Painting Tips
How to Raise Your Painting Prices
Quick answer: Raise painting prices on new estimates first, in steps rather than one jump, starting with the job types you like most or that…
Painting Tips
How to Compete With Lowball Painting Bids
Quick answer: You do not beat a lowball painting bid by dropping your price. You beat it by making the two bids impossible to compare…
Painting Tips
How to Follow Up on a Painting Estimate
Quick answer: Send the estimate fast, ideally the same day you walk the job, with a clear next step written into it. Then follow up…
Painting Tips
How to Handle Change Orders on a Painting Job
Quick answer: A change order is a written, priced, approved addition or alteration to the scope you originally agreed. Raise it immediately, before doing the…
Painting Tips
How to Avoid Underbidding a Painting Job
Quick answer: Underbidding is almost never a math mistake. It is a scope you did not see or did not write down, plus costs you…
Painting Tips
How to Do a Painting Job Walkthrough
Quick answer: Walk the job in a fixed order (outside first or room by room, never randomly), measure the surfaces that drive labor, photograph every…
Painting Tips
How to Price a Painting Job by the Hour (and When Not To)
Quick answer: Price by the hour internally, sell by the job externally. Hourly is the right way to cost a painting job, because hours are…
Painting Tips
How to Estimate Paint and Material Costs for a Job
Quick answer: Estimate materials in two passes. First the coatings (paintable area divided by real spread rate, times coats, plus a waste allowance, with primer…
Painting Tips
How to Account for Prep Time in a Painting Estimate
Quick answer: Price prep by tiering the surface condition (light, medium, or heavy) and applying that tier as a multiplier to your base production rate,…
Painting Tips
How to Calculate Painting Labor Cost (The Formula Most Painters Get Wrong)
Quick answer: Painting labor cost is paintable area divided by your production rate to get man hours, then man hours multiplied by your loaded labor…