Painters & decorators
Websites and quoting systems for painters and decorators
Decorating is bought on trust and finish. Somebody is letting a stranger into their house for a week, and they are deciding whether to based on a few photographs and how easy you are to get hold of.
Quote requests
Priced from photos where possible
An illustration of the kind of screen this builds towards - yours is built around how your decorating business actually runs.
The reality
Where the time and money goes in a decorating business
Quoting means driving out to look at every room
A quote for a hallway, stairs and landing needs measurements. Doing that in person for every enquiry, including the ones that go nowhere, is a lot of unpaid driving.
Customers cannot picture the standard of work
Decorating photographs badly unless it is done properly, and most decorators have a handful of poorly lit phone pictures at best.
Interior and exterior work pull in opposite seasons
Exterior work needs dry weather, interior work fills the winter. Balancing the two across a year takes planning most sole traders never get time to do.
Landlord and letting agent work is one-off when it should repeat
End-of-tenancy repaints happen constantly, and the agent uses whoever they last remembered. Staying in that rotation is worth more than any advertising.
Enquiries at nine at night
People think about decorating in the evening, at home, looking at the wall they hate. If contacting you takes anything more than a tap, they put it off again.
The approach
How we'd fix it
The single change that pays for itself is a quote form built around rooms. How many rooms, what type, ceilings included, is there wallpaper to come off, and a photograph of each space. That is most of what you need to price a domestic job, and it means quoting happens in the evening from a phone rather than through a week of driving between free estimates.
The portfolio then does the selling. Decorating is a visual trade and customers are looking for evidence of a clean, careful finish - cut-in lines, tidy edges, furniture properly covered. Grouped by job type and with a before-and-after where you have it, that gallery converts better than any amount of description. Beyond domestic work, the landlord and letting agent side deserves its own page, because the buying decision there is completely different and it is where the repeat work lives.
What we build
Built for decorating businesses
Room-by-room quote requests
Room count and type, ceilings, wallpaper removal and photos of each space, so you can price without a visit.
A portfolio that shows the finish
Galleries by job type with before-and-after sets, which is what actually persuades somebody to let you into their house.
Separate landlord and agent page
End-of-tenancy work, turnaround times and per-property pricing, aimed at a completely different buyer.
Seasonal scheduling
Exterior work planned into the dry months and interior work filling the winter, so the year balances instead of lurching.
Quotes accepted online
Itemised quotes with a deposit taken on acceptance, so a confirmed job is actually confirmed.
Call and WhatsApp always to hand
Because most decorating enquiries happen in the evening, on a sofa, on a phone.
What changes
The difference it makes
- Quoting stops meaning a week of unpaid driving
- The gallery persuades people before you have spoken to them
- Landlord and agent work becomes repeat work rather than luck
- The year balances between exterior summers and interior winters
In practice
A worked example: quoting from the sofa
A decorator was doing free estimates in person, which meant three or four evenings a week driving to houses to measure rooms, for work where perhaps one in three came off. The estimates themselves were quick; the driving was the cost.
A room-by-room form with photo upload moved most of that indoors. Room type, sizes, whether there is paper to strip, a picture of each space - enough for a firm price on a straightforward domestic job, with a visit reserved for the larger or more unusual ones. The conversion rate did not change much. The number of evenings spent driving dropped substantially, and quotes started going out the same day rather than at the weekend.
The systems behind it
What this is built from
Everything on this page is put together from the same handful of systems, shaped around how decorating businesses actually work.
Questions
Painters & Decorators - the questions I get asked
Can I really quote decorating work from photographs?
For most straightforward domestic jobs, yes. Room type and rough dimensions, whether the ceilings are included, whether there is wallpaper to come off, and a photograph of each room will get you to a firm price or a tight range. Keep the site visits for the big jobs and the unusual ones, and you save yourself several evenings a week.
How important is a photo gallery?
It is the most important thing on the site. Somebody is deciding whether to let a stranger work in their home for a week, and they are judging that on the quality of your finish and how tidy you look. A dozen well-lit photographs of completed rooms will do more than any amount of writing about attention to detail.
Should landlord work have its own page?
Yes, because it is a completely different sale. A letting agent cares about turnaround time, price per property and whether you can be relied on between tenancies. A homeowner cares about the finish and whether you will be careful with their furniture. Those two people need different pages saying different things.
How do I stop the year being so uneven?
By scheduling deliberately rather than taking work in the order it arrives. Exterior jobs get planned into the dry months when they are enquired about in February, and interior work is steered into the winter. A system that shows you the shape of the coming months makes that possible; a paper diary generally does not.
Do you have an example of this working?
Yes - there is a full write-up of the site I built for a decorating business in Coventry, covering what makes a decorator's website actually bring in quote requests rather than just look tidy. It is worth a read if you want the detail rather than the summary.
How a painting and decorating business wins more work from its website
When someone wants a room painted, they search, glance at a few sites and message whoever looks trustworthy. Here's the site I built for Eagle Painting & Decoration, and why it turns those searches into quote requests.
Similar businesses I work with
All industries →Builders
Enquiries that arrive qualified on budget and timescale, galleries that prove the standard of work, and quotes with staged payments.
Roofers
Built for weather-driven demand: urgent enquiries handled first, surveys done from photographs, and insurance work documented properly.
Cleaning Companies
Recurring contracts scheduled properly, staff rotas across every site, and invoices that go out on their own each month.
Run a decorating business? Let's have a look at it
Tell me how things work at the moment and I'll come back with a clear, fixed quote - and an honest view on whether it's worth the money. No pressure and no jargon.