Lead paint removal cost dataset

Five routes, four of them priced here

⚠️ The top row is not a way of removing lead — it is what ordinary painting costs in a house that has it, and it comes from our painting dataset rather than from a second set of bands here. One job, one model, one number. Read the bottom two rows together: stripping and replacing cost about the same and buy the same permanence, so for the same money the house ends up with a new component or an old one scraped bare. The service lives are our estimates and they are what the per-year column hangs on.

The threshold, applied

Straight from the rule: Minor repair and maintenance activities are activities … that disrupt 6 square feet or less of painted surface per room for interior activities or 20 square feet or less of painted surface for exterior activities — 40 CFR 745 subpart E, Residential Property Renovation, read 2026-08-23.

⚠️ Indoors the threshold is per room, so the same total spread across more rooms can stay under it — and Jobs, other than emergency renovations, performed in the same room within the same 30 days must be considered the same job for the purpose of determining whether the job is a minor repair and maintenance activity, so splitting the work over three weekends does not split the threshold. Replacing a window is never minor maintenance whatever its area, which is one reason the window row is on this table: sashes and jambs are friction surfaces, and friction is where lead dust is actually made. A certified firm must also hand over EPA, Renovate Right no more than 60 days before starting and keep the records 3 years.

Line items

68% of the reference total comes from estimated rather than official figures. The reference job is 400 square feet of interior painted surface across 4 rooms — 100 per room, against a threshold of 6 — treated by encapsulation, tested first and verified afterwards: 22.4 trade hours. Routes and locations that are not selected sit at zero quantity, so the table below is every path rather than one job.

The reasoning behind each figure

Finding out whether there is lead, and whereestimated, ±47%

• A risk assessment or an XRF survey of the surfaces in question, or paint chips to a laboratory. ⚠️ It is the cheapest line on this page and it can delete every other one: pre-1978 does not mean lead, it means possible lead, and plenty of houses that age come back clean on the surfaces that matter.
• It also tells you which surfaces, which is what turns a house-wide fear into a job with a size. The friction surfaces — window sashes, jambs, doors — are where lead dust actually comes from, and they are rarely the largest area.
• Priced per property rather than per sample: the visit is most of it.

Indoor containment: floor and doorway poly, tape, signs, HEPA, suitsestimated, ±42%

• ⚠️ This line appears only when the job crosses the federal threshold — more than 6 square feet of disturbed paint per room indoors. Below it the work is minor repair and maintenance and none of this is required. Above it, it is not optional.
• Plastic to the floor, a barrier across every doorway, tape, warning signs, a HEPA vacuum and disposable coveralls the crew leaves behind. The doorway barriers are what makes indoor containment cost more per square foot than outdoor.
• Jobs, other than emergency renovations, performed in the same room within the same 30 days must be considered the same job for the purpose of determining whether the job is a minor repair and maintenance activity — so splitting a job across three weekends does not split the threshold.

Outdoor containment: ground sheeting, weights, signs and HEPAestimated, ±44%

• ⚠️ Appears only over the federal threshold, which outdoors is 20 square feet for the whole job rather than per room.
• Sheeting laid on the ground and weighted, extending well past the wall, because what outdoor containment is for is stopping chips reaching the soil. There are no doorways to seal, which is why the band is lower than indoors.
• Wind stops the job. That is not a line item, but it is why an exterior lead job takes more calendar days than its hours suggest.

Setting up indoors, cleaning down daily and the paperwork

• Three fixed hours per room — the room is the unit indoors, because the threshold is per room and so is the containment — plus HEPA vacuuming and wet wiping at the end of every day, which is what the rule means by cleaning rather than tidying.
• The paperwork is real work too: the firm has to give the owner the EPA pamphlet no more than 60 days before starting, get it acknowledged, and keep the records for 3 years.
• ⚠️ It is also the honest reason a certified firm quotes more than the man who did your neighbour’s kitchen. What the premium buys is containment, cleaning and a record — not better paint.

Laying and lifting the ground sheeting, and the paperwork

• Four fixed hours plus 0.010 per square foot. Outdoors there are no rooms to work in, and the sheeting is laid out and taken up again every day rather than left — rain on a sheet full of paint chips is the failure mode.
• More hours per square foot than indoors and less material: it is a job of handling rather than of sealing.
• Same paperwork either way: the pamphlet no more than 60 days before, acknowledged, and the records kept 3 years.

Encapsulate — a coating made to lock it in — materialsestimated, ±42%

• ⚠️ The answer to the question people actually ask, and the caveat that goes with it. Painting over lead paint is a recognised way of dealing with it — but ordinary paint is not an encapsulant. An encapsulant is a thick elastomeric coating sold and tested for the purpose, it goes on at several times the film of paint, and it will not stick to a surface that is already flaking. On sound paint it is the cheapest real option on this page.
• Modelled to last 15 to 20 years before the question comes back, which is our estimate and is the number the cost-per-year comparison on this page hangs on.

Encapsulate — a coating made to lock it in — labour

• Modelled at 0.02 trade hours per square foot. Stripping is roughly four times the time of encapsulating, which is most of why it costs what it costs.
• Wages are official BLS data for painters, construction and maintenance, adjusted to your metropolitan area. The hours are our estimate.

Enclose — cover it with new material — materialsestimated, ±43%

• New drywall over a wall, new siding over old, a panel over a windowsill. The lead stays where it is and something durable goes over it. ⚠️ It is the option that survives a flaking surface, and the one that quietly commits the next owner: whatever is behind the enclosure is still there, and taking it off later is a lead job again.
• Modelled to last 25 to 40 years before the question comes back, which is our estimate and is the number the cost-per-year comparison on this page hangs on.

Enclose — cover it with new material — labour

• Modelled at 0.035 trade hours per square foot. Stripping is roughly four times the time of encapsulating, which is most of why it costs what it costs.
• Wages are official BLS data for painters, construction and maintenance, adjusted to your metropolitan area. The hours are our estimate.

Replace the painted component — materialsestimated, ±43%

• Take out the thing the paint is on — the trim, the door, the sash — and fit new. It is the only route that ends the problem permanently for that component, and on windows it is usually both the most effective and the cheapest per unit of risk removed, because friction surfaces are where lead dust actually comes from. ⚠️ Note that window replacement is never minor maintenance under the rule, whatever its area.
• Modelled to last 40 to 60 years before the question comes back, which is our estimate and is the number the cost-per-year comparison on this page hangs on.

Replace the painted component — labour

• Modelled at 0.06 trade hours per square foot. Stripping is roughly four times the time of encapsulating, which is most of why it costs what it costs.
• Wages are official BLS data for painters, construction and maintenance, adjusted to your metropolitan area. The hours are our estimate.

Strip it back to bare substrate — materialsestimated, ±44%

• ⚠️ The one the search term names and the one to be talked out of. Chemical stripping or wet scraping to bare wood is the slowest, dearest and messiest route, it generates regulated waste, and it is the route most likely to create the dust it is meant to prevent — which is why the federal rule prohibits torching and restricts power sanding and heat guns. There are cases for it, mostly ornate trim worth saving. There are far more cases where the money buys new components instead.
• Modelled to last 40 to 60 years before the question comes back, which is our estimate and is the number the cost-per-year comparison on this page hangs on.

Strip it back to bare substrate — labour

• Modelled at 0.085 trade hours per square foot. Stripping is roughly four times the time of encapsulating, which is most of why it costs what it costs.
• Wages are official BLS data for painters, construction and maintenance, adjusted to your metropolitan area. The hours are our estimate.

Bagging, hauling and disposing of lead wasteestimated, ±47%

• Double-bagged debris, stripper sludge and the removed components, taken where the local rules say they go — which is the part that varies most between states.
• It applies to the two routes that generate waste, stripping and component replacement. Encapsulating and enclosing generate almost none, which is one of the reasons they cost less.

Cleaning verification, or clearance dust wipes to a laboratoryestimated, ±53%

• Wipes taken off the floors, sills and troughs after the work and sent for analysis, or the visual cleaning verification the federal rule accepts in its place.
• ⚠️ It is the only line that tells you the job worked. Everything else on this page is a promise about process; this is a measurement of the result, and on a house with a small child in it that difference is the whole reason to spend the money.

Not included in this dataset

Repainting a pre-1978 house safely, which is the fifth route

⚠️ Deliberately not modelled here: it is priced on our interior and exterior painting pages, which already add a lead premium on the hours when the house is pre-1978. This page shows those figures alongside rather than inventing a second set. One job, one model, one number — two models of the same work drift apart, and a reader who compared the pages would be right to stop trusting both.

Replacing the windows, which is often the answer

Also priced elsewhere on purpose, on our window replacement page. It belongs in this conversation rather than outside it: window sashes and jambs are friction surfaces, friction surfaces are where lead dust is actually generated, and replacing them removes the source rather than covering it. ⚠️ Under the federal rule window replacement is never minor maintenance, whatever its area.

Soil around the outside of the house

⚠️ Decades of exterior paint chips end up in the ground under the eaves, and that soil is a lead pathway in its own right — particularly where children play or vegetables grow. Testing and remediating soil is a different specialism with different rules and it is not priced here, but it is the thing most likely to be missed when only the building is treated.

Whether your insurance pays for any of it

One of the questions Google shows on this search, and this site is not the place to answer it: what a policy covers depends on the policy, the state and the circumstances, and there is no national figure worth publishing. It is a question for your insurer in writing, before the work rather than after.

Anything about health

⚠️ This page prices building work. What lead exposure does, at what level, and what to do about a particular person is a matter for a doctor and for public health authorities, and the CDC page linked on this page is the federal starting point.

⚠️ And the boundary worth stating twice, because this is a subject where it matters: this dataset prices building work. Anything about what lead exposure does, at what level, or what to do about a particular person belongs with CDC, Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention (read 2026-08-23) and with a doctor, not with a cost calculator. The thresholds above are also federal minimums: outdoors the figure is 20 square feet, and several states set stricter rules than either.