An Essential Insurance Guide for Painter Contractors

To the average observer, the painting trade may seem fairly straightforward. You spot some folks on a worksite wearing white-bibbed overalls. They move about with buckets and brushes and rollers, making things prettier than before. However, a deeper dive into the business reveals that there’s a lot more involved than just swinging a brush: some of these moving parts can translate into risk for the business owner.

Risk is something every painting contractor needs to address. A lot can go wrong on the job, and I have the stories to prove it. As a property and casualty agent, I insured painters for more than twenty years. I was once a painter’s apprentice myself: I used that experience and understanding to carve out a niche, assembling comprehensive insurance packages to address exposures these contractors continually face.   

So, I’ve put together the following guide to help new or existing painter contractors examine all their insurance options, with every applicable policy type. Before setting foot on a job, it’s prudent to have these coverages in place. The proper insurance will help protect you from events that threaten significant financial harm to your bottom line, or even your business’s outright existence.

Understanding the Risks Painters Face

It’s not difficult to come up with scenarios that could endanger a painter’s livelihood. One client, working on a large commercial building, used a portable heat source to help remove some of the peeling paint from the corrugated metal siding. In the eaves near the roof, out of sight of his workers, sat a bird’s nest, which caught fire and almost spread inside. Luckily, this blaze was extinguished before any major damage occurred. But with a building as big as a football field packed with inventory, it could have been disastrous.

With that in mind, here are some scenarios that might keep a painter awake at night:

Property Damage. One client’s ladder broke through a window at a residence, damaging, among other things, the antique furniture inside. The property owner secured a replacement cost estimate that, quite unexpectedly, ran into the thousands.

Employee Injury. To add fuel to the fire, the employee responsible for the ladder accident sliced open his arm on a piece of the broken glass. He needed stitches and some time to recoup from the injury.

Liability Claims. I insured a client painting townhouses in front of a scenic stream. A worker on the shoreline accidentally kicked over a five-gallon bucket of paint, and the liquid headed for the water. The spill triggered an environmental event that cost a small fortune to mitigate.

Equipment Theft. Another painter purchased a new sprayer for quickly applying large amounts of paint to exterior or interior walls, which was stolen during a break-in. These machines, as all painters understand, cost a lot more than brushes and rollers.

Big, small, or somewhere in-between, keep these perils¹ in mind when designing a painting contractor’s insurance program.

These Coverages Are a Must for Painters

As you can see, a solid painting insurance package must extend to many areas. Here are some specific policies that a contractor should not go without.

General Liability Insurance: In the case of the paint spill, general liability would help cover cleanup and legal defense costs if state and/or federal agencies decide to take the matter to court. Painters can look at the outcomes of similar situations and judgments to gauge what dollar limits should apply to liability coverage.

Workers’ Compensation Insurance: The injured employee above needed medical care and time off to recover. Since the injury occurred during employment, this worker’s individual health insurance is unlikely to pay for the cost of care. Workers compensation will cover medical treatment, as well as some wages while the employee is unable to perform their duties. In many states, this coverage is mandatory for painting contractors with employees.

Commercial Auto Insurance: Even the one-person shop owns that white painter’s van that rolls from job to job. As with personal vehicles, accidents with company vehicles happen frequently. Commercial auto insurance policies work like personal auto policies, which is unlikely to cover a business vehicle—or a fleet of them.

Optional Painting Coverages It Never Hurts to Have

Some claims-related incidents are less common than others in the painting trade. But preventive measures are never a bad idea, no matter how small the risk. Here are some additional coverage options:

Inland marine insurance originally referred to coverage of cargo moved across the water, but expanded to apply to the transportation of equipment and machinery from home base to work sites (and vice versa) by any means. Such a policy allows for valuable items, like scissor lifts or scaffolding, to be scheduled and insured separately, since a standard contractor’s policy limits per-item coverage.

Professional liability insurance, sometimes called errors and omissions insurance, kicks in when honest mistakes or miscalculations occur. Let’s say a painter provides an inaccurate job completion date to a general contractor—or things just go awry with labor or missteps on that job. A one-week job turns into three weeks. This halts the progress of other contractors, resulting in project cost overruns. A breach of contract claim is filed against the painter by the property owner.  

Umbrella insurance is extra liability insurance, which sits on top of the existing coverage of a basic packaged policy. Painters with this basic policy can choose a dollar limit for coverage that gets capped at a prescribed maximum level. When you consider the scenario of the polluted stream, it might be advisable to purchase an umbrella policy that would allow the addition of $3 million in coverage, for example, to the $2 million you already hold.

Choosing the Right Coverage

There’s a process to designing the proper painting contractor’s insurance program. I’m fortunate: I know a lot about the industry. However, I still conduct a thorough fact-finding mission, checking whether a new client² may face risks outside my understanding or experiences. Here is how to consider and choose the right coverages, in three simple steps.

1. Understand the Exposures: While I prepared my own list of what may go wrong, painters know their business better than anybody. They can bring these concerns to the table when discussing coverage options.

2. Shop Around: Painters with complex operations may face mounting premium costs. However, big or small, getting the best coverage for the dollar is a general rule in any insurance endeavor.
3. Engage the Experts: Many insurance agents and brokers have extensive experience with painting contractors of all shapes and sizes. Find the right detail-oriented partners who can help keep your business safe from financial harm.

Stay on Top of Things

If your business grows, in terms of revenue, employees, or ancillary services, it’s best to keep your insurance carrier informed of such changes. Painters should actively assess these details, for both performance and legal reasons. Here are a few ways to accomplish this:

• Schedule Yearly Reviews: Meet with your agent or broker annually, at a minimum, to discuss sales and payroll figures. Also, if you haven’t done so already, the annual review is the time to inform the carrier about, say, the new power washing arm of your painting business.
• Keep Tabs on the Industry: Trade magazines or bulletins can keep you abreast of new laws or compliance requirements, which may mean tweaks to riders or endorsements on your insurance policy.
• Think on the Fly: Making a large equipment purchase or acquiring another business warrants immediate attention. Policy conditions may require timely notification to the policy provider.

The Final Brushstrokes

Whether you paint large commercial structures or just stick to the interior walls and moldings of residential folks, you must understand that incidents and accidents do happen. To keep the business healthy and viable, a comprehensive painting contractor’s insurance program can’t be forsaken. While larger contractors may have more to assess when it comes to risk, smaller-scale businesses have a lot on the line as well. Find a knowledgeable insurance professional who can advise you on adequate protection, and wrap up the job with peace of mind and a gleaming finish coat.

1. https://www.businessinsurance.com/painting-company-cited-over-workers-fall-in-water-tower-us-tank-painting-inc/ ↩︎
2. https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/small-business/how-to-start-a-painting-business ↩︎