What a proper painting quote should include

A quote is a scope of work wearing a dollar sign. On the Peninsula, the dollar sign gets all the attention and the scope does the damage. This checklist is for owners reading a PDF on the kitchen table. It sits next to the 2026 cost ranges in the costs hub.

The brief you should have sent

If you asked for “a price to paint the house”, you invited chaos. Send storeys, cladding, photos, occupied or empty, interior/exterior/both, and any known rot, mould or lead. Ask for a named system. Then the quotes can be compared.

What the document must name

Surfaces. “All interior walls, ceilings and timber trim except wet-area tiles. Exterior weatherboards, fascia, barge, eaves, timber windows. Gutters excluded. Brick unpainted.” That kind of sentence.

Prep. Wash method, scrape extent, fill, caulk, mould treatment. “Prep as required” means “not priced”.

Products. Primer name, topcoat name, sheen. Dulux Weathershield Low Sheen is a product. “Dulux” is a company.

Coats. Two topcoats unless a specific extra hide coat is listed. “Until covered” is not a number.

Colours. How many, and whether changes after tinting are extra.

Access. Scaffold, EWP, towers, who hires them, who is in the garden. See scaffolding.

Exclusions. Carpentry, glazing, replacing rotten boards, Colorbond roofs, high-pressure damage to plants, moving furniture, after-hours work.

Conditions. Weather windows, occupied-house rules, dogs, parking.

Money. GST, deposit, progress, retention if any, what happens if rot appears. A modest deposit is normal; a full prepayment to a mobile number is not.

Insurance. Public liability, and workers compensation if they have employees. Ask for certificates. Victoria does not license painters like electricians; insurance and reputation do more of the filtering.

Red flags

• Price far below the ranges in our cost guide with no explanation.
• No site visit on a two-storey or weatherboard job.
• “We don’t need scaffold.”
• Paint brand missing.
• Pressure to decide today because the crew has a gap.
• Cash discount that equals “no invoice”.
• Refusal to write exclusions.

A slightly higher quote that talks about laps and salt is usually the cheaper job in year five.

Comparing three quotes without losing your mind

Make a table: coats, products, access, exclusions, start date, insurance. Ignore the cover photo of a sprayer at sunset. If quote B is $4,000 cheaper because gutters, eaves and primer vanished, it is not cheaper.

Ask each painter what they would do with the worst wall. The answer should sound like prep order, not like “two coats of the good stuff”.

Variations after the start

Rot, asbestos-looking eaves linings, lead, hidden mould: these should trigger a written variation, not a shrug. You want that mechanism in the quote. Painters who hate variations enough to price a contingency honestly are easier to live with than painters who smile and then resent the house.

Guest work and sponsored mentions

If a painting company ever buys a mention on this journal, the link will carry rel="sponsored". A quote for your house is a private contract, not a sponsored post. Do not treat a directory listing as a specification.

A good quote is slightly boring. Boring is how weatherboards get their bottom edges painted.

Payment schedules that are not a trap

A modest deposit to book a crew is ordinary. Progress payments tied to stages — wash done, interiors complete, exterior complete — are ordinary. A request for the full amount in cash to a personal account before a brush is wet is not a quote, it is a story. Keep a paper trail. GST invoices matter when something fails in year two and you want the product warranty to still recognise the job.

If a painter is a sole trader, that is fine. Ask how they cover illness and weather overruns. A one-person band who is also the only person who can climb the scaffold will slip. That is not a moral issue. It is a calendar issue you should hear up front.

Photographs and “before” records

Ask for a few dated photos of prep, not only the sunset hero shot at handover. You want the washed wall, the primed bare timber, the scaffold in place. When a dispute appears — and most do not — those pictures are the job. Owners should photograph too. A shared album is less awkward than a memory of what the eave used to look like.

Colour sign-off

The quote should say who signs the colour. Sample pots are cheap. A whole elevation in the wrong grey is not. Write the codes on the quote after you have lived with samples. Changing a deep base after 40 litres are tinted is a variation, fairly. See testing colours.

Handover

What does “finished” mean? Touch-ups within a week, a walk-around together, product names left on a card, and the scaffold gone. If the painter disappears while there is still tape on the windows, the quote did not describe the end of the job. The end is part of the scope.

A quote you can reread in twelve months without shrinking is a good quote. If you already cannot remember what was included, it was never written down.

After-hours, weekends and the occupied-house premium

If you need work only on Saturdays, say so. It costs more and takes longer. If the dog cannot be boarded, say so. If a baby sleeps at 1pm, say so. Painters can work around a house. They cannot work around a surprise. Put the constraints in the brief so the number you sign is the number that belongs to your life, not to an empty listing. A quote that knows the dog’s name is usually a quote that also named the primer. Put both on the page — the household constraint and the product — and you have something you can hold a painter to without a fight.