Drywall Cost

It doesn’t matter whether you are going to attack your drywall project on your own or are hiring a professional for the job. Having a basic understanding of the cost of drywall will help you stay in budget whilst also letting you know if the contractor you hire is perhaps getting a little over creative with his pricing.

The costs of the materials that you need will vary from place to place, so the figures used here are just an average of sorts. What’s more important is the calculations used to get to the final price.

Let’s use these prices as our average:

  • Drywall Screws – $4.39/lb
  • All-Purpose Drywall Mud $11.99/5 Gallon
  • Drywall Sheets (8x4x1/2inch) – $8.48/Sheet
  • Fiberglass Tape 300ft – $7.97/roll

The first thing you have to do is calculate the square footage of the wall space in the room that is to be drywalled. Multiple the height by the width and then add the totals of each wall to get the total square footage. For example, let’s say you have a perfectly square room with all walls the same size, at 8’ X 14’. That would be 112 square feet per wall for a total of 448 square feet.

Given that we are using 8×4 drywall in this example, your next step is to divide your total square footage by 32 to get the total number of sheets, remembering to round up when you do so. What you actually get is an even 14 sheets which, when multiplied by the cost per sheet, brings up a total of $118.72.

There are normally 30 screws used per sheet, which means you’ll need 420. There are 150 screws in a pound, so round that up to get 3 pounds of screws, which at $4.39/lb equals $13.17.

Next up is the mud which usually comes in at a gallon per 100 square feet. That means 4.48 gallons, rounded up to 5. A 5-gallon tub of mud is $11.99, so add that to the price. You’ll also have to add on tape, with a couple of rolls enough for a job of this size, meaning another $15.94 onto the total.

That gives a total of $160.35 for your single room, which of course is the total before adding on sales tax, the cost of tools, or the hourly rate of the contractor if you choose to go that route.