What to put in a painting contractor business package for 2027

What to take away

• A package sells when its unit is something the customer can picture: a room, a door, a deck, a hallway, not a vague scope of work.
• Seventeen ideas here are starting points. Each needs your own task hours behind it before it carries a price.
• Packages built around a repeatable unit are the ones that survive: same setup, same materials, same crew rhythm.
• Do not launch more than one or two new packages a season. Each is a new set of ways to be wrong.

Interior packages

1. Single room refresh. Walls only, sound surfaces, minor filling, one color. The simplest unit in the trade and the easiest to time accurately.
2. Ceilings only. Sold on its own because it needs different protection and different access, and because customers rarely ask for it unprompted.
3. Doors and trim enamel. Priced by the leaf and the linear foot. Needs degreasing, deglossing, and a finish that hardens rather than one that stays soft.
4. Cabinet refinishing. Doors removed, numbered, and sprayed off site or in a controlled area. The package must state cure time before normal use.
5. Hallway and stairwell. Access and protection dominate the hours, not the area. Price the ladder work, not the square footage.
6. Wallpaper removal and wall preparation. Sold separately from painting, because removal time is unknowable until the first strip comes off.
7. Basement and utility coating. Masonry primer, moisture assessment, and honest advice about what a coating can and cannot fix.
8. Pre-sale touch up. A fixed half day or day of filling, patching, and touch-up before a property goes on the market.

Exterior packages

9. Full exterior repaint by elevation. Quoted elevation by elevation so a customer can stage the work over two seasons.
10. Trim, fascia, and soffit only. The parts that fail first on most houses, and a way in for a customer not ready for a full repaint.
11. Front door and entry. A small, visible unit with a high perceived value and a real skill requirement.
12. Deck cleaning and finishing. Sold with a moisture and condition assessment, and with a stated difference between a penetrating stain and a film-forming finish.
13. Fence staining by linear foot. Straightforward, weather dependent, and one of the few painting units that prices cleanly per foot.
14. Garage floor coating. Requires moisture testing and surface profiling. Never sell this as a cosmetic upgrade.

Recurring and commercial packages

15. Annual maintenance visit. A scheduled day each year for touch-ups, caulking, and a written condition report. This is the package that turns a one-time customer into a relationship.
16. Tenant turnover package. A standard scope at a standard color for property managers, priced per unit type and scheduled in blocks.
17. Common area refresh. Corridors, lobbies, and stairwells for a building manager, scheduled outside business hours with the disruption written into the plan.

The recurring packages are the ones most worth the effort. They fill the calendar in advance, which is what makes a crew affordable. The best markets for a painting contractor business piece covers where these buyers concentrate.

What each package needs before it has a price

• A named unit: one room, one door, one elevation, one unit type.
• A preparation standard written as actions rather than adjectives.
• A coating system chosen for the substrate, with the sheen stated.
• An exclusion list, particularly for wall repair, hardware, and furniture.
• Task hours from at least three completed jobs of that type.

The services and packages guide sorts these by service family and by what tends to go wrong. The mechanics of tiering and exclusions are set out in how to package painting contractor services, and which of them will earn their place is a margin question covered in most profitable painting contractor services.

Two constraints that cut across the whole list

Old paint. Several of these packages routinely land in pre-1978 housing, where disturbing paint brings federal work practice requirements into play. The EPA program page for renovation and repair contractors sets out the certification and what it covers, and the package price has to include the practices rather than discovering them mid-job.

Claims. Every package description is advertising, and the FTC advertising guide for small business sets the standard: hold the support before making the claim. Be especially careful with durability language, which usually belongs to the coating manufacturer rather than to you.

Method affects cost across the whole list. Spray, back-roll, brush, and roll are different labor numbers on the same surface, and the choice belongs in the package definition. The equipment and setup guide covers what each method needs.

Keep the costing evidence. Job-level records of hours and materials are what let you revise a package rather than guess at it, and they double as the substantiation described in the IRS guidance on business records.

Common questions

Which package should a new company launch first?

The single room refresh. It is the easiest to scope, the fastest to learn to time, and the least punishing when the estimate is wrong.

Do fixed-price packages work in repaint work?

For genuinely standard units, yes. For anything where the substrate condition is unknown until you are on site, publish the unit and the inclusions but hold the price until you have looked.

How many packages should be on the menu?

Enough to cover the work you want and few enough that your estimator can price any of them from memory. Beyond that, packages start competing with each other for the same crew day.

Can I bundle a discount into a package?

You can, but be clear what is being discounted. A bundle that trades preparation for a lower price is not a discount. It is a shorter-lived paint job sold as a saving.