COST GUIDE

Popcorn Ceiling Removal Cost

Name: Durahome Painting Plus
Address: 504 Prior Ave N, Saint Paul, MN, 55104, US
Telephone: (612) 400-8864
Price range: $$
Rating: 4.8

★★★★★4.8 from 140+Google Reviews

Popcorn ceiling removal cost runs $3.00 to $6.50 per square foot in this market — and here is what sits inside that number and what sits outside it.

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How much does popcorn ceiling removal cost?

$3.00 to $6.50 per square foot in the Twin Cities for removal, skim, prime and finish — so a 200-square-foot bedroom ceiling is roughly $600 to $1,300 and a whole main level can run $4,000 to $7,000. Two things sit outside that rate: repairs to what the texture was hiding, and testing on any ceiling that could predate the early 1980s. Both should be stated in your quote.

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THE SCOPE

Six Stages Inside the Square-Foot Price

"Removal" is the shortest word for a sequence of six operations, and a quote that costs meaningfully less than $3.00 a square foot is usually leaving one of them out.

TIER 01Included in $3.00–$6.50/sq ft

Containment

Plastic to the walls and floor, doorways sealed, vents closed and the room isolated. This is the messiest work in residential painting and containment is what separates a project you can live with from one you cannot.

✓ Full floor & wall plastic containment✓ Sealed doorways & closed vents

TIER 02Included in $3.00–$6.50/sq ft

Wet Scraping

The texture is misted so it comes away in a heavier, cleaner fall rather than going airborne. Dry scraping is quicker for the crew and considerably worse for the house.

✓ Dust-reducing wet mist process✓ Cleaner fall than dry scraping

TIER 03Included in $3.00–$6.50/sq ft

Repair of What Is Underneath

Unfinished tape seams, popped fasteners, old patches textured over to hide them. This is variable and it is covered in the next section.

✓ Fixes hidden tape seams & pops✓ Preps substrate for skim

TIER 04Included in $3.00–$6.50/sq ft

Skim Coating

Bringing the whole ceiling to a flat, continuous plane rather than filling discrete spots. This is the stage that decides whether the finished ceiling looks like a smooth ceiling or a scraped one, and it is where the skill sits.

✓ Full continuous plane skim✓ Level 5 smooth ceiling finish

TIER 05Included in $3.00–$6.50/sq ft

Priming & Stain Blocking

Priming, including stain blocking wherever there is a water mark, so nothing bleeds through the new finish.

✓ Stain-blocking primer seal✓ Prevents old watermark bleed

TIER 06Included in $3.00–$6.50/sq ft

Two Finish Coats in Ceiling Flat

And two finish coats in a ceiling flat, which scatters light rather than returning it. Anything with sheen prints every imperfection.

✓ Two flat finish coats✓ Non-reflective light scatter

💡 Note: If a quote does not describe a skim stage, ask about it. Scraped-and-painted is a different product from removed-and-finished, and the difference is visible under any window.

THE VARIABLES

Repairs, Rooms and the Age Question

FEATURE 01

Repairs beyond the ordinary.

Every ceiling has some. Where there is water damage from a past ice dam or a long-ago leak, soft drywall gets cut out and replaced rather than skimmed, and that is a real line. An honest estimate tells you what is expected and raises anything beyond it with you before the work happens rather than adding it afterward.

FEATURE 02

Lower-level ceilings, which price higher per square foot.

Beams, bulkheads, duct soffits and recessed lighting mean almost none of the surface is open plane, and every one of those is an edge worked by hand rather than rolled. A finished basement ceiling can run half again what a bedroom does per square foot.

FEATURE 03

Vaulted and sloped ceilings,

which need staging inside the room and skim coating on a slope. Priced separately, always.

FEATURE 04

Plaster rather than drywall.

In pre-war housing the surface behind the texture is frequently plaster on lath, which cannot be wet-scraped the same way and can be hollow where it has let go overhead. Different operation, different price, and it is identified at the assessment rather than found on the first morning.

FEATURE 05

And walls in the same visit.

Not an add-on so much as a saving — the room is already cleared and sealed, so doing the walls now costs meaningfully less than a return trip later.

BEFORE ANYTHING IS SCRAPED

Older Ceilings, Explained Plainly

If the texture on your ceiling was applied before the early 1980s, it has to be tested before it is disturbed. This is not a judgment call and it is not a matter of opinion.

Testing means laboratory analysis of a sample.

Not an inspection, not an experienced eye. Appearance tells you nothing reliable, and anyone claiming they can tell by looking is telling you something that is not true.

The house's build year is not the answer.

What matters is when the texture went on. A 1925 house may have been textured in 1968; a 1972 house may have had a ceiling redone in 1991. Property records give you one; your own history and an assessment give you the other.

A negative result means the project proceeds as normal.

A great many ceilings test clear.

A positive result means it must not be disturbed,.

and the work belongs to a licensed abatement contractor.

And to be explicit: we do neither testing nor abatement.

Neither is within our capability and we will not pretend otherwise. What we do is stop before disturbance, tell you plainly what needs to happen, and point you toward whose licensed work it is. Testing itself is modest relative to the project and it happens once.

THE SCOPE DECISION

Why Doing One Room Rarely Saves What You Expect

Containment, masking and set-up are largely a fixed cost, so they are spread across whatever is in the project. One bedroom carries the whole set-up on its own; five rooms share it, and the per-room cost falls accordingly.

01 — Avoid visible doorway transitions.

Avoid visible doorway transitions.

Where texture runs throughout a house, removing it from one room leaves a visible transition at the doorway — a smooth ceiling meeting a textured one at a line you cannot unsee.

Avoid visible doorway transitions.

Where texture runs throughout a house, removing it from one room leaves a visible transition at the doorway — a smooth ceiling meeting a textured one at a line you cannot unsee.

TWIN CITIES COVERAGE

Popcorn Ceiling Removal Cost Guides Across The Metro

We provide itemized, written walkthrough estimates across Minneapolis, St. Paul, and surrounding suburbs.

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100% Twin Cities LocalExperienced & dedicated crews

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