Painting Contractor Websites: Estimates and Portfolio

A painting contractor's website needs separate pages for interior and exterior work, an estimate request that asks for the room count, the surfaces and photos, and a portfolio of rooms and houses you actually painted. If you work on homes built before 1978, it should also show your lead-safe certification, because federal rules tie advertising that work to it.

Interior and exterior are different jobs

The customer, the questions and the season are different, so give each one its own page.

Interior

Walls, ceilings, trim, doors, and cabinets if you do them
Drywall patching and repair before paint
Whether you move furniture, cover floors and work while people live in the home
How long a typical room or a whole floor takes on your jobs
The paint lines you use, and low-odor options if you offer them

Exterior

The siding you paint or stain: wood, fiber cement, aluminum, brick
Prep: power washing, scraping, sanding, caulking, priming, wood repair
One, two or three stories, and whether you use ladders or lifts
The months you paint outside, and how weather moves the schedule
Decks, fences and garage doors, if you take them

An estimate request with room count and photos

A request that says "paint my house, how much" turns into a phone call before anything else happens. A form built for painting gives you most of what you need up front.

For interior jobs

How many rooms, and which ones
What gets painted in each: walls, ceilings, trim, doors
Ceiling height: standard, vaulted, a two-story foyer or stairwell
Condition: nail holes, cracks, water stains, peeling
Big color changes, like dark to light, which can take extra coats
Furnished or empty
When they'd like it done
A wide photo of each room, taken from a corner

For exterior jobs

Number of stories
Siding material, if they know it
A photo of each side of the house, plus close-ups of peeling or damaged spots
Trim, shutters, doors and the garage door: included or not
The year the house was built, even roughly. More on why below.

Add one line you can update yourself saying how far out you're booking right now, inside and outside. It saves a call from someone who needs the job done before a party next weekend.

Say on the form which jobs you can price from photos and which need a visit. A few rooms of walls might be quoted from photos, while a whole exterior with soft wood around the windows needs you there. Whichever way you work, say so.

What your written estimate covers

Tell people what they'll find in your estimate: the surfaces, the prep, the number of coats, the paint brand and line, the timeline, and what isn't included. When a homeowner lays three estimates side by side, the one that lists the prep is easier to trust than a single number at the bottom of a page.

Help with color

If you help customers choose colors, say how: a color consultation, sample patches on the wall, or working from colors they already picked. Say whether samples are part of the estimate or extra. A homeowner stuck on choosing a color may put off asking for a quote altogether, and a clear answer here gives them a next step.

A portfolio that sells the work

Painting is easy to judge from photos, and just as easy to fake with stock photos. Use your own.

Before and after from the same spot, a wide shot of the room at the same angle
Close-ups of the details: crisp lines where the wall meets the ceiling, clean trim, cabinet doors without brush marks
Prep shots on exteriors: scraped, primed and caulked before the topcoat. It shows the part nobody sees in the finished photo.
The color on each photo: brand and color name. It answers the question you'd get anyway.
Grouped by type: interiors, exteriors, cabinets, commercial

Keep the color true

Shoot in daylight, turn off filters, and don't edit a photo until the color shifts. A homeowner who picks a gray from your gallery expects to see that gray on their own walls.

For more on taking photos that bring in jobs, see job photos that win work.

Lead-safe work on older homes

This is the part of a painting website with real rules behind it.

EPA's Renovation, Repair and Painting rule covers work that disturbs paint in housing and child-occupied facilities, such as schools and child care centers, built before 1978. EPA says that, in general, anyone paid to do that work must be certified, including sole proprietorships, and it lists painters among the trades covered. It also says firms cannot advertise or perform renovation work covered by the rule in those buildings without firm certification.

EPA's page for homeowners tells people planning work on a pre-1978 home to find an EPA or state lead-certified contractor and to look for the certification logo. Since both pages talk about EPA or state certification, check which one applies where you work.

If you're certified:

Show the certification on the site, next to your other licenses
Add a short page on how you work on older homes: containment, dust control and cleanup
Ask for the year the house was built on the estimate form, so you know before the visit

If you're not certified, read EPA's contractor page before your site says anything about older homes. This isn't legal advice, only the place to start.

The other trust details

Insurance: liability, and workers' compensation for your crew, with a certificate on request
Your own crew or subcontractors, said plainly
A workmanship warranty, only the one you actually give, and what it covers
How you protect the home: drop cloths, covered furniture, taped edges, cleanup at the end of each day
Any license your state or city requires for painting, if one does

For the list that applies to every contractor, see the contractor website checklist, and for everything we build for trades, see websites for contractors.

What to leave off

Stock photos of a roller on a perfect blue wall
Color wheels and paint swatch clip art
Manufacturer photos or another company's work presented as yours
"Best painters in town" with nothing to back it up

See your own work on a real site

We build the first version of your website free, in 2 days, with your interior and exterior pages, your portfolio and an estimate request that takes room counts and photos. You click around it, then decide. If it isn't for you, you owe nothing. How our pricing works explains the fixed price. Get your free preview.