How to start a painting business

In this article

Painting has the lowest barrier to entry of any trade in these guides. A brush, a ladder and a van and you are working. That is exactly why it is crowded, and why the people who last are the ones who treated it as a business from the first week rather than the first crisis.

What it costs to open

Line	Typical	Notes
Business licence	$50–$200	Down to your city. A state contractor licence, where required, adds $500–$2,000 for testing and application.
EPA lead certification	an 8‑hour course	Plus a separate firm certification. Not optional — see the next section.
General liability	$40–$208 a month	A $1M/$2M policy averages around $208 a month nationally; small solo operations with clean records pay far less.
Starter kit	$1,000–$2,500	Brushes, rollers, ladders, drop cloths, a sander, a shop vac, prep tools.
Airless sprayer	$300–$3,000	Wait. Do 10–15 jobs with a brush and roller first — you will learn what you actually need and you will not have bought the wrong one.
Getting found	$300–$1,000	Google listing, vehicle lettering, cards, a page people can quote from.
Working float	$1,000–$3,000	Paint for the first jobs, bought before anybody has paid you. The line everyone skips.

The certification almost nobody tells you about

This is the most important section in this article and it is missing from most guides on this subject.

Under the EPA’s Renovation, Repair and Painting rule, anyone paid to disturb paint in housing or a child‑occupied facility built before 1978 must be certified. Not encouraged — required, by federal law, since 2010. It applies to sole proprietors exactly as it applies to companies.

What	Detail	Why it matters
Who it covers	Pre‑1978 homes, apartments, schools and childcare facilities	That is a very large share of the housing you will be quoting on. If you do not know the build year, you do not know whether you are legal.
The trigger	More than 6 sq ft of interior paint, or 20 sq ft of exterior	That is one wall. Scraping, sanding and heat‑stripping all count.
What you need	An 8‑hour accredited course and a 25‑question exam, valid 5 years — and firm certification	Two separate things. The individual is certified and so is the business, even a one‑person business.
If you skip it	Federal and state fines	Agencies have issued millions in penalties since the rule took effect, and a competitor with a grudge only has to make one phone call.

Treat it as a selling point rather than a chore. “EPA lead‑safe certified” on a quote for a 1950s house is worth more to a parent than any discount you could offer, and half the people bidding against you will not have it.

Get legal before you get customers

• Pick a structure. Sole proprietor is free and instant; an LLC costs a filing fee and keeps your house out of it if something goes badly wrong.
• Get an EIN from the IRS — free, online, same day — and open a business bank account. Never buy paint on a personal card again.
• Check whether your state requires a contractor licence, and at what dollar threshold. Some kick in as low as a few hundred dollars of work.
• Buy general liability before the first job, not before the first big one. One knocked‑over tin on a hardwood floor is a decade of premiums.
• Get EPA lead certified — you and the firm — before you quote a pre‑1978 house.
• If you will have staff, get workers’ comp. It is required in most states from the first employee.
• Write down what you do not do. No lead abatement, no roofs, no asbestos, no scaffold above two storeys. Decide it now, not on the phone with a customer.

The kit, and what to wait on

Buy the things that cost you jobs when they are bad, and the cheap version of everything else until the work tells you otherwise.

• Good brushes and a proper roller frame. This is where the finish comes from and it is the cheapest quality you can buy.
• A sturdy extension ladder and a decent step. Not the £40 one.
• Real drop cloths, canvas not plastic. Customers notice, and plastic is a slip hazard on stairs.
• A power sander and a shop vac with a HEPA filter — the vac is also part of working lead‑safe.
• Masking: tape, film, paper. You will use more than you think and running out costs an afternoon.
• Filler, caulk and a caulk gun. Most of what customers call “a good paint job” is actually good filling.
• Not yet: the airless sprayer. It is faster on big open work and slower on everything else once you count masking. Buy it when a specific job pays for it.

Learn to estimate before you learn to spray

The single biggest difference between painters who make money and painters who are busy is not skill with a brush. It is being able to look at a room and know how long it takes.

Start tracking actual hours against your estimate on job one, before you have any habits to unlearn. Two years of that is worth more than any course. And read how to price a painting job before you quote anything — labour is 75–95% of the cost in this trade, so being half a day out matters far more than what you paid for the paint.

The painting quote calculator will do the arithmetic while you are learning the judgement.

Your first jobs

• Take the small interior work first. A single room is a complete job you can finish, get paid for and photograph. Exteriors are weather, height and scale — a bad first one can end you.
• Photograph everything, before and after, on every job. Your portfolio is the only thing you can show a stranger.
• Ask for the review while you are still standing there. Not that evening. They will not do it that evening.
• Say yes to a repaint for a decorator or a small builder. Sub work pays less and teaches faster, and one relationship can fill a diary.
• Turn down the job you cannot do properly. The one bad job in your first year is the one that gets talked about.

What kills painting businesses in year one

• Underestimating days. Not underpricing paint — underestimating days. It is the same mistake every time and it is fatal because labour is nearly all of the cost.
• Quoting without seeing the job. Ceiling height, wall condition, colour change and access are all invisible on the phone and each of them can double the time.
• No deposit. You buy the materials, they change their mind, you own four gallons of a colour nobody wants.
• Free colour consultations and free extra coats. Give one and it becomes the standard.
• Working uninsured or uncertified because it has been fine so far. It is fine until the one day it is not.

Sources

Every figure above comes from one of these, checked in August 2026.

• US EPA, Renovation, Repair and Painting Program — contractors and firm certification — who must be certified, the square‑footage triggers, and what the training involves. Read both; the firm and the individual are certified separately.
• NAHB, questions and answers about the lead paint rule — the practical version, written for builders rather than regulators.
• MoneyGeek, painting contractor insurance cost — general liability premiums and what moves them.
• US Bureau of Labor Statistics and PayScale — what a painter earns.
• Start‑up cost bands and the equipment sequencing are drawn from operator reporting across several independent sources; treat them as shapes rather than quotes.

The EPA rule is the one to re‑check rather than take from any article, including this one. It is federal, it is enforced, and the agency’s own pages are the only version that counts.