Key to Getting the Best Deal on a Painting Job

About once a week or so, I get a call from someone looking to get a phone quote on a painting job. They simply give me a number of rooms or the square footage and just ask for a price. These people are just looking for the best deal they can get. I can’t really blame them – a paint job can be a big ticket item.

It is true that in this age of the internet, shopping has become a lot easier. Just figure out what you want, let us say “Sony XYZ,” and simply google for prices from various vendors. Then buy it from whoever has the lowest price.

However shopping for services such as painting does not quite work the same way as shopping for flat screen TVs. One three-bedroom house does not equal another three-bedroom house. There are a lot of variables here. To name a few, there are: quantity and size of rooms; type of windows and doors; number and intensity of paint colors; amount of protection needed for plants and furniture; quality of paint used; and the extent of needed paint surface preparation.

Any one set of the above variables as compared to a different set of those variables can mean a difference of tens and, in some cases, hundreds of hours of work.

Best deal does not necessarily mean best price. I am not saying that price is unimportant. I think price is important but only to the extent that it represents the real value of the work done.

Getting the best deal means getting the best value for the price. Key to getting the best deal on a paint job would lie then not only in being able to compare the price but also (and just as importantly) in being able to evaluate and compare the value offered for it. (Also read How to Evaluate Painting Proposals.)

In comparing painting proposals, you must compare the proverbial “apples to apples.” If you only compare the price without any regard to what that price represents, there is a good chance that you will end up with a proverbial “lemon.”