TradesPaintersPricing and profit
Painter Business PricingA rate per square metre you copied off a cost guide is not a price. It is a guess.
Pricing for painting business owners who quote per square metre, per job or per house and are not certain any of it clears. This is how to build a painting price from your real costs up, then hold it when the client says someone else is cheaper.
The week this is about
Sound Like Your Painting Business?
Your square metre rate came from somewhere else
Published cost guides put interior work around $15 to $45 per square metre and exteriors higher, so you picked a number in the middle and stuck with it. It has never been checked against your award labour cost, your paint bill or your overheads.
Paint goes up between the quote and the job
You quoted the estate in March and start in July. Trade prices have moved, the tint has gone up, and the fixed rate you signed has not. On a job with any volume, a small rise on every tin quietly takes the whole margin.
The prep was never in the price
You quote coats because coats are easy to count. Then it is sugar soaping, filling, sanding back, spot priming and two days of it before a topcoat goes near the wall. Prep is where painting jobs go under, and it is the line nobody prices honestly.
Underprice by a little on every job and you will work a full year at capacity, exhausted, and finish it with nothing in the bank.
Pricing and profit
Here Is What We Do About It.
The Profitable Pricing Masterclass shows you how to build a painting charge-out rate from the ground up: award labour under MA000020, paint and consumables, overhead recovery, then margin. The Profit & Freedom Masterclass takes it further into what the business must earn to buy you time off, and coaching keeps your prices there.
Free tool, no sign-up
Charge-out rate calculator
Put in what labour costs you, how many hours you can actually invoice and what the business spends, and it builds the rate that covers all of it and leaves a margin. It runs in your browser and nothing you type is sent anywhere.
Work out your rateHow it works
Three Steps, Starting Tonight.
Work out what an hour really costs you
Not the wage. The wage plus the ute, the insurance, the phone, the unbilled hours and the time you spend quoting. Most owners have never put that number on paper.
Price off the number, not off the last bloke
The Profitable Pricing Masterclass takes you through building a rate that carries your overheads and a margin, so you stop pricing against whoever is cheapest this month.
Hold the price and watch what happens
The Profit and Freedom Masterclass covers the part nobody warns you about: what to do when someone pushes back, and why losing the wrong job is a win.
What changes
What Painting Business Pricing Actually Changes.
Three things painting business owners walk away able to do.
Build a square metre rate from your own labour, paint and overhead costs.
Price prep as its own line so a blowout does not eat the job.
Hold your price on a quote instead of dropping it to match a lowballer.
Questions
Painter Business Pricing, Answered.
Should I quote per square metre or by the job?
Why is my quote losing money at the rate everyone else charges?
The client says another painter is thousands cheaper. What do I say?
Painters
The Other Ways We Help Painters.
Painter Business Training
Structured training that turns what painters know on the tools into a business that runs properly.
CoachingPainter Business Coaching
A coach who has run a trade business, in your corner, holding painters to the plan.
SystemsPainter Business Systems
The documented process that lets the work happen properly when painters are not standing there.
The free appPainter Business App
Lessons, tools and a room full of other owners, free for painters with an active ABN.
Marketing and leadsPainter Business Marketing
How painters get the phone ringing with the jobs worth having, not just the cheap ones.
Hiring and teamPainter Business Hiring
How painters build a crew that does it right without being watched.
Start Tonight, For Nothing.
The Crew, daily Q&A, starter courses and your complimentary coaching session. Free with an active ABN. No card, no trial clock.
Turning over $20k a month or more? Thirty minutes, one on one with a trade business coach, on what is capping the business and what to fix first.