Drywall Repair Pricing Calculator
Price patches, holes, water damage, texture matching, and skim coats from your real costs — total hands-on labor across every coat and return trip, overhead, and materials — with your profit margin built in, not sanded away. Every price comes with a full breakdown so you can see exactly where it comes from.
Your Business Setup
Set these once — they reflect your business, not the job.
Price a Job
Enter the job — the price updates as you type.
Instant Rate Card — Common Drywall Repair Jobs
Twelve common jobs priced with your business settings above. Change your rate or margin and the whole menu reprices instantly. Hours are total hands-on time across every visit — patching, each coat, sanding, and texture — because mud dries on its schedule, not yours. Adjust to your market and the wall in front of you.
| Job | Typical hours | Typical materials | Your flat rate |
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We really appreciate feedback from working pros like yourself to get these numbers accurate — to help our fellow trades and businesses succeed, now and for the next generations to come.
Worked Examples: Three Real Repair Jobs
Using the default business settings above ($28/hr loaded finisher rate, $14/hr overhead, 60% materials markup, 22% target margin, 3% card fee, 2% callback reserve):
1. Doorknob hole patch — 2.0 total hands-on hours across visits, $18 in materials
Labor $56 + overhead $28 + materials charged at $28.80 (your $18 cost with markup) = $112.80 base → flat rate $159, netting about $49 in true profit at a 31% margin. The customer sees a hole the size of a fist; you see a patch visit, two coats with dry time between them, a sand, and a texture pass. Two hours of hands-on time spread over multiple trips is exactly why "it's just a small hole" pricing bankrupts repair guys.
2. Ceiling water-damage patch, about 2×2 ft — 4.0 total hours, $40 in board, mud, and stain-blocking primer
Labor $112 + overhead $56 + materials charged at $64 = $232 base → flat rate $319, netting about $95 at nearly a 30% margin. Ceiling work is overhead-arm work with dust containment, cutting back to sound material, and a stain-blocking primer so the water mark never ghosts through — priced above the same-size wall patch on purpose. And the leak gets fixed before you open the mud bucket; that's in writing.
3. Popcorn ceiling removal & refinish, one room — 8 lead hours + 4 helper hours, $60 in materials
Labor $296.80 (helper at 65% of lead rate) + overhead $168 + materials charged at $96 = $560.80 base → flat rate $769, netting about $206 at a 27% margin. Scrape, skim, sand, and refinish is a full production sequence with serious containment — plastic on everything, dust management, and a finish the homeowner will stare at every night. That's why per-room popcorn pricing lives in the several-hundreds, not the double digits.
What Does Drywall Repair Overhead Actually Cost?
Overhead is every cost of being in business that isn't a specific repair: truck or van payment and fuel, ladders and low scaffolding, drywall routers and sanders (and a dust-collection vac if you work occupied homes), texture sprayers and hoppers, general liability insurance, phone, scheduling software, and marketing. For a serious one-truck repair operation, a typical year lands in the range of $15,000–$28,000 before anyone earns a wage.
The number that matters is overhead per billable hour — and in repair work, billable hours are the hours your hands are on the wall, not the hours driving between three small jobs or waiting on a second coat to set up. A solo repair specialist running multiple stops a day may drive one to two unbillable hours between them. Divide annual overhead by hands-on hours: roughly $21,000 ÷ 1,500 billable hours ≈ $14 per billable hour — the default this calculator starts with. Repair pros who divide by drive-inclusive hours underprice every patch on the schedule.
Common Drywall Repair Pricing Mistakes
Recommended Profit Margins for Drywall Repair
These are working benchmarks, not laws. Repair work earns better margins than hanging new board because you're selling skill and logistics, not square footage — the invisible patch is the product. Materials are a small share of the ticket, so the markup barely moves the price but keeps consumables from quietly eating your margin. What matters is that the margin is a decision you made, visible in your price — not whatever was left after the third trip back.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much should I charge for a drywall patch?
Price the trips, not the hole. A proper doorknob-hole repair is a patch, two or three coats of compound with dry time between them, sanding, and texture — spread across two or three visits. Count every hands-on hour across all of them, add your overhead and materials with markup, and divide by one minus your target margin. With typical 2026 numbers a small professional patch lands in the $125–$250 range, and larger or ceiling repairs well above that. Customers who balk at that number are pricing the hole; you're pricing the finish.
Why do small drywall repairs cost so much?
Because joint compound doesn't care how small the hole is — each coat has to dry before the next one goes on, which means a twenty-minute patch still consumes two or three trips of driving, setup, dust protection, and cleanup. A minimum job charge exists to cover that real time. The professional answer is to batch: repair every ding, nail pop, and crack in the house in one visit sequence, so the customer gets far more value from the same trip structure.
Should I charge extra for texture matching?
Yes — texture matching is the difference between a repair and an invisible repair, and it's a genuine skill. Matching an existing knockdown, orange peel, or hand texture takes test panels, the right mud consistency, and an experienced hand; a bad match means the patch is visible from across the room forever. Price texture work as its own line with real hours behind it, and set expectations in writing about paint: a perfect texture match under mismatched paint still shows.
How should I price water damage drywall repairs?
First rule: the leak gets fixed before the drywall does, and that goes in writing — repairing over an active leak buys you a guaranteed callback. Then price for what water damage really is: cutting back to dry, sound material (often bigger than the visible stain), checking insulation, allowing for a stain-blocking primer, and stopping the job if you find mold beyond a small surface area, which is remediation territory. Ceiling water repairs also carry overhead-work fatigue and containment time — price them above the same-size wall repair.
What profit margin should a drywall repair business target?
Repair work should target a healthier margin than hanging new board — commonly 20–30% true net margin after all costs, card fees, and a callback reserve. You're selling skill (invisible patches, texture matching) and trip logistics, not square footage. Materials are a small share of the job, so a 50–75% materials markup barely moves the price but keeps the mud, tape, and patch panels from quietly eating your margin.
Is this calculator really free?
Yes. No account, no email, no ads. The calculator runs in your browser and the numbers you enter are never sent to us. We use basic traffic analytics, described in our privacy policy.