Nearly a third of painters work for themselves. BLS projections put 31.3 percent of construction and maintenance painters as self-employed, the highest share of any trade on this list except landscaping supervisors, and Census counts 75 percent of painting contractor establishments with fewer than five employees.12 That is the competition: low overhead, low prices, and wide variation in quality. The painting companies that last are the ones that estimate accurately, run crews well, handle lead-safe work properly and deliver a clean experience.
How a painting business makes money
Interior repaints. Walls, ceilings, trim and doors. Year-round work, often room by room, with predictable production once you know your rates.
Exterior repaints. Larger tickets, heavy on prep (washing, scraping, sanding, wood repair, caulking). Seasonal and weather-dependent.
Cabinets. Cabinet painting and refinishing is high-value, detailed work that can be done year-round, often partly in a shop.
Staining and specialty. Decks, fences, epoxy floors and specialty finishes.
Commercial and turnover work. Property managers, apartment complexes and offices need repeatable repaints. Margins can be thinner, but the work is steady.
The market in numbers
Census counted 38,280 painting and wall covering contractor establishments with employees in 2023, employing 208,201 people, an average of just 5.4 per establishment.2 Payroll averaged about $55,200 per employee. 88.8 percent of establishments had fewer than ten employees. BLS projects only 3.0 percent job growth for painters to 2035, slower than most trades here, with about 24,900 openings a year, almost all from people leaving.1
Wages vary a lot by state. In the states with the most painters, medians range from $45,460 in Texas to $61,260 in Illinois; Hawaii has the highest state median at $68,220 and Arkansas one of the lowest at $40,090.3
| State (May 2025) | Painters employed | Median annual wage |
|---|---|---|
| California | 38,430 | $59,020 |
| Florida | 22,450 | $47,530 |
| Texas | 18,330 | $45,460 |
| New York | 13,040 | $59,570 |
| Washington | 9,510 | $59,650 |
| Illinois | 6,820 | $61,260 |
| United States | 225,190 | $49,400 |
Source: BLS OEWS May 2025 state and national files, SOC 47-2141.3
An 11.4 percent rise from January to the August peak, and a drop of 9,700 jobs from November to December alone.
| Jan | 191,000 |
|---|---|
| Feb | 193,300 |
| Mar | 194,900 |
| Apr | 198,900 |
| May | 206,000 |
| Jun | 212,200 |
| Jul | 212,000 |
| Aug | 212,800 |
| Sep | 209,300 |
| Oct | 210,000 |
| Nov | 206,800 |
| Dec | 197,100 |
Source: BLS CES, series CEU2023832001
Lead-safe work on pre-1978 homes
EPA's Renovation, Repair and Painting (RRP) rule applies to anyone paid to do work that disturbs paint in housing and child-occupied facilities built before 1978, including sole proprietors.4 For a residential painting company in an older neighborhood, that can cover most exterior prep and many interior jobs. Here are the numbers that matter, pulled from EPA's pages and the regulation:
| RRP requirement | The rule |
|---|---|
| Who needs certification | The firm, plus a certified renovator on the job; other workers trained by a certified renovator |
| Firm certification term and fee | Five years; $300 for EPA firm certification or recertification |
| Minor repair exemption | Disturbing 6 square feet or less of paint per room inside, or 20 square feet or less outside. Window replacement and demolition of painted surfaces are always covered |
| Pre-renovation pamphlet | Give the owner EPA's pamphlet no more than 60 days before work begins, and get a written acknowledgment (or a certificate of mailing at least 7 days before) |
| Records | Keep the records that show compliance for 3 years after the job |
| Who runs the program | EPA, except in 15 states authorized to run their own RRP programs |
Sources: EPA RRP program and contractor pages,4 EPA firm certification page,5 and 40 CFR 745.84 and 745.86.6
Running the day
Painting is crew work, scheduled in days. Book jobs by estimated crew-days, and for exteriors build in weather buffer days. Confirm colors, sheens and areas in writing before the crew arrives; most painting disputes are about what was supposed to be painted.
Track hours against the estimate on every job. If a crew finishes a 40-hour estimate in 52 hours, you need to know whether the estimate was wrong or the job went badly. Over time, this data becomes your own production rate table.
Take photos before, during and after: existing damage, prep work, and the finished result. TradesWork keeps photos and notes with the job in a field app that works in English and Spanish, and sends customers one text link with arrival time, approvals, the invoice and a photo recap.
Pricing your work
Good painting estimates combine measurement, production rates and real costs.
- 1
Measure
Wall and ceiling area per room or elevation; count doors, windows, trim runs and cabinet doors. Counts beat square footage for trim and cabinets.
- 2
Apply production rates
For each surface and coat: hours = area ÷ your crew's square feet per hour, adjusted for access, height and condition.
- 3
Add prep
Washing, scraping, patching, caulking, masking, protecting floors and furniture, and lead-safe setup on pre-1978 homes.
- 4
Add materials
Gallons = area × coats ÷ coverage per gallon from the product data sheet, plus primer, caulk, tape and plastic.
- 5
Price it
Divide direct cost by (1 − target gross margin).
Painting job price
A worked example. The wage is the BLS national median; every other number is an example you should replace with your own:
| Line (example) | Amount |
|---|---|
| Painter wage at the national median, plus 20% burden, plus $12,000 vehicle and tools share | $71,280 a year |
| Billable hours (example: 1,400) | $50.91 per hour |
| 1,200 sq ft of walls, 2 coats, at 150 sq ft per hour per coat (example rate) | 16 hours |
| Prep and masking (example) | 6 hours |
| Labor: 22 hours × $50.91 | $1,120 |
| Paint: 2,400 sq ft ÷ 350 sq ft per gallon (example coverage) = 7 gallons at $55 (example) | $385 |
| Sundries (example) | $60 |
| Direct cost | $1,565 |
| Price at a 45% gross margin | $2,845 |
Notice that prep is more than a quarter of the labor in this example. That is typical of the trap: estimators price the rolling and forget the masking. Build your loaded hourly cost with the labor rate calculator, and use the markup and margin calculator for materials.
Free calculatorLabor rate & flat-rate price calculatorFind the hourly rate you need to charge to hit your profit goal, then price any job.Present options: walls only, walls plus trim and ceilings, or a premium line with an extra coat. Options make the bigger job easier to say yes to; our good-better-best post explains why. The painting estimate template and painting invoice template are laid out for exactly this.
Balancing the seasons
BLS notes that outdoor painting jobs may be seasonal,7 and the payroll data agrees: painting contractor employment fell by 9,700 between November and December 2025.8 Exterior painting depends on temperature, humidity, rain and the paint manufacturer's application limits.
Plan the year, not the week. Market interior and cabinet work in fall and winter, and start booking spring exteriors in late winter, with a firm start window. Keep a list of flexible interior jobs that can fill rain days during exterior season. Commercial and property-turnover work can be a valuable base load, even at thinner margins, because it keeps trained crews employed. Losing good painters in the slow season is expensive.
Keep a color record for every job: brand, color name, sheen and where it was used. Leave a labeled touch-up kit with the customer. When they call back in three years, you can quote in minutes and match exactly.
Marketing that works for painting
Photos and reviews. Painting is visual. Before-and-after photos on your Google Business Profile and website do much of the selling.
Yard signs and neighbors. An exterior repaint is seen by everyone on the street. Ask for a sign and for referrals.
Seasonal campaigns. Market exteriors in late winter for spring booking, and interiors and cabinets in fall.
Fast estimates. Homeowners often get several bids, many from solo painters. The company that visits promptly and sends a clear, option-based estimate the same day has an edge, and "lead-safe certified firm" on that estimate means something on an older house.
Where TradesWork fits today, and where it doesn't
TradesWork is a strong fit for the operating side of a painting company: estimates with options from your own price list, signed on the phone, with monthly payment shown for larger jobs; multi-day crew jobs planned as one job and re-planned around weather; before, during and after photos in a field app that works in English and Spanish and with no signal; one text link per job for confirmation, arrival time, approval, invoice and photo recap; and text-to-pay, Tap to Pay, review requests, referral rewards, QuickBooks Online sync and job profit.
Not built yet: area takeoff and production-rate estimating (most painters calculate quantities first, then enter priced line items), and deposits and progress billing on large jobs. Painting-specific estimators like PaintScout and DripJobs focus on the measuring and production-rate side.
Choosing painting software
Look for:
- Estimating that handles measurement, production rates and options, or fast priced line items.
- Crew scheduling in days, with weather changes.
- Photos and notes organized by job, including lead-safe documentation.
- Customer communication: confirmations, arrival times and approvals by text.
- Job costing: estimated versus actual hours and margin per job.
- Payments, including deposits for larger jobs.
Our buyer's guide can help you weigh the options, and the Jobber alternatives page compares tools many smaller painting companies start on.
Footnotes
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BLS Employment Projections 2025-35, Table 1.2, SOC 47-2141 (326.9 thousand in 2025, 336.7 thousand in 2035; 24.9 thousand annual openings; 31.3 percent self-employed). https://www.bls.gov/emp/tables/occupational-projections-and-characteristics.htm ↩ ↩2
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U.S. Census Bureau, County Business Patterns 2023, national file, NAICS 238320 (38,280 establishments; 208,201 employees; $11,485,346 thousand annual payroll; 28,745 establishments under 5 employees). https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/cbp/data/datasets.html ↩ ↩2
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U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025 national and state files, SOC 47-2141. https://www.bls.gov/oes/tables.htm ↩ ↩2
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EPA, Renovation, Repair and Painting Program, https://www.epa.gov/lead/renovation-repair-and-painting-program, and RRP for contractors. https://www.epa.gov/lead/renovation-repair-and-painting-program-contractors ↩ ↩2
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EPA, RRP Firm Certification. https://www.epa.gov/lead/renovation-repair-and-painting-program-firm-certification ↩
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40 CFR 745.84, https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-40/part-745/section-745.84, and 40 CFR 745.86. https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-40/part-745/section-745.86 ↩
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BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook, Painters, Construction and Maintenance. https://www.bls.gov/ooh/construction-and-extraction/painters-construction-and-maintenance.htm ↩
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BLS Current Employment Statistics, all employees, painting and wall covering contractors, not seasonally adjusted, series CEU2023832001, 2025. https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/CEU2023832001 ↩
