Commercial Painting Guidebook and Frequently Asked Questions

Commercial Painting Services > Commercial Painting FAQ

Commercial Painting Guidebook and Frequently Asked Questions

In order to help guide you through the Commercial Painting Process, here are some thoughts and best practices:

How do I know I even need a commercial painter (“Can’t I hire just ‘any’ painter”)?

If you need to paint for a business, school, industrial park, warehouse, retail location, condominium complex, hotel, restaurant or house of worship, you have very specific needs. We can address your needs with the following services to our Commercial Clients:

We can paint during off-peak, night and weekend hours at no additional charge to you. This eliminates the disruption to your customers and staff during work hours.

Quoting multiple phases of a large painting project. We are used to working within annual budgets and can accommodate phased projects and invoicing.

Insurance policies need to be in place. We not only have a $1 million General Liability policy (pretty standard) and a Worker’s Compensation policy (standard, but not all painters carry it), but we also carry a $5 million Umbrella Policy. This means if anything happens that exceeds the limits of our General Liability or Auto policies while painting your commercial painting project, we have an additional $5,000,000 of coverage. This the GOLD STANDARD of insurance coverage that very few painting companies carry. (CertaPro Certificate of Insurance)

A commercial painter should always add you or your business as “additional insured” on their policy. Make sure you ask them to do this to add to the protection. For smaller painters this will cost them about $100 to add you as “additional insured”, which can be a good indicator of the type of company they are – If they can’t pay the $100, they may not have decent cash-flow. We buy blanket “additional insured” coverage that allows us to add as many Clients as we need to. We pay more for this, but since we add so many Clients a year to our policy, it is necessary.

We have a staff member in the office whose main job is to make sure our insurance coverage is the best it can be, that we are meeting our Clients’ needs, and that we’re compliant with the coverage they are required to have.

We are also well-versed on obtaining approval from Compliance Depot, MY COI and other vendors our Clients hire to make sure their vendors’ insurance is sufficient. If you deal with a lot of vendors, and are having a hard time managing their insurance, W9s and other paperwork, it might make sense for you to check into these services which do most of the work for you.

Payment terms for corporate invoicing. Many branch offices aren’t able to pay a painter the day the project is finished. We can arrange for you to pay on your billing department’s preferred schedule and apply the purchase orders your office provides so we bill each phase of your painting project correctly.

Help choosing colors. Our staff designers can help you choose colors and render color architectural drawings that will allow you to visualize the final paint job. This helps you get buy-in from your supervisors and get your project approved quickly.

Corporate colors. We will work with your corporate office to make sure the colors the boss specifies, are the colors we paint.

What paint products do you recommend for Commercial Projects?

Often commercial customers have specific needs that we can address with a specialized paint coatings, for example:

A hockey rink, gym or hospital hallway might need a paint coating that does not easily scuff. This Sherwin Williams product would work in this situation.

Amusement and recreation locations need products that provide industrial levels of coatings.

Hospitals, daycare centers, senior living facilities and schools might need a product that kills 99.9% of bacteria, including Staph and E.Coli. For this application, we would recommend using Sherwin Williams Paint Shield.

For restaurants, lunchrooms and cafeterias, we apply No-VOC paints, so the paint fumes don’t compete with the delicious aromas of food. We also apply No-VOC paints in residential settings such as apartments and dormitories, schools, hospitals and senior living facilities, so the residents are not bothered by the smell of curing paint.

For stained ceiling tiles, we can spray an acousti-coat paint made specifically to make your drop ceiling and ceiling tiles look brand new again.

Car dealerships and auto body locations often need to coat their cement floors with a durable epoxy coating. This not only looks fantastic and clean, it prevents cement dust from being tracked throughout the building.

Retail locations need durable and on-trend paint that will attract customers. For retail stores and multi-store locations we have color consultants on staff who can provide direction and also provide (free) color renderings of what the space will look like, before we even pick up a brush.

What if I need multiple locations of my business painted?

No problem. Our team travels throughout New England for Commercial painting and carpentry projects. Just email us or fill out the form on our website and we’ll set up a time to give you a quote.

If you need a painter outside of New England, we have 350+ offices in all 50 states and Canada that can help you. Again, email us and we’ll get you to the right office that is near your particular location.