – $240 | — | — | estimated±43% |
| Board offcuts, backing, tape and compound0.2 small + 1 medium + 2.5 large + 6 per section | patch equivalent | $4.00 – $14 | — | — | estimated±56% |
| Drywall finisher: cut, patch, tape and sandsum of per-patch hours × surface factor | hour | — | — | Drywall and Ceiling Tile Installers | sourced |
| Drywall finisher: match the texture (conditional)patches × texture hours × surface factor | hour | — | — | Drywall and Ceiling Tile Installers | sourced |
| Texture material and masking (conditional)one per patch where there is texture to match | patch equivalent | $6.00 – $20 | — | — | estimated±54% |
| Primer and paint (conditional)painted area: 3× the disturbed area for a spot, the wall, or the room ×3.2 | sq ft | $0.16 – $0.42 | — | — | estimated±45% |
| Painter: mask, cut in and roll (conditional)0.5 h + 1 h per 180 sq ft painted (modelled) | hour | — | — | Painters, Construction and Maintenance | sourced |
| Lead-safe setup, containment and cleaning verification (conditional)1 where a pre-1978 house has more than 6 sq ft disturbed in a room | job | $180 – $480 | — | — | estimated±45% |
| Dust protection and clean-up1 per visit | visit | $18 – $55 | — | — | estimated±51% |
The reasoning behind each figure
Written out so a drywall contractor can point at the exact assumption that is wrong.
- Minimum call-outestimated, ±43%
- Almost every trade has a floor price for turning up, and drywall repair has it more than most because the work itself is often an hour. It covers the travel, the van and the fact that the slot cannot be sold to anyone else.
- It is also the reason to batch repairs. Four holes in one visit costs far less than four visits, and this is the line that makes that true.
- Board offcuts, backing, tape and compoundestimated, ±56%
- Priced in patch equivalents rather than square feet, because the material in a repair follows the number of patches far more than their area: every one needs tape, three coats of compound and something behind it to screw to.
- A small patch is a few cents of filler; a section needs a piece of board, backing strips and screws. The equivalents weight them 0.2, 1, 2.5 and 6.
- Drywall finisher: cut, patch, tape and sand
- Modelled per patch rather than per square foot: 0.15 hours for a small hole, 0.7 for a medium one, 1.6 for a large one and 3.2 for a section that needs backing behind it. Ceiling work is multiplied by 1.45.
- ⚠️ Those hours are spread over more than one visit and that is not padding: compound has to dry between coats. A repair that is genuinely invisible is three thin coats over two or three days, and the single commonest complaint about a cheap patch is that it was done in one.
- The wage is official BLS data adjusted to your area. BLS publishes drywall and ceiling tile installers for 209 of the 530 areas in our index; elsewhere this hour is priced from the broader construction group for the same area. The hours are our estimate either way.
- Drywall finisher: match the texture
- Per patch: 0.35 hours for orange peel, 0.6 for knockdown and 0.9 for popcorn, on top of the repair itself. Nothing for a smooth surface, because there is nothing to match.
- Matching texture is the part of this trade that is genuinely a skill. It usually means practising on a scrap of board first to get the droplet size and the timing right, and that practice is inside these hours.
- Texture material and maskingestimated, ±54%
- Aerosol or hopper texture, plus the plastic and tape to mask everything within range of the spray, which is a larger area than people expect.
- Primer and paintestimated, ±45%
- Stain-blocking primer over the patch and then paint over the area being repainted. Priced per square foot of painted area rather than per gallon, because the coverage of a gallon is the thing nobody can predict on a repair.
- Colour matching an existing wall from a chip is unreliable after a few years of light: the tin will match the original formula, not the wall as it is now. That is the real reason the answer is often the whole room.
- Painter: mask, cut in and roll
- Half an hour of masking plus one hour per 180 square feet of painted area, two coats. Cutting in at the ceiling line and the trim is most of the time on a small area, which is why painting one wall is not a quarter of painting four.
- The wage is official BLS data adjusted to your area, and painters are published in 487 of the 530 areas in our index, so this line is nearly always priced by its own trade. The hours are our estimate.
- Lead-safe setup, containment and cleaning verificationestimated, ±45%
- ⚠️ Appears only when the house predates 1978 AND the disturbed painted surface goes over 6 square feet in a room. That is the line the federal rule draws between a minor repair, which is exempt, and a renovation, which has to be done by a certified firm with containment, HEPA cleaning and a cleaning verification.
- Note the rule's own catch: the surface disturbed is the entire area removed, not the size of the hole that was there. Cutting out a neat two-by-three-foot rectangle to fix a one-foot hole disturbs six square feet, not one.
- This is routine regulated work, not abatement. Abatement is the permanent removal of a lead hazard, it is a separate licensed specialty, and nothing here prices it.
- Dust protection and clean-upestimated, ±51%
- Floor protection, a zip wall at the doorway on anything larger than a couple of holes, and a vacuum at the end. Sanding joint compound produces a very fine dust that travels through a whole house and settles on everything.
- It is a small line and it is the difference between a repair and a week of finding dust on the skirting boards.
Not included in this dataset
- Whatever caused the damage
- A stain that keeps coming back is a leak, a crack that reopens every year is movement, and a hole in a ceiling below a bathroom is a plumbing job with a drywall repair attached. Patching without fixing the cause buys a patch that fails again, and the cause is not priced here.
- Popcorn ceilings in older houses
- Acoustic ceiling texture sprayed before the early eighties may contain asbestos. It should be tested before anything is scraped or sanded, and if it is positive that is licensed specialty work rather than a drywall repair. No figure on this page covers it.
- Lead abatement
- The lead-safe line above is routine regulated renovation by a certified firm, and it applies above the six-square-foot threshold. Abatement is a different thing: permanently removing a lead hazard, priced after an inspection by a licensed abatement contractor.
- Matching a discontinued texture or a plaster wall
- Some textures from particular decades cannot be reproduced with current products, and a genuine plaster wall over lath is not drywall at all — it is repaired with plaster by someone who does that, and it is slower and dearer than anything here.
- Structural or framing repair
- A wall that has moved, a ceiling that sags between joists, or damage from an impact that went through to the framing all need the structure fixed first. Board goes on afterwards.
Use the calculator, price a whole house at drywall installation cost, or read the full method.