Questions to Ask a Painting Contractor Before You Hire

One promise about how this page is written now. Where the law says something, we quote the law. Where nobody has published an answer, we say so instead of reaching for a number that sounds authoritative. And where our advice would have you reject a painter who is operating entirely within the rules, we have taken it out and explained why it was there. A vetting checklist that flags lawful people is not being careful. It is just noisy, and it costs you the good contractors first, because they are the ones with somewhere else to be.

Do painters need a license? It depends on your state

This is the fix that will change what you do first. We used to send you straight to your state board and tell you a missing record was your answer. Across much of the country there is no record to miss, because painting is not a licensed trade there in the first place.

Minnesota treats interior and exterior painting, and wallpapering with it, as a single special skill, and a contractor who provides only that one skill is exempt from licensing at any dollar value. Texas licenses air conditioning, electrical, plumbing and a handful of other trades through its department of licensing, and painting is not among them. Ohio licenses exactly five trades, being heating and cooling, refrigeration, electrical, plumbing, and hydronics, and painting is not one of them either. Florida does not carry painting as a state contractor category at all, leaving it to counties. So a painter in those places has no state record for you to find, and finding nothing means nothing.

Other states do license it. California puts painting under the C-33 Painting and Decorating classification, and the scope is broader than we used to describe: the board says a painting and decorating contractor prepares surfaces by scraping or sandblasting and applies paints, papers, textures, fabrics, stains, fillers and waxes, for the purposes of decorating, protecting, fireproofing and waterproofing. Wallpaper is in. Sandblasting is in. Nevada licenses painting and decorating as a C-4, though it exempts repair or maintenance work under $1,000 including labor and materials, unless a permit is required or the job is part of something larger.

So the first question is not can I see your license. It is does my state license this work, and if it does, what is your number. Then take the number to the board yourself rather than trusting a photograph of a card. And if painting is unlicensed where you live, settle that in your own mind before an empty search result starts looking like a confession.

One more thing we had backwards, and this one ran in the direction of letting the wrong person in. We used to say a painter working under a general contractor license was fine. In California it often is not. State law bars a general building contractor from holding a prime contract on a project outside framing and carpentry unless that project calls for two or more unrelated trades, or unless he also carries the correct classification himself, or hands the work to a subcontractor who does. A repaint is one trade. So a bare general building license does not by itself authorize a paint only contract in California, and we were waving it through. What is genuinely fine is a specialty contractor painting as work incidental and supplemental to their own trade, which the code expressly allows.

What insurance should a painting contractor carry?

General liability is the coverage that matters most and the one to lead with. It is what pays when a ladder goes through your window or overspray lands on the neighbor car. Ask for a certificate sent to you directly by the agent or the insurer rather than forwarded by the contractor, check the company name on it matches the name on the contract, and check the policy dates cover your work.

We used to print a specific figure here, telling you a certificate usually shows a million dollars per occurrence and two million in total. We have taken that out. No authority publishes it and we were passing off a plausible sounding number as a benchmark you could measure a contractor against.

The bigger fix is workers compensation. Our old page told you to demand comp for everyone on the job, subcontractors included, and to treat a blank comp line as a warning. That advice rejects lawful contractors across a lot of the country. In Texas the statute is explicit that an employer may elect to obtain coverage, so a private employer is not required to carry it at all. In New York, Ohio and Georgia a sole proprietor with no employees is outside the requirement and can only opt in voluntarily. Alabama exempts employers with fewer than five. And in California, painting sits outside the classifications that lost the no-employee exemption, so a solo C-33 painter can lawfully file an exemption with the board and carry none. The rule that will eventually sweep all licensees in was pushed out to January 2028.

Florida is the real exception and worth knowing. It counts painting as construction work, and in construction a sole proprietor is treated as an employee, so a one man painting operation there does need coverage unless he has incorporated and filed a formal exemption.

Which means the useful question was never do you carry comp. It is whether anybody besides him will set foot on your job. If yes, you want the comp certificate for the crew. If he genuinely works alone, the right document is a valid exemption certificate where his state issues one, and its absence in Texas or Ohio is not a defect. Asking a one man contractor to insure himself against himself, in a state that does not require it, is a question with no good answer, and the good contractors notice.

And the reason we gave you for demanding it was itself a bit off. We said an injured painter with no coverage can send the bill to your homeowner policy. That can happen, but the thing that actually creates your exposure is your own negligence, a rotted rail or a concealed hazard, and in California it is hiring someone unlicensed, since state labor law presumes a worker doing licensed work without a license is your employee. Which brings you back to the license, not to the comp certificate.

What are the lead paint rules for a house built before 1978?

A federal rule governs this, administered by the EPA and known as the Renovation, Repair and Painting rule. In its own current words, the rule requires that anyone paid to perform work that disturbs painted surfaces in homes, childcare facilities and preschools built before 1978 be certified and their employees be trained in the use of lead-safe work practices. We previously quoted an older version of that sentence and, in retyping it, widened preschools into schools, which is not what the agency wrote and not what the rule reaches. That was our error and it is fixed.

The bigger error was treating pre-1978 as a switch that makes every job a lead job. It is not, and the exemptions are the part a homeowner most needs, because without them you will accuse an honest painter of breaking a federal law he is not subject to. Work that disturbs 6 square feet or less of painted surface per room inside, or 20 square feet or less outside, is minor repair and maintenance and falls outside the rule, provided no window is being replaced, nothing is being demolished, and no prohibited practice is used. And if the components have been tested and found free of lead paint, by a certified inspector or by a certified renovator using a recognized test kit, the job leaves the rule entirely.

That second exemption is worth pausing on, because it also fixes the money. Testing is optional. The painter may simply presume lead is present and work safely, and many do. But a test that comes back clean removes the job from the rule, so a test is not one more line stacked on your bill. It is a spend that can delete the lead work altogether. We used to describe testing as though it were mandatory and expensive, which is close to the opposite.

Not every old house is the same risk either. The EPA publishes the gradient: roughly 87 percent of homes built before 1940 carry some lead paint, against roughly 24 percent of those built between 1960 and 1978. If your house is late in that window, a test is a cheap way to find out you are in the three quarters that are fine.

What to actually ask, on a job big enough to be inside the rule:

• Is your firm certified, and who is the certified renovator assigned to my job? These are two different things. The company holds a firm certification, and a named individual holds the renovator certification. A compliant job has both, and that renovator is required to have his course certificates with him at the site. A firm that cannot name the person is telling you something.
• Where do I verify you? Careful here, because we sent readers to the wrong place. Fifteen states run their own EPA-authorized programs, including Massachusetts, Washington, North Carolina, Georgia, Oregon, Wisconsin, Utah and others, and firms there are certified by the state and will not appear in the federal database at all. Check your state program first if you are in one of them, or you will look up a fully compliant painter, find nothing, and walk away.
• When do I get the Renovate Right pamphlet, and what am I signing? The firm must give it to you no more than 60 days before work starts, and it must obtain your written acknowledgment that you received it, which it has to keep for three years. So you will be asked to sign for it. That signature is their federal compliance record, which makes it a much sharper question than asking whether they have heard of the booklet.
• Are you offering me a waiver? There is no longer such a thing. An owner-occupant opt-out existed once and was removed in 2010. A painter who offers to have you sign your way out of the rule is working from a playbook that is more than fifteen years out of date.

Where the rule does apply, the federal register of certified firms is the place to check the ones outside those fifteen states, and your state program is the place to check the rest.

Pin down the scope and the prep

The vaguest two words in painting are prep as needed. They commit to nothing, and prep is where most of the labor lives, which makes it where a cheap number hides. Get specifics:

• Which surfaces are in, and which are out? Walls, ceilings, trim, doors, closets, built-ins. Get the excluded ones named, so a room does not turn into a change order.
• What is the prep, step by step? Washing, scraping loose paint, sanding, patching, caulking, priming bare and patched spots. Written down, not shrugged at.
• Who fixes bad wood, cracked drywall, or failing stucco, and is it in the price? Paint that fails over a rotted or moving surface is outside most warranties, so this needs an owner.
• How do you protect floors, furniture, and landscaping, and what does cleanup look like at the end of each day?
• Do we walk the job together to confirm colors and sheen before the first coat?

How many coats of paint should a painter apply?

We use Sherwin-Williams is not a spec. Each of the big makers runs a whole staircase of products at wildly different prices, so a brand name on its own tells you nothing. What you want in writing is the brand, the exact product line, the sheen, and the coat count, called out by surface. The rungs are real and the price roughly triples from a maker professional grade up to its flagship, so the line name is the whole story.

• Which product line and sheen on each surface, and how many gallons did you figure?
• How many full coats on walls, on trim, on doors, and where does primer go? Ask him what he believes is underneath the existing paint. Manufacturers do permit one coat where the existing paint is sound and the color is barely moving, so a single coat is not by itself evidence of a corner cut. Bare board, heavy patching, stains, or a real change of color are a different matter and call for primer and two.
• If I supply a different paint than you recommend, does that change your warranty? Many painters will not stand behind labor over paint they did not choose.

How much deposit should a painter ask for?

A large payment demanded up front is the oldest warning sign in the trade, and we still think you should ask about it. But our old page told you most states set no cap and California was the strict exception, and that is not true. More states limit a home improvement down payment than we admitted, among them Maryland, Maine, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Ohio, Nevada and Vermont, each with its own formula and its own threshold. Check your own before you assume you are unprotected.

California holds it to a tenth of the contract, or to $1,000, whichever of the two lands lower. We also cited that rule to the wrong section and misspelled the statute back at you. The cap lives in Business and Professions Code section 7159.5, but the sentence a California contract must actually carry in bold sits in section 7159, and the statute writes it as one word, DOWNPAYMENT. We had you scanning your contract for a string that is not in it.

Can you cancel a contract after signing it? Usually, yes

This is the biggest thing missing from our old page. Sign a painting contract inside your own home and federal law hands you three business days to tear it up, for any reason at all, and painting is close to the perfect case for the rule.

The Federal Trade Commission rule covers a sale where the seller personally solicits it and you agree somewhere other than his place of business, and the rule says in its own text that this includes sales made in response to or following an invitation by the buyer. That last clause is the one people get wrong. Calling the painter yourself does not cost you the right. The threshold is $25 at your residence, so every real paint job clears it. There is no showroom for a painter, so the exclusion that strips this right from showroom trades does not reach him, and an in-home estimate is exactly the contact that defeats the mail and telephone exclusion too.

The seller has real duties under it. He must give you a completed contract carrying the cancellation statement, hand you two copies of a detachable Notice of Cancellation form filled in with his name, address, the date, and the deadline, tell you orally that you can cancel, refund you within ten business days, and not sell your contract on to a finance company before the fifth business day. Those are not courtesies. Failing them is an unfair and deceptive practice. A painter who hands you a contract with no cancellation form attached is a painter who does not know the rule he is subject to, and that is a genuinely useful thing to learn before he is on a ladder in your hallway.

California stacks its own protection on top, and it is the stronger one. Signing does not start your clock. Receiving a signed and dated copy of a contract that meets the statute does, which means a painter who never hands one over never gets the clock running at all. A homeowner aged 65 or over gets five business days rather than the usual three. Where the job is repair or restoration after a declared disaster, the window opens to seven. California also does not carry the federal showroom exclusion, so an earlier visit to a shop does not cost you the right the way it would federally. Worth noting for completeness: even a bonded contractor, who escapes the deposit cap, must still give you the cancellation notice.

What warranty should a painter give you?

You get two separate promises and they cover different failures. The workmanship warranty is the painter own promise about his labor, commonly one to two years, covering paint that peels or blisters because of how it went on. It will not usually cover trouble that starts in the surface underneath, the house moving, or ordinary wear. Read the exclusions, and ask one thing people forget: on a callback, does it cover the paint as well, or only the labor to reapply it.

The manufacturer warranty is the one we described wrongly, in three ways, and every one of them flattered it. We told you it covers how well the paint resists fading and fights chalking. It does not. Sherwin-Williams warrants against the coating peeling or blistering. Benjamin Moore warrants that the paint will not blister, will not lift away where the surface was correctly prepared and primed, and will not wear through to whatever lies beneath. Fade and chalk are not in there.

We told you these warranties seldom cover the labor to redo the work. Seldom is wrong. They never do, and both companies say it in capitals. Sherwin-Williams excludes labor or costs associated with labor outright and limits its entire liability to replacement coatings or a refund of the original purchase price. Benjamin Moore says the warranty does not include the cost of labor for application of paint. So the most you are getting back is paint.

And we told you lifetime limited means the expected service life of the coating. It does not, and this one can cost you real money. Sherwin-Williams pins the word lifetime to however long the house stays yours, and says plainly that the cover cannot be handed on or assigned. Benjamin Moore ties it to as long as you reside in your home, non-transferable, and spells out that if the property is sold, leased or rented, the warranty is no longer valid. If you bought a house and were told it came with a lifetime paint warranty, you have nothing. There is also a trap in the fine print worth asking about: the Sherwin-Williams lifetime terms are written around a purchaser who buys the coating and applies it himself, which is not what happens on a job where your painter supplies the paint.

One thing we had right and are keeping. You will hear that paint warranties are pure marketing and never pay. That is folklore. Benjamin Moore interior lines carry a satisfaction warranty under which a satisfactory result is defined by the consumer, which is a low bar to clear. They do pay. They pay in paint. Knowing the remedy is capped at replacement product, and dies when you sell the house, is more useful than either believing the marketing or dismissing it.

Where a cheap quote goes quietly thin

Past the scope and the coats, savings hide in a handful of places that rarely make it onto the page and absolutely change how the job holds up:

• No primer over bare or patched drywall. The gypsum industry guidance is about absorption: primer evens out how thirsty the wall is across face paper and joint compound, and skipping it gives you flashing and joint photographing, where the taped seams shadow through the finish. It is uneven sheen you are risking, not automatic peeling. There is a sting anyway, because Benjamin Moore warrants against peeling only where the surface was properly prepared and primed, so leaving the primer off surrenders the cover.
• Thinning past the label. The labels do allow some: Benjamin Moore permits up to 8 fluid ounces a gallon on several lines and Zinsser up to 10 ounces on its primer, while Sherwin Williams says no reduction is needed on most interior lines. Past the label you lose film thickness, hide, and durability, and you have moved outside what the maker specified.
• Ceilings and closets left at one coat inside a bid that still says the whole house. Ceilings show lap marks and thin spots badly under raking light.
• Trim done fast. Sanding, priming, and laying two coats of a real trim enamel on doors and baseboards is slow, careful work and the easiest thing on the job to skip.
• Barely masking. Under protecting floors, fixtures, and landscaping saves real setup time and shows up as spatter you are scraping off for weeks.

How to put two painting quotes side by side

Do not start with the totals, and do not start with a feeling. Start with the three things you can actually check, because each one turns a vague suspicion into a specific question a painter has to answer.

First, match the surfaces. Get each bid to list what it includes and what it excludes, then compare those two lists rather than the two prices. A quote that quietly leaves out ceilings and trim looks cheaper and is not.

Second, match the paint and the coats. Brand, exact line, sheen, and how many coats on each surface, with primer called out where it goes. Two bids can name the same brand and be selling you products at either end of that ladder.

Third, match the hours. Ask what prep is included, step by step, then ask how many bodies on site and for how long. Since the bill is almost entirely labor, a quote that comes in thousands lower has bought fewer days, and a painter who cannot say which days those are has not really priced the job.

Run those three and the totals stop being mysterious. The cheap bid is either doing less work, which you may be perfectly happy with once you can see exactly which work, or it cannot account for itself. Either way you have stopped guessing at who is honest and started reading what each one actually sold you.

Red flags when hiring a painter

We have struck the items that flagged lawful behavior. What survives is the set that genuinely means something. Take any one alone and there may be a fair explanation. Two or three stacked up is your answer:

• Dodges the license number in a state that clearly licenses painting. Note the condition, because in Minnesota, Texas, Ohio and others there is no license to dodge.
• Will not produce an insurance certificate, or produces one you are not allowed to verify with the insurer.
• Puts a number on your whole house over the phone, having never walked it. Prep cannot be priced sight unseen.
• Answers the prep question with prep as needed and will not get specific no matter how you ask.
• Wants a large deposit, in cash, and cannot show you a bond or joint control agreement that would entitle him to ask for it.
• Hands you a contract with no notice of your right to cancel attached to it.
• On a pre-1978 house big enough to be inside the lead rule, cannot tell you whether the firm is certified or who the assigned renovator is. Or offers you a waiver, which has not existed since 2010.
• Will not put the scope or the warranty in writing, and offers a spoken promise to make it right instead.
• Gets short with you for asking any of this. How a contractor handles being checked is a preview of how he handles a problem.

You are not being difficult. A painter running a real operation has these answers ready and finds the questions ordinary. Get them on paper, and the hire mostly picks itself.