San Diego's Trusted Choice for Interior House Painting Services

Most interior painting estimates arrive as one number for the whole house. That number is hard to argue with and hard to adjust, and when it lands above what you wanted to spend, your only obvious move is to ask the painter to sharpen his pencil — which usually means quality comes out somewhere you cannot see.

J Brown Painting bids interior work the other way. Every estimate we write comes back broken into separate line items, each with its own price, so what you are choosing is how much of your house we paint — not how well we paint it.

An interior estimate from us splits into:

• Ceilings
• Walls
• Doors and door casings
• Baseboards
• Closets

Take all five, or take walls and baseboards and leave the rest for next year. You see what each piece costs before you decide, instead of negotiating a lump sum down and hoping the savings came out of a good place.

Leave the ceilings out. Ceilings are usually in good shape, because nothing touches them — no furniture rubs against a ceiling and nobody puts their hands on it. Unless you want to change the ceiling color, this is the first line we point at when a number needs to come down: skipping it usually costs you nothing you would see.

Leave the closets out. Closet walls are generally covered by whatever is hanging in them, and they sit behind a door on top of that.

Match your ceilings to your walls. If the ceilings and walls are the same color, same product and same finish, the price often drops significantly — and the reason is labor, not material. The usual arrangement is walls in one color with ceilings, doors and trim in a bright white, and that difference is what creates the expensive part: where two colors meet, we cut the line by hand around the perimeter of every room. Match them and that line disappears. We paint significantly faster, and faster work means a cheaper quote with nothing taken out of the scope.

Something most homeowners do not know when they pick a swatch: the color you choose changes how many coats the job takes, and coats are what you are paying for. What you want is a color that covers in two.

If your walls are yellow, pink or red and you are going to a white — especially a bright white — there is almost zero chance it covers adequately in two coats. You will see that pink, red, orange or bright green bleeding through even after two full coats of a nice thick paint, and at that point you are into a third coat and the price has moved. The existing colors that tend to cover well are grays, medium browns and olive greens. That does not mean you cannot have the white you want. It means the estimate has to say what happens if it does not cover, and ours does, in one sentence: if the paint color the client chooses does not adequately cover the existing color in two coats, there is an additional price for each additional coat required. At estimate time nobody knows yet which color you will pick, so putting it in writing up front is the honest way to handle it.

Our standard spec is walls in an acrylic latex satin, with ceilings, doors and trim in a bright white semi-gloss enamel — usually Sherwin-Williams Pure White. The off-whites we are asked for most are Greek Villa, Shoji White, White Duck and Alabaster. Still choosing? See colors that make rooms look bigger and colors for large rooms.

Scope is negotiable. Condition is not. And two very different things both get called drywall work.

Patching is localized damage, six inches to a foot — nail holes, anchor holes, small dents, minor cracks. Joint compound, sand, spot prime, paint. Normal prep on nearly every job. Repair is its own job: cutting out the damaged drywall, installing new with backer behind it, taping the seams, multiple coats of joint compound, matching the existing texture, then priming and painting. You see it with water damage, holes bigger than about twelve inches across, a failing tape joint, corner bead missing chunks, or settling cracks on a ceiling.

That difference matters while you are reading a bid, because repair is its own line and should be spelled out rather than buried inside a word like "prep." If a quote covers your whole house without mentioning the water stain in the hallway, ask about it before you sign. We handle drywall repair ourselves. Baseboards sit in the same category — painting existing ones and replacing them are two different scopes at two different prices (why you should replace baseboards).

Get three quotes — that is the safest way to see the real range for your house. We are rarely the lowest and rarely the highest. Four things to check on all three, ours included:

• Does it name the grade of paint, not just the brand? "We use Sherwin-Williams" is technically true of the cheapest product on their shelf. The manufacturer, the line, the sheen and the number of coats should all be in writing.
• Does it say specifically what is being painted — and what is not? A bid that says "paint interior" is not a scope. Ours lists the prep, the surfaces by name, an exclusions section so there is no argument later, and the license number.
• Is the license active and insured? California's contractor license lookup is free and takes a minute. It shows whether the license is active, and whether workers' compensation, general liability and the bond are all in force. Workers' comp is what stops an injured worker coming after you for medical bills after a fall on your property. We are #1131421.
• How large a deposit are they asking for? Not a matter of opinion: under California law the down payment on a home improvement contract may not exceed $1,000 or 10% of the contract amount, whichever is less (Business and Professions Code 7159.5). A contractor asking 30% or 50% up front is not driving a hard bargain — they are outside the law.

Our own schedule: a deposit of 10% of the contract price or $1,000, whichever is less — inside that legal limit — and the remaining 90% not due until the job is finished and you are happy with the work. Customers describe how that went in our reviews.

If an interior quote comes back higher than you hoped, do not start by asking for a discount. Ask to see it broken out by ceilings, walls, doors and casings, baseboards and closets. Then ask three questions: do the ceilings and closets actually need paint, what would matching the ceilings to the walls save, and will my color cover in two coats. Those three change the number without changing how the work gets done.

Contact J Brown Painting for a free interior painting estimate in San Diego. We will walk the house and price it line by line, so you can see what each choice costs before you commit to it.