Drywall Installation Cost Calculator
Drywall installation costs about 2.81 a square foot of board hung and finished, which for a 1,500 square foot house in Atlanta is $17,070. The catch is in the units: that house holds 6,085 square feet of board, 4.06 times its floor area, because every partition is boarded twice and the ceilings count too. This calculator works out that board area, the sheet count and the hours for your own house.
Estimate the cost for your home
Estimated cost to board and finish the house
$16,970
typical · range $13,032 to $20,908 · 6,085 sq ft of board · 213 sheets of 4 × 8 ft sheets · $2.79 per sq ft of board
Labour priced at national wages. Enter a ZIP code to price it for your area. 55% of this figure comes from modelled material prices — each line shows its own uncertainty.
Priced from bls.gov Aug 2026how every line is sourced
The one input that changes the answer for you.
Ceilings, the inside face of every exterior wall, and both faces of every interior partition. This is where the board area comes out at three or four times the floor area.
Tape and three coats, sanded. What almost every residential quote assumes, and what looks right under a flat paint in ordinary light.
Two people can carry one up a stair. More sheets and therefore more joints to tape, which is more finishing.
The commonest house shape and the baseline here.
Bedrooms, bathrooms, hallways and closets in the usual proportions. This is the baseline.
1 / 5
The figure above is already calculated. Each step just makes it more yours, and you can stop at any of them.
A house holds four times its floor area in board
This is the number every quote is really built on, and the one nobody gives you.
- Floor area (all storeys)
- 1,500 sq ft
- Ceilings
- 1,500 sq ft
- Exterior walls, inside face
- 1,274 sq ft
- Partitions, both sides
- 3,312 sq ft
Board to hang: 6,085 sq ft — 4.06× the floor area
Trade hours: 135 — about 8.4 days for a two-person crew
The ratio falls as the house gets bigger — a large house has proportionally less perimeter and fewer partitions per square foot of floor. That is why a price per square foot of floor quoted from someone else’s job travels badly, and why the only stable number in this trade is the price per square foot of board.
| Line item | Qty | Cost | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gypsum board(board area × 1.12) ÷ sheet size | 213sheet | $2,769–$5,538 | estimated±33% |
| Moisture-resistant board upcharge12% of the sheet count where moisture-resistant board is used | 26sheet | $156–$390 | estimated±43% |
| Joint compound, tape and fastenerstotal board area | 6,085sq ft of board | $730–$1,704 | estimated±40% |
| Corner bead and trim0.35 linear ft per sq ft of board (modelled) | 2,130linear ft | $1,278–$3,408 | estimated±45% |
| Drywall installer: hang the board4 h + 0.009 h per sq ft of wall + 0.014 per sq ft of ceiling (modelled) | 67hour | $3,686–$3,960 | sourced |
| Drywall finisher: tape, coat and sand3 h + area × level rate, ceilings ×1.25 (modelled) | 68hour | $3,741–$4,019 | sourced |
| Skip and disposalboard area × 0.45 for offcuts, ×1.6 where old board comes out too | 2,738sq ft of board | $493–$1,369 | estimated±47% |
| Delivery and stocking1 per job | 1lot | $180–$520 | estimated±49% |
| Total | $13,032–$20,908 | ±23% |
Where these numbers come from
- The multiplier, and why it moves
- A house holds between three and five times its floor area in board, and the ratio falls as the house gets bigger: 4.74× at 1,000 square feet, 3.65× at 2,000. Floor area grows with the square of a dimension while perimeter grows linearly, so a large house has proportionally less exterior wall per square foot of floor. That is our own calculation from the geometry, not a published figure, and it is the reason a price per square foot of floor borrowed from a neighbour’s job is unreliable while a price per square foot of board is not.
- Labour rates by area
- BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025, for drywall and ceiling tile installers, tapers and painters. Retrieved 2026-08-20. Tapers are published for a minority of our 530 areas; where they are not, that hour is priced from the installer figure for the same area rather than from a national average. Benefit load from BLS Employer Costs for Employee Compensation. The hours per square foot are our estimate and are set out on the dataset page.
- The dust, which is a real hazard and not a nuisance
- Sanding joint compound is the dustiest hour in a house, and CDC NIOSH, Construction safety and health covers the respiratory protection that goes with it. The consequence for you is simpler: the fine dust settles through a whole house and into the ductwork, so containment and a final clean belong in the quote, and EPA, Introduction to Indoor Air Quality is the reason to ventilate afterwards rather than immediately move back in. Both retrieved 2026-08-22.
- Stripping out old board in an older house
- A tear-off in a house built before 1978 disturbs painted surfaces, which brings the EPA, Lead Renovation, Repair and Painting Program into play: paid renovation above the minor-repair threshold has to be done by a certified firm. Separately, CPSC, Identification of manufacturers of problem drywall made in China lists the manufacturers of the imported board that caused corrosion complaints in houses built and repaired in the mid-2000s, which is worth knowing if you are replacing board of that vintage rather than adding it. Retrieved 2026-08-22.
- What the finish level actually buys
- The step from a level 3 to a level 5 is $3,352 on this 1,500 square foot house — $15,972 against $19,324. It buys nothing you can see until the light is wrong, and then it buys everything: a skim coat over the whole surface is what stops joints telegraphing under a satin paint or across a wall with a window at one end. The levels themselves are an industry standard published by trade associations, and we describe what each involves rather than reproducing their text.
- Material prices
- Modelled estimates, not sourced prices. No public, machine-readable source of US residential material prices exists, and we would rather say so than pretend otherwise. Each line carries its own uncertainty band. How we estimate them.
Contractor overhead and profit applied at 33–43% over direct cost. Data last reviewed 2026-08-23.
What this figure does not include
- Priming and painting
- A finished drywall surface is bare board and compound, and it must be primed before paint. Painting is a separate trade with its own quote, and the level of finish above is what decides how much work the painter has to do to make it look right.
- Framing, insulation and anything behind the board
- This prices hanging and finishing on studs that already exist. Framing, insulation, vapour barriers, and running electrics or plumbing in the wall all happen before the board goes on and are priced separately.
- Tile backer behind a shower
- Moisture-resistant board is not waterproof board. Behind a shower or a tub surround the correct product is a cement or foam backer with its own waterproofing, and using green board there is a mistake that shows up as a soft wall in a few years.
- Lead paint abatement
- The lead-safe line above is routine regulated renovation work by a certified firm. Abatement — permanently removing a lead hazard — is a separate licensed specialty priced after an inspection, and putting a cheap number on it would be worse than putting none.
- Imported drywall problems
- Between roughly 2001 and 2009 some imported board emitted sulphur compounds that corroded wiring and fixtures. CPSC identified the manufacturers involved. If a house of that vintage has blackened copper and a persistent smell, that is an investigation rather than a drywall quote.
- Permits
- Boarding out existing framing rarely needs one. Anything that changes the framing, or fire-rated assemblies between a garage and living space, usually does. Fees vary with no national source.
Questions people actually ask
How much would it cost to drywall a 1500 sq ft house?
About $17,070 in Atlanta, in a range of $13,129 to $21,011, hung and finished to a level 4. The figure that gets you there is not the 1,500: it is 6,085 square feet of board, which is 4.06 times the floor area once you count both faces of every partition, the inside of the exterior walls and the ceilings. That is 213 sheets. Anyone quoting this job has done that multiplication whether or not they showed you, and it is the first thing to check when two quotes disagree.
How long does it take to drywall a 2 000 sq ft house?
About 161 trade hours, which is roughly 10 working days for a two-person crew. But it does not compress into that many consecutive days, and that is the part worth understanding: taping is three coats and each one has to dry before the next, so a house is hung in two or three days and then finished over the following week. A crew that promises the whole job in three days is either bringing more people or skipping a coat, and only one of those shows up later on the wall.
How much would it cost to drywall a 12x12 room?
About $2,248 in Atlanta, in a range of $1,725 to $2,771. A 12 by 12 room is 144 square feet of floor and 539 square feet of board — four walls at 395 square feet plus the ceiling — which is 19 sheets. Per square foot of board it is dearer than a whole house, because turning up, setting up and cleaning up cost the same for one room as for twenty, and on a small job there is nothing to spread them over.
How much does 1000 sq ft of drywall cost?
It depends on which thousand you mean, and the difference is about four to one. A thousand square feet of board is roughly $2,805 hung and finished as part of a larger job, because this trade runs at a remarkably steady 2.81 a square foot of board across house sizes. A thousand square foot house is $13,396, because it holds 4,744 square feet of board. Suppliers and contractors both quote in board area; homeowners think in floor area; and almost every argument about a drywall price starts in that gap.
Taken from Google’s “people also ask” results for this search on 23 August 2026, not invented.
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