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…
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Painting Tips
Tips, guides, and advice for painting contractors on pricing, estimating, and growing your business.
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…