How Much Should I Charge to Wrap a Car? Vehicle Wrap Pricing, Worked

October 26, 2026 · Pricing a service business

To work out how much to charge to wrap a car, price the job from what it takes: film and laminate for the surface plus your waste, ink and printer wear, the design, your helper, and your own hours at the floor rate your year needs, with a margin on top. In the illustrative full printed wrap below, the job costs $3,689.67, a 30% margin prices it at $5,270.96, and that is $21.08 per square foot on the vehicle.

None of these figures are market prices, and there is no vehicle-size table here. The surface area is one example’s own measurement, and every waste share, supplier price and install rate belongs to one made-up shop, there to be replaced with your own tape measure, supplier sheet and timing. Nothing here says which film suits a vehicle or its paint; apply every film as its maker directs.

The vehicle wrap pricing formula

film sq ft   = wrap sq ft / (1 - waste share)
linear ft    = film sq ft / (roll width in inches / 12)
materials    = film (by the roll or by the foot, cheaper)
               + laminate + sundries
print        = film sq ft x (ink + printer wear per sq ft)
install      = prep + parts + wrap sq ft / install rate
               + old film removal + post-heat
job cost     = materials + print + design fee + helper pay
               + your hours x your floor rate
price        = job cost / (1 - margin)

Step 1: your hourly floor

The example installer wants $52,000 a year kept after a 25% tax set-aside, carries $24,000 of business costs (bay rent, printer lease, insurance), and books 32 hours a week on paying jobs for 48 weeks. No-shows and redos take 10%, leaving 1,382.4 paid hours. The year needs $93,333.33, so the floor is $67.52 per paid hour. Forget the lost hours and you would set it at $60.76. With 10 unpaid hours a week of driving and admin, the installer keeps $25.79 per hour actually worked.

Step 2: film needed

The example vehicle measured 250 square feet, panel by panel, and a full wrap covers 100% of it. With 20% of the film lost to waste, overlap and bleed, the job takes 312.5 square feet of film, 62.5 of it never on the vehicle. On a 60 inch roll that is 62.5 linear feet. Bought by the 50 foot roll it would be 2 rolls, with 37.5 feet left over.

Step 3: film and laminate cost

2 rolls at $750.00 would be $1,500.00; 62.5 feet cut to length at $14.00 a foot is $875.00, so this job buys by the foot. Laminate runs the same length.

That is $6.23 per square foot on the vehicle, before ink.

Step 4: print and design

Ink at $0.45 and printer wear at $0.15 per square foot printed, waste included, make $187.50 for 312.5 square feet. The printer runs 3.13 hours, but that is machine time, not yours. Laminating takes 1.56 of your hours at 0.5 hours per 100 square feet.

Design is 6 hours to the first proof, 2 revision rounds of 1.5 hours and 2 hours of print file prep and paneling: 11 hours at the $67.52 floor, a $742.72 design fee. A customer who brings print-ready art takes that line out.

Step 5: install hours and the helper

Wash, clay and degrease is 2 hours. 14 parts off and on at 10 minutes each is 2.33 hours. Laying 250 square feet at 15 square feet per person-hour is 16.67 person-hours, removing 60 square feet of old film at 30 an hour is 2.00, and post-heat and inspection 1.5 more. The install is 24.50 person-hours, 68% of it laying film.

Split across a crew of 2, your share is 12.25 hours and the helper’s 12.25, at $22.00 an hour with payroll costs: $269.50.

Step 6: price the wrap

That is $21.08 per square foot on the vehicle. The 30% margin is a 42.9% markup on cost, so be sure which one your price list means; the markup vs margin chart works both ways. A 50% deposit of $2,635.48 covers the film, laminate, sundries and print ($1,745.00) before you order or print anything. Card fees are not in this price; if you take cards, add them.

Vehicle wrap pricing by the square foot: checking a rate

If you quote from a per square foot price list, check it against the job. At $18.50 per square foot plus the design fee, this wrap quotes at $5,367.72 and earns a 31.3% margin on the $3,689.67 cost. The rate that just meets a 30% margin is $18.11 and break-even is $11.79, so the example rate clears both, narrowly. With the design fee in the quote, a $1,200 minimum job only takes over below 24.7 square feet of wrap. A rate that covers one vehicle may not cover the next, so run each job.

The insight: a partial wrap costs more per square foot

Some of every wrap does not shrink with the area: prep, parts and post-heat (5.83 hours here) and the design fee. Take the same job with the area as the only change, at $6.98 of film, laminate, sundries and print per square foot and a crew cost of $44.76 per person-hour (your floor and the helper’s cost, shared evenly), leaving out old film removal and laminating hours for both:

The partial wraps 40% of the vehicle but costs 57.2% of the full price. Quote it at the full wrap’s per square foot rate and you would charge $1,996.95, $860.29 short of its price. Price partials from their own hours, not as a slice of a full wrap. The full wrap here is lower than step 6’s because removal and laminating are left out of this comparison. The window tinting post shows the same fixed-time effect on smaller film jobs.

How these were calculated

The floor is (income / (1 - tax share) + business costs) / (booked hours x (1 - share lost) x weeks). Film is wrap area / (1 - waste share); linear feet are film area over the roll width in feet; rolls are rounded up, and film is costed at the cheaper of whole rolls and cut length. Laminate runs the film’s length. Print is film area times ink and wear per square foot. Install hours are prep, parts, laying, removal and post-heat, shared evenly by the crew. Job cost and price follow the table, with figures carried from step to step as the spreadsheet shows them, to the cent. The partial comparison uses the same per square foot material and print, the same fixed hours and design fee, and one crew rate. Every figure was computed twice, once by the code behind the product below and once by an independent program that works film in square inches, adds rolls one at a time and sums install time in minutes, and the two agree. All inputs are illustrative, not measured rates, vehicle sizes or market prices. None of this is financial, legal or tax advice.

To run this on your own vehicles, supplier prices and year, the pack below has eight linked calculators, from the hourly floor to the full against partial check.