Most of the painting calls we get from Murray Hill are about studios and one-bedrooms. Almost every one of them starts the same way: "It's a small place, so it shouldn't cost much." It's true that a studio costs less to paint than a two-bedroom. But it usually costs more than people expect, because a lot of the work in an apartment doesn't shrink with the floor plan.
This post shows why, how to build a realistic budget for a studio or one-bedroom, and where you can trim the number without regretting it. For whole-apartment ranges across Manhattan, see our guide to what it costs to paint a Manhattan apartment.
Murray Hill's apartments are small, and that shapes the job
Murray Hill is a mix of old and new. The Landmarks Preservation Commission's Murray Hill Historic District report, designated January 29, 2002, covers a protected core of rowhouses between Park and Lexington Avenues in the East 30s. The district was extended in 2004 with 12 more buildings. Outside those blocks, the neighborhood is mostly larger apartment buildings. The Roebling Team at Compass, a Manhattan real estate team, describes Murray Hill on its neighborhood market page as surviving brownstone blocks mixed with large postwar buildings. It says the apartments are the smallest of any neighborhood it tracks.
For painting, that means lots of studios and one-bedrooms, often in full-service buildings with house rules for contractors. That's why small-apartment budgeting is worth getting right here.
Why a small apartment doesn't cost proportionally less
Think about what's actually in a studio compared with a two-bedroom.
The kitchen and bathroom are still there. A studio has a kitchen and a bathroom, the same as a bigger apartment. Both are slow rooms: lots of cutting in around cabinets, tile, fixtures and the tub.
Doors and trim don't shrink much. Entry door, bathroom door, closet doors, door frames, baseboards. A studio might have four or five doors to paint, and each one takes the same time no matter the size of the apartment.
Setup is the same. Getting the crew and materials into the building, covering floors and furniture, masking, and cleaning up at the end take roughly the same time whether the apartment is 450 or 1,000 square feet.
Minimums exist. HomeGuide notes that many painting contractors charge a $250 to $500+ minimum project fee. Even if a contractor doesn't call it that, a crew day has a floor.
Taking out a bedroom mostly takes away flat wall and ceiling, which is the fastest surface to paint. The slow parts stay. That's why the price per square foot tends to rise as apartments get smaller.
What the published ranges say
HomeGuide's 2026 apartment guide puts professional apartment painting at $2 to $6 per square foot. It gives these national ranges:
Studio (400–600 sq ft): $800 to $3,600
One-bedroom (600–800 sq ft): $1,200 to $4,800
HomeGuide breaks the per-square-foot range into tiers. About $2–$3 covers walls only with minimal prep. About $3–$4 adds ceilings, trim and moderate prep. About $4–$6 covers the full job with extensive prep and premium paint. The same guide says labor accounts for 70% to 85% of the total, and that urban areas cost more than suburban ones.
For New York City specifically, the NYC Painters Murray Hill apartment painting guide gives 2026 ranges of roughly $1,300 to $2,500 for a studio and $2,000 to $4,000 for a one-bedroom, including walls, ceilings, labor and paint. If you'd like a quick range for your own layout, the NYC Painters apartment painting cost calculator works room by room.
Treat all of these as starting points. Ranges this wide depend on what's included, which is what the rest of this post is about.
Build the budget line by line
The best way to see where the money goes is to list every surface. Here's an illustration for a typical one-bedroom with 8-foot ceilings, using HomeGuide's national per-item figures from its room painting guide. This is not a quote. The point is to show which lines matter.
The apartment: a 14 × 16 ft living room, an 11 × 12 ft bedroom, a short foyer and hallway, a galley kitchen, one bathroom, five doors.
Walls in the living room, bedroom and foyer: about 1,000 sq ft after doors and windows. At HomeGuide's $1–$3 per sq ft for labor, that's about $1,000 to $3,000.
Ceilings in the same rooms: about 420 sq ft. At $1–$2 per sq ft, that's about $420 to $840.
Kitchen walls: HomeGuide lists $150 to $250, because cabinets and backsplash cover much of the wall.
Bathroom walls: $250 to $650 for an average bathroom, not including the ceiling or trim.
Doors: $100 to $250 each. Five doors is $500 to $1,250.
Baseboards and trim: $1 to $4 per linear foot. About 150 ft is $150 to $600.
Added up, that's roughly $2,500 to $6,600. That's higher than the one-bedroom ranges above, and that's normal. Per-item national prices are built for single rooms. When a crew does a whole apartment at once, it saves time on setup and cleanup, so whole-apartment quotes usually land below the sum of the parts. What the exercise does show is where the money is. In this example, doors and trim alone can be a quarter of the job.
Now make it a studio. Take out the bedroom and you remove about 368 sq ft of wall and 132 sq ft of ceiling, plus one door. That's roughly $600 to $1,600 off the line-item total. The kitchen, bathroom, most of the doors, the trim and the setup all stay. The studio costs less, but nowhere near half.
Paint is a small part of the bill
People sometimes try to save by buying cheaper paint. In a small apartment, that saves very little. Benjamin Moore lists its Regal Select interior paint at 400 to 450 square feet per gallon. Two coats on 1,000 sq ft of walls is about five gallons. HomeGuide puts paint at $20 to $80 per gallon depending on quality. So moving from a basic paint to a good one might add a couple hundred dollars to a one-bedroom. Given that labor is most of the bill, the better paint usually pays for itself by lasting longer and cleaning better.
Where you can save without regrets
These are the changes that actually move the number in a small apartment.
Keep one color for the walls. Every color change adds a cut line at corners and ceilings, and sometimes an extra coat. One wall color across the apartment is the fastest option.
Stay close to the current color. Going from a dark color to a light one, or the reverse, can mean an extra coat everywhere. HomeGuide notes that multiple coats raise the cost, especially when covering dark colors with light ones.
Decide on the ceilings and closets. If the ceilings are in good shape and still white, you may be able to skip them or do only the bathroom and kitchen ceilings. Closet interiors are another optional line.
Leave the doors if they're in good shape. Doors and trim are slow work. If they're clean and the color isn't changing, washing them and touching them up may be enough.
Paint before you move in. HomeGuide says empty apartments cost less to paint, and that more furniture means more labor. In a studio, there's no spare room to move things into, so every piece has to be moved to the center and covered.
Do the prep you can do yourself. Take down shelves, curtain rods, frames and TV mounts before the crew arrives, and clear the floors along the walls. Check with the contractor first about who fills the holes those leave.
Our Midtown East post on building a scope-first painting budget shows how to sort these into must-dos and nice-to-haves.
Where not to cut
Bathroom prep. If the bathroom ceiling is peeling, painting over it without fixing the cause and scraping the loose paint usually means it peels again. Ask what the contractor will do about it.
Patching in strong light. Small apartments often have one big window lighting one wall. That wall shows every patch. Pay for it to be done right.
Lead-safe work in older buildings. Many Murray Hill buildings, prewar and postwar, were built before 1978. The city's HPD safe work practices page says lead-safe work practices should be used in pre-1978 buildings when work disturbs 2 square feet or more of paint in a room. Stricter rules apply when a child under 6 routinely spends 10 or more hours a week in the home. Ask any contractor how they handle it.
Costs that aren't paint
Two lines often get left out of small-apartment budgets.
Building requirements. Co-ops, condos and rental buildings often ask contractors for a certificate of insurance and set work hours or elevator rules. Check with your managing agent before booking. Our post on comparing written painting quotes covers what to ask.
Sales tax. Ask whether each quote includes it, so you're comparing the same number.
How to get quotes you can compare
For a studio or one-bedroom, ask each painter to price these lines separately:
Walls, by room
Ceilings, by room
Kitchen and bathroom
Each door and frame
Baseboards and other trim
Closet interiors
Prep and repairs, described for each problem area
Paint brand, product and number of coats
Our post on pricing walls, ceilings and trim separately explains why this helps. Once the lines are split out, you can drop the ones you don't need without asking for a new quote.
When you're ready for a number on your own place, request a free estimate. We'll walk through the apartment with you, price each line, and show you which ones you can leave out.