Homeowners in Loveland and Boulder call us most often after collecting three bids that range from $4,200 to $9,800 for the same house. The spread looks like somebody is gouging them. Usually nobody is. The bids describe different amounts of work, and only one of them says so on paper.
A painting estimate is a scope document that happens to have a price at the bottom. If it does not tell you what gets prepped, how many coats go on, and which product goes where, the number is not comparable to anything.
Surface Prep, Described in Detail
Prep is where the money goes and where the corners get cut. It is also the part that determines whether the finish lasts four years or twelve.
Your estimate should name the prep work explicitly: pressure washing, scraping, sanding, caulking failed joints, spot-priming bare wood, replacing rotted trim, filling nail holes. “Prep as needed” is not a scope. It is a phrase that lets the price stay low until the crew is on site.
Ask specifically how the estimate handles rot and substrate damage. On older Front Range homes, a painter cannot know exactly how much soft wood sits behind the paint until scraping starts. An honest quote handles that one of two ways: it includes a stated allowance (say, eight linear feet of trim replacement), or it names a per-foot rate for anything found beyond the base scope. Both are fine. Silence is not, because silence becomes a change order once your house is already stripped.
Number of Coats, and What Counts as a Coat
This is the single most common place estimates diverge without saying so.
Some contractors quote one coat over existing paint. Others quote primer plus two finish coats. Both can be described as “repaint your house,” and the labor difference is enormous. We quote three-coat exteriors, and that means exactly what it says: the surface gets a primer or sealer coat and two full finish coats, not a heavy single pass that gets counted twice.
If a quote says “two coats,” ask whether the primer is one of the two. On bare wood, previously failed areas, or any significant color change, a spot-prime plus two finish coats is the honest specification. Dark-to-light color changes almost always need the extra coverage, and a bid that skips it will look fine in month one and patchy by year two.
The Actual Products, by Name
A real estimate names the paint. Manufacturer, product line, and sheen, per surface.
“Premium exterior paint” tells you nothing, because the same manufacturer sells a contractor-grade line and a line that costs twice as much per gallon and carries a much longer warranty. At Colorado altitude, where UV exposure runs harder than it does at sea level, that difference shows up on south and west elevations within a few seasons. If you want to compare two bids fairly, the product line is the first thing to look at after prep.
Sheen should be specified per surface too, since body, trim, and doors rarely take the same finish. Our paint sheen guide covers how those choices behave in practice.
What Is Excluded
Good estimates have an exclusions section, and its presence is a decent proxy for how carefully the rest was written.
Common exclusions worth confirming before you sign: detached garages and outbuildings, fences, decks and railings, interior window sashes, gutters and downspouts, garage doors, and any surface above a certain height that needs lift equipment. None of these are unreasonable to exclude. All of them are unpleasant to discover on the final invoice.
Access, Protection, and Cleanup
For interiors, the estimate should say how your belongings get handled. Furniture moved to the center and covered, floors papered or dropped, hardware and outlet covers removed rather than taped around, fixtures masked. We mask and protect interiors as a matter of course, but you should see it written down regardless of who you hire, because “cleanup included” is doing a lot of unspecified work in a lot of quotes.
For exteriors, ask about landscaping protection and where the crew will stage equipment.
Timeline, Crew, and Payment Terms
The estimate should give you a start window, a working duration, and some indication of crew size. A three-day exterior and a three-week exterior are different products even at the same price, and the difference usually comes down to how many people show up.
Payment terms deserve a hard look. A deposit is normal. A deposit approaching half the contract value before any material arrives is not, and it is the most reliable early warning sign of a contractor with cash flow problems. Progress payments tied to completed phases protect both sides.
Get the warranty in writing too, with its duration and what it actually covers. Peeling, blistering, and adhesion failure are the failure modes worth naming. Fading is usually excluded, and that exclusion is standard rather than a red flag.
Licensing and Insurance, Verified Rather Than Claimed
Every contractor says they are licensed and insured. Ask for the certificate of insurance and check that it is current, that it names general liability and workers’ compensation, and that the coverage amounts are real numbers rather than a logo on a truck.
If the crew is not covered by workers’ comp and someone gets hurt on your property, that exposure can land on your homeowner’s policy. This is a five-minute check that almost nobody performs.
One more, specific to older houses: if your home was built before 1978, federal rules govern how the work gets done, and the contractor needs the right certification to disturb painted surfaces. We cover that in detail in our guide to lead paint in older Colorado homes.
Comparing Bids Without Getting Fooled
Line the estimates up side by side and normalize them before comparing totals. Same coat count, same product tier, same prep depth, same surfaces included. Once you do that, the $4,200 bid and the $9,800 bid usually turn out to be quoting two genuinely different jobs, and the sensible choice becomes obvious.
The cheapest bid is sometimes the right one. It is the right one when it is cheapest for a reason you can point to on the page.
If you want a written estimate with the scope broken out line by line, call us at 720-849-7654. Free estimate, no obligation, and we respond within one business day. We serve Loveland, Boulder, and Estes Park.