How long does it take to paint a house interior?

How long does a single average bedroom or study take to paint?
 
Short answer:
Modern home/unit – 2 coats walls only – 6 hours
Modern home/unit – 2 coats walls and ceiling – 12 hours
Modern home/unit – 2 coats walls, ceiling, 3 coats door and skirting boards – 18 hours
This includes adequate masking, floor and furniture protection, and sanding/washing/primer on door and skirting. (NOTE: Cheap painters don’t do this).
 
Historic home/unit – 2 coats walls only – 8 hours
Historic home/unit – 2 coats walls and ceiling – 16 hours
Historic home/unit – 2 coats walls, ceiling, 3 coats door, WINDOW, PICTURE RAIL and skirting – 30 hours
This includes adequate masking, floor and furniture protection, and sanding/washing/primer on door, WINDOW, PICTURE RAIL and skirting. (NOTE: Cheap painters don’t do this … either).

If you want talk to me (The Tidy Painter) about fixing your cracks and painting your walls and ceilings (and you live on Sydney's Lower North Shore) click here.
 

Long answer:
Most people are surprised at how long it takes to paint a room … until they try it themselves. Painting is LABOUR INTENSIVE!!! (Well, decent painting is. Crappy painting that fails almost immediately is really fast!)
 
The steps to a great paint job are as follows:
 
1. PROTECT YOUR STUFF. Small items must be moved out. Big stuff like furniture must be wrapped in plastic. Floor coverings, like carpet and floorboards must have drop sheets laid over AND masking the appropriate tape applied around the entire perimeter. Then curtains and blinds must be removed.
 
2. FILL THE HOLES/CRACKS. Nearly every room has cracks or picture hook holes that need to be filled and dried ready to paint.
 
3. MAKE THE TRIM ‘GRIPPY’. All the glossy stuff like doors, wooden windows, skirting boards, picture rails, wardrobe doors, even wooden fire places need to be de-glossed, or the new paint will peel off. De-glossing is done with sandpaper and/or a special primer.
 
These 3 steps are called Protection and Preparation. These steps can take up to 50% of the time allowed for a long lasting, good looking paint job. Cheap painters just don’t do this stuff and that’s why they can present quotes that are half as much as a real painter.
 
Sadly a lot of home owners opt for the half price option and are very disappointed with the results. AND the inevitable fix up costs even more because of the damage caused the first time around.
 
Only then does a good painter do the painting part. Even here there is a huge difference between good and cheap painters. The good guys take TIME to apply the paint correctly so there are no bare patches and no dribbles or runs.  They take TIME to let the first coats dry before applying the second coats, while the cheapies apply one super thick coat and call it done.
 
A good painter doesn’t just chuck the paint on and run out the door. They apply, let dry the evaluate whether the RESULT is correct. If not, they make sure it is correct.
 
So they next time you look online for the answer to: How long does it take to paint a house interior? Make sure you separate the cheap answer from the quality answer.