4 Questions to Ask Before You Get Interior Painting

4 Questions to Ask Before You Get Interior Painting

When it comes to your home, you’ve got to be conscious and knowledgeable of whom you’re letting in to do work. If you don’t ask some questions before you hand over your interior paint job, you may end up with extra fees, a ton of unexpected cleaning, or a badly executed paint job that you’ll want to be redone right away. But don’t let that scare you away from hiring someone to paint your interior; you just have to ask the right questions first.

Interior paint jobs can be done for a number of reasons. Maybe you just want to freshen up your home for your own purposes or maybe you want to update it to sell it at a better price. Whatever the reasons it’s done for, an interior paint job is also one that has to be done right as it’s one that you have to live with. You probably know the easiest way to do this is by hiring a professional interior painter and letting them deal with it.

But like we already agreed, you can’t hire just anyone. If you don’t know much about the process of interior painting and hiring contractors, it would be easy to get overwhelmed by the choices involved. You have to decide on everything from your paint color to who it is that’s going to be doing the work.

Once you ask the right questions and hire the right people, they can help you worry about paint colors and everything else. But you really have to start with who to hire. Below we have the questions you should ask to make sure you end up with a professional interior painter who will do your job right.

1. Do they have a portfolio or references they can show you?

This is something that can be fairly easy to come by via social media sites. Often a business that has been around for a while and does a good job will have something to show for it. Reputations exist for a reason and the reasons why you would ask about this are pretty self-explanatory. You shouldn’t hire someone who can’t show you examples of their previous work.

Without those examples, you really don’t know what it is you’re getting in to. You don’t know if the work will be quality or mediocre. Guarantees and words don’t mean much if there isn’t actual work to back it up. If someone can’t show you examples, hire them at your own risk. If you can’t see what their completed work looks like how do you know that it will stand up to your standards?

Before you hire someone, know that if they’re based in your area they should have customers nearby that have reviewed their services and/ or posted pictures of the work. They should also have some pictures accessible on their website. These should be high-quality pictures with workers working in them so you know they’re real and not just stock photos. This is easy evidence of a job well done.

You might also use these references to gauge (or just ask) how long they’ve been in business. If a company is new they may not have as much of a standing, but a company that has been around for a while is one that is good and has been in your community. If they haven’t been in business long this isn’t to say don’t hire them, you should just be a little more thorough to make sure they’ll be around long enough to see your job through to completion.

2. Are they licensed and insured?

If you don’t ask any other questions, at least ask this one. A big benefit of hiring interior painters is that you don’t have to worry about any issues that may arise during or from the job. For example, most ladder accidents that happen occur on a ladder between two and six feet tall. You may not think it but problems and injuries do happen during the painting process, and that’s why licensing and insurance programs exist in the field.

If you don’t hire a painter you could hurt yourself, so you hire a painter. But what if the painter hurts himself? If it’s on your property, you’re responsible. That is, unless they’re insured. That’s why you need to make sure any painter you hire is licensed and insured. Ask your interior painting company is they have both liability insurance and worker’s compensation insurance.

Liability insurance means if there are damages done by the painter or if something happens to your home, you will not be expected to front those costs. Worker’s compensation insurance means that the painter that hurts himself is taken care of by the company, not by you. So when incidents happen, and they do, these two things protect you and the team you’ve decided to hire.

3. What products do they use? What is their prep process?

One thing you want to know about the interior painters you hire is what kind of paint they use. You want to know that they’re using the best paint available and you want to know what they personally know about it. They should be able to tell you why their paint will ensure good, long lasting results that you won’t have to paint over for a long time. Make sure they don’t sacrifice quality of paint for the price because then you know they’ll skimp on other things as well.

Next ask about their preparation process. This is arguably this most important step of the painting process and if your chosen interior painters don’t do it correctly, it could compromise your entire painting project. If you don’t ask and they do the job, when it starts peeling right after you won’t be very happy having to fork over more money than you wanted to spend in the first place. Be sure to ask about their clean-up process too, it doesn’t hurt to know.

Then after you’ve asked these questions, get it in writing. Before you get started a good interior painter will write up a document guaranteeing the quality of the work, what they will be doing and the time constraints for the project. They’ll also include everything from the estimate of the project to the materials used and the amount of preparation work. You should feel free as a homeowner to ask for such a document.

4. How do you feel about it?

This is a question for you to ask not your painters, but yourself. One of the most important things to keep in mind when it comes to who is doing your interior paint job is to trust your gut. If you don’t feel you would be comfortable having someone working in your home, find someone else. If you’ve asked every question you can think of and you still don’t feel satisfied, don’t do it. At the end of the day, it’s your home and you have to live in it. For this reason, ask any and every question that you might have. Make sure someone will be available should you have any questions during the process.

Make sure you feel good about the price you are paying. The saying “you get what you pay for” is a saying for a reason so keep that in mind. When you’re paying for someone who is licensed, with the skill and experience needed to do your job properly, the lowest bid is probably not going to be the best answer.

Deciding shouldn’t be too hard

Once you’ve asked these questions, you’ll generally be in good hands. It’s often a good idea to talk to a few different people and get a few different bids and estimates. Don’t base your ultimate decision on price alone, and be wary of anything that doesn’t make you feel comfortable. Find an interior painting company that will give you satisfactory answers to all of your questions.

We hope that this list can help you decide what questions to ask your interior painter before you get started and that it can help you know what to expect from a professional company.

If you are looking for a Naples, FL interior painting company or just want to learn more about interior painting, then give us a call. We’re ready to answer all of your questions. You can contact us here or you can call us directly at 239.600.1418