A real painter’s quote splits into seven lines: wash, sand+fill, masking, primer, coats, paint brand+product, and cut-in. If the cheap quote is missing one, that’s where the savings — and the trouble — are coming from.
Painting has the widest honest price spread of any trade. Three painters can quote $3,200, $7,500 and $12,800 for what looks like the same 3-bedroom job — and none of them is necessarily lying. They’re pricing three different scopes. The cheap one didn’t price the prep. The dear one priced two extra coats and proper masking. The only way to tell is to read the quote.
A working painter’s quote splits into seven lines. If a cheaper quote is missing any of them, that’s where the saving is coming from — and where the trouble starts.
“$4,500 to do the house” is the sentence to watch for. It can’t be compared, because you don’t know what’s in it. Did it include a sugar-soap wash? A primer matched to your surfaces? Two coats, or one? Branded paint, or whatever was on special? A detailed PDF answers all of that. A text message answers none of it — and a cowboy knows that’s the point.
A working painter welcomes a request to itemise — the prep is where they earn their margin. A cowboy stalls, because the prep is the line they skip to land the cheapest quote.
Ask this, exactly
“Can you send the quote split into prep, primer, paint brand and product, number of coats, masking, and cut-in — with the dollar amount for each?”
A working painter sends a detailed PDF. If the answer is a single number with nothing behind it, you’ve found your answer about the painter, not just the price.
Every Brushline quote arrives as these seven lines, with the dollar figure beside each one and the paint brand and product named in writing. You can lay it next to any other quote and see, line for line, exactly where the difference sits. That’s the whole idea — a quote you can actually compare.