If you ask yourself, “How much money do painting companies make?” it’s probably because you suspect two things.
First, there are many unreliable painting companies near you, and second, it seems like a recession-resistant industry.
In both cases, you are right!
In 1989, I asked this same question: “How much money do painting companies make?”
The answer to your question is not straightforward, as it depends on several factors. However, by the end of this blog, you will be convinced that this is a potentially lucrative business.
A painting business owner who manages and grows the business can expect a gross profit of around 50% and a net profit between 13% and 27%. That’s a huge disparity. That means if your painting company grosses $750,000, your income before taxes would be between $97,500 and $2020,500!
Of course, your net profit could be under 13%, but that would likely be due to poor management, leadership, or fiscal decisions.
Check out our free brochure, “How Much Do Painting Companies Make in 2024,” and see how much it costs and learn trending marketing practices.
# 1 Leadership—If you are wearing all the hats, burnout will occur. Ultimately, your business will be stuck because you will not have the energy or the time to grow. The answer is leadership—recruiting, training, and delegating your way forward one step at a time.
#2 Focus / Planning—If you don’t plan and control most of your day, the day will plan for you. Successful companies are run by people who don’t let themselves get dragged from one thing to another. Focus and planning greatly affect how much a painting company makes.
#3 Accurate Estimating System– having accurate production rates for both inter and exterior painting will allow you to protect your margins. Regardless of how much estimating experience one has, taking the best guess will not likely generate good profits over the long haul.
#4 Marketing Strategy – most small painting companies have a simple marketing strategy for a good reason. Becoming a digital marketing expert is a full-time job; it takes many months, if not years, to see the results of SEO. A marketing and advertising budget is necessary.
#5 Recruiting top painters – one of the hardest lessons to learn, which also has a major impact on how much painting companies make, is getting rid of below-average or problem painters. Painters who are less than good, decrease profits dramatically. From time to time you will hire them, but getting rid of the quickly will make sure your profits are on the high end.
Without experience, the road to high margins is unlikely unless you are out in the field providing at least half of the labor. If you have no experience and you don’t want to buy an existing business or franchise, working out in the field is a great way to learn the business without going bankrupt. After 12 months or so of painting, you will acquire some speed and have a good idea of how long things take to paint. Take notes on how long it takes to paint different substrates and start your own production rates.
A working owner and a painter or two should be able to do around $400,000 – $600,000 worth of work annually and generate an income of $100,000 or more.
One of the biggest difficulties for independent painting companies is going from a hands-on painting contractor to an actual business owner. There are several reasons, but the biggest reason may be time. It isn’t easy to paint during the day, give estimates, and write proposals in the evening and still has time for anything on the list below. And paying someone to do that well could easily cost $75k a year. Most painting contractors find it difficult to put down the brush and become business owners. Franchising solves that problem because it has that infrastructure in place.
Estimating software
Download our free guide to “How Much Do Painting Companies Make in 2023” and learn: Common Start Up Costs, Marketing That Works, How to Get Started Fast, Choosing Your Role In The Company, Competing In A Recession Resistant Industry.
Whether it is best to franchise or start a painting company independently is not the purpose of this blog. However, if I give you the short answer would go something like this.
The franchisee has the advantage for the first 3-5 years. Training, marketing, and production rates are so important to growing a business.
However, once you have closed 1,000 jobs or so, you will have a decent foundation for operating a successful company and you will rely less on the franchisor and more on repeat business!
For more information visit: 5 Advantages of Owning a Franchise.
A typical independent painting company with a working owner and a 3-4-person crew can expect to make around $80,000 – $120,000 per year.
In addition, with gross sales around $500,000, the margins would be 25% – 35%, depending on how involved the owner was in the actual painting.
A franchise model would likely have higher gross sales. Perhaps as high as $750,000 – $950,000 for a typical franchise in their 3rd-4th years. However, because they are not painting, they will have higher labor costs. Also, franchisees pay royalties, which reduces the margins. Typically, one would expect the margins to be between 15-25% for a franchise under a million or less as the company grows.
The amount of money you can make in this business is well into the six figures. That’s good news! Even better, you are in control of your growth. How well you lead, plan and execute will ultimately answer how much money painting companies make.
We understand that buying a painting franchise takes a huge leap of faith on your part. So, we have sweetened the pot like no other painting, or handyman franchise has ever done. We have a guarantee. Our guarantee is simple. If you follow our system and do not gross $500,000 in your first 20 months, we will reimburse your franchise fee in full. For more details, please see our Guarantee.
Territory size – we have the largest territories of any painting or handyman franchise. Our territories are 2-4 times bigger than our competitors.
In addition, other major benefits include:
How much a painting company makes depends on how fast you can get out of the gate.
Having a turnkey operation allows you to start growing your business immediately.
A proper franchise allows you to skip the following costly steps:
Klappenberger & Son uses an estimating system that delivers fast and accurate prices.
Enter the measurements, and the costs automatically appear.
No prior estimating experience is necessary.
No prior sales experience is necessary.
Using painting software is 1,000 times better taking a wild ass guess, but it is no substitute for experience. If you are new to the painting industry, please use estimating software.
If you invest in a painting franchise, I highly recommend that you rely on the franchisor for guidance.
A fifteen-minute phone conversation and a few pictures can
mean the difference between profit and loss.
If you are acting as a sole proprietor, ask your favorite sales rep. for assistance on complicated estimating projects
Sales reps enjoy helping contractors and may give you some
assistance on the labor and help choose the right product.
When owning a painting business, there are multiple sectors to consider, and each has different levels of profitability.
Figure 2 How much a painting company makes is strongly tied to what what type of painting work does it perform.
Now you can see that asking, “How much does a painting company make?” is like asking the question, “How fast can a car go?”
We need to know:
2. What are you driving? Do you want to be a sole proprietor or franchisee?
3. And what type of road do you want to take? What painting sector are you targeting? Residential? New construction, etc.?
Starting a painting business is not a good idea; if you chose to paint apartments. Labor costs will eat you alive. Most of the time, painting apartments are for Chuck & a Truck.
However, owning a painting company is much more profitable in other categories. See figure 2
Download our free guide to “How Much Do Painting Companies Make in 2023” and learn: Common Start Up Costs, Marketing That Works, How to Get Started Fast, Choosing Your Role In The Company, Competing In A Recession Resistant Industry.
If you agree with the first part of each question, your margins will be good to excellent.
If you agree to the second part of each question, I believe you will face more challenges and lower margins.
It doesn’t mean you won’t or can’t succeed; it just tells me this is where you are, and you will likely have some additional hurdles.
Look at the figure below to see what would happen if a painting company lowered a $15,000 job by just 10%!
Reducing the cost of a $15k job by 10% lowers the price to $13.5k
As you can see labor, materials, and overhead remain the same.
The only thing that changed was the profit which decreased by $1,500.
Owning a painting company has treated my franchisees and me very well.
Robots cannot prep or paint anytime in the foreseeable future. Good.
Amazon cannot overtake the painting industry.
So far, so good.
And just about every structure in the world has some protective coating on it, so the supply of possible jobs is everywhere. Excellent!
Each year the painting industry grows by about 4%.
Download our free guide to “How Much Do Painting Companies Make in 2023” and learn: Common Start Up Costs, Marketing That Works, How to Get Started Fast, Choosing Your Role In The Company, Competing In A Recession Resistant Industry.
This is a great question. I know what you are thinking. What about all the cheap labor out there?
Is starting a Painting company a good idea if I have to compete with Chuck & a Truck?
There is an infinite amount of work available, and if some contractors want to work for less –be my guest.
Every home commercial structure built in the US needs painting at some point. Our franchisees have been able to grow regardless of the economy and charge a fair price.
Call five painting contractors and see how many answers. It is typically between 1-3 who answer. Fridays thru Monday is even worse.
Consider this:
Be grateful for the cheap painting contractors, for they are accepting the jobs from the customers who just want the cheapest price. Those will not be the customers you want to target. A better customer has gone with the lowest price and has regretted that choice.
In my experience, 65- 70% of customers are willing to pay a fair price for painting and handyman services.
Consider this: Paint is applied to every home and building in the United States, and the number of places to paint is staggering. If most customers are willing to pay a fair price, I believe that it makes starting a painting company a good idea.
There are plenty of roads to get to your destination; competing with the lowest price is not a route I recommend.
How much money a painting company makes is determined by how quickly the owner learns. When buying a franchise, you hopefully will have fewer mistakes because someone else has gone to the school of hard knocks for you. If you follow their system, you can expect margins of around 20%.
If you just start your own with no experience it will probably fail unless you are working in the field trying to reduce labor costs.
There are a few questions I recommend you ask yourself before exploring a painting franchise.
Will you follow the franchise model, a proven process? I understand everyone prefers to do things their way. But I have found that if you do not like to follow a strategy, you won’t. And the results not good for anyone.
If you do not think you will follow a process, I don’t recommend buying a franchise.
Do you want complete autonomy? Meaning you want to create your website, logo, all the software and systems, marketing material. If you wish to have full independence, I don’t recommend buying a franchise.
A proper franchise provides continued training, digital marketing services to assist in growing your business. However, it comes with royalties and additional fees. Will you be agreeable to paying royalties and a brand development fee? If you agree with the questions above, we would like to discuss this opportunity with you.
Download our free guide to “How Much Do Painting Companies Make in 2023” and learn: Common Start Up Costs, Marketing That Works, How to Get Started Fast, Choosing Your Role In The Company, Competing In A Recession Resistant Industry.
Example of a $3,000 painting project through a painting franchise
Owning a painting business is no different than other home service businesses. You need:
Franchises include most of these necessities in their system.
I believe that our training program is second to none. For information on our franchise training, visit our website.
Our franchise, Klappenberger & Son, has a training program that is six weeks long. Most franchisor’s training last 1-2 weeks. Our six-week training program allows us to dive much deeper into learning how to:
In addition to learning the fundamentals of growing a successful franchise we also,
The painting and handyman industry has plenty of opportunities. It is quite possible to build a multi-million dollar company, but it takes determination and know-how. If you are new to the industry and want to start a painting business, I suggest two ways.
Start your painting business and work with a veteran painter—work side by side for a minimum of three years as if it was a mentorship.
This way, you minimize mistakes and drastically reduce labor costs. You can immediately start making decent money, but it is an impossible way to grow a business. But you will learn and earn but find it incredibly challenging to grow the business.
Investing in a franchise requires capital, but it is so much faster than a sole proprietor. Klappenberger & Son has everything in place for you. To grow a company properly, you need to have systems in place. Our franchise does, and you can be the beneficiary of our process.
We can assist you through the process of your financial options. The Small Business Administration has approved our franchise agreement. Klappenberger & Son has relationships with Sterns Bank that also can authorize the process.
How much a painting company makes is determined by who the driver is and what road (sector) they chose to go down.
Owning a painting company, I believe, is a wise decision. The industry is recession-resistant, and the competition is less than many other sectors. The painting company’s profitability is excellent as long as you follow smart business practices and have sound systems in place. Klappenberger & Son offers a complete franchise system that can help build and grow your business. Their training, estimating software, and continued support all help you get out of the starting gate quickly and grow a business that generates income and prosperity.
Additional topics include:
Download our free guide to “How Much Do Painting Companies Make in 2023” and learn: Common Start Up Costs, Marketing That Works, How to Get Started Fast, Choosing Your Role In The Company, Competing In A Recession Resistant Industry.
In conclusion, five key areas will determine how much can a painting company can make.
As a rule, the larger the company, the smaller the margins due to additional expenses. However, a key to success is understanding your production costs, which allows for accurate job estimation and better financial planning.
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Email: dklappenberger@klappenbergerandson.com
Address: 902 Bluff View Dr. Myrtle Beach, SC 29579