Painting: pricing the preparation honestly

Painters lose money on preparation, not on paint. The paint costs what it costs, and a wall takes the same three coats however rough it began.

The hours move. One room needs a wash and a sand, and the one next door needs filling, stripping and two days nobody priced.

Grade the surface before you price it

Almost any surface sorts into three grades, and each grade carries a different hourly cost.

1. Sound. A wash, a light sand, and a fill on a few marks.
2. Tired. Flaking in places, old patches showing through, some gaps to caulk.
3. Failed. Stripping, major filling, rust, or a surface that needs sealing before anything else.

Walk the job with those three grades in your head and mark each surface. Your quote then prices a known quantity of work rather than an average.

Price the grades separately, in the quote

Your customer reads one number and assumes it covers everything. Splitting the preparation onto its own lines changes that conversation before it starts.

The quote shows painting and preparation as separate lines per area. A customer who sees two days of stripping priced on the hall understands why the hall costs more than the bedroom.

Photograph the bad surfaces at quote time

A photograph of the failed paintwork sits beside your price and does the explaining for you. It also settles the question six weeks later, when the memory of the wall has softened.

The pictures belong on the job. Your quote then carries its own evidence, and you never argue about the state of the surface.

Price the damage you cannot see yet

Some damage hides behind the old coating. Nobody can price what nobody can see, so the quote says what happens when the damage appears.

The rate for extra preparation goes into the quote, as a line your customer accepts up front. Then the extra work needs a phone call rather than a negotiation.

Track your real preparation hours

Hours against preparation need recording separately from painting. Most painters have never separated the two, and they carry one blended rate that suits neither.

After twenty jobs you learn what each grade really costs. Our guide to checking in at the job covers how to capture those hours without a timesheet.

Repaints tell you where your pricing drifts

A customer who calls you back in four years is telling you the job held. A callback in eight months tells you the preparation lost.

Each failure points back to the grade you gave that surface. Nearly always you called it sound and priced it that way.

Ceilings and trim carry the hours

Customers price a job by wall area, and painters lose money on everything else. A ceiling takes longer per square metre than any wall in the room.

Trim is worse. Skirtings, architraves, windows and doors need cutting in, and a room with six doors costs far more than a room with one.

A count of doors, windows and metres of trim belongs in the quote. Those three numbers predict your hours better than the floor area ever will.

Your quote then prices the room somebody actually paints, rather than the wall area they measured. That difference is most of the margin on a domestic repaint.

What to change first

• Every surface gets a grade, sound, tired or failed, before the quote
• Preparation carries its own lines, per area
• The failed surfaces go on the job as photographs
• The rate for hidden damage sits in the quote your customer accepts
• Preparation hours record separately from painting hours
• Every callback gets held against the grade that surface carried