How to Start an Interior Painting Business & Make Money?
How to Start an Interior Painting Business and Make Money?
Do, you want to learn how to start an interior painting business where you live? If Yes, then this article will provide you with the ultimate guide on how to start your interior painting business.
Painting is the oldest profession that has ever existed in the history of mankind. It’s also one of the most profitable businesses for those that know how to do their job well.
You don’t need a university degree to be able to start an interior painting business. Interior painting is the painting of the interior of houses such as rooms, kitchens, offices, hallways, and bathrooms.
Interior painting brings out the inner beauty of a house, it gives it a new look.
The process of painting a house sound easy when watching an expert painter perform his duties, but don’t be a fool, not everyone can do interior painting, it’s like art, and often masters only after several attempt and years of experience.
It’s one of the businesses to which, you turn to gain more skills and techniques as you regularly carry out your duties.
Let’s look at how you can start an interior painting business in any part of the world you live.
Steps on How to Start an Interior Painting Business
Step 1: Learn the desired skills needed
If you want to start an interior painting business, you must have the basic skills or techniques on how to paint an interior of a building.
Interior painting is not all about dipping a paintbrush or paint roller in a bucket of paint and rolling on the wall. It’s more than this. Its starts from learning colour combinations, colours that best suit a particular structure. Colours that will give a building the new look would be appreciated by everyone.
Knowing about the colour combination isn’t enough, you will also need to know, mixing techniques, and what best quantity of paint A that you will need to mix with paint B to get the desired colour C. Thus, basic chemistry is needed here.
So, if you ever want to start your own interior design business, the first step you will take is to gain all the basic skills required.
You can start with YouTube Videos, or an online course on interior design painting. But try as much to put into practice what you have learned by painting your own home and observing the outcome.
Step 2: Study your potential competitors
Before you start an interior painting business, you must study your competitors. These can be another individual interior design painter or an established company.
Study what they do, how they do it, how they get their customers, how much they charge and how long they take to perform a particular interior design service.
Studying your competitors in your area will give you an idea of how you are to start your own.
If they charge too high, you might want to charge a bit lower to win customers.
Step 3: Choose a name for your interior painting business
The next vital step towards starting an interior painting business is to choose a business name. This step looks simple too, but be careful not to choose a poor name. A painting business name must be unique and must be able to send out a message to the public about what your business is all about.
When picking a business name for your interior design services, you have to keep in your mind that the name you pick should portray what type of services you are rendering to the public.
You can name your business after you if you want to keep small and run it as a family business.
Examples of catchy names for an interior design business could be The Brush Brothers, Yankee Painting service, Traditional Arts, Finish Master, Color My Life, Brush Hour, Splash Painters, The Paint Doctor, Legacy Painters, Perfect Rooms, Arts Boys etc.
No matter the type of name you choose, make sure it can be remembered by everyone, one that portrays the type of service you offer and one that is catchy and unique.
Step 4: Plan your interior house business
Create a plan on how you are going to start and operate your interior design business. A business plan would be a good start, but if you want to keep it small, then start by developing a business model.
Be in a business plan or business model, make sure you plan well. Ask key vital questions and seek answers to them such as:
- Where will you want to start your business?
- where will you buy the necessary equipment needed,
- how much will you charge your clients?
- How will you promote your business etc.?
The above are some of the basic questions you must consider when planning your interior design business.
Step 5: License your interior painting business
To successfully, run an interior design business to win the trust of the public, you will need to register your business and license it.
A license is what gives you the power to operate your business legally.
You can license your business as a sole proprietor 9one man business), a limited liability company or an s-cooperation.
The cost of getting a license varies across each country and state.
If you live in the USA, the cost of getting a license is not the same, it varies across the different states and the cost can range from $75 to $400 depending on the state and type of license.
If you live in west Africa in countries such as Cameroon, Nigeria, Chad, etc you might likely run your interior design business without a license as long as you don’t have an office space in public.
Step 6: Buy all the basic requirements
The tools you will need to operate your business on the day to day basis are very important. Get all the equipment you need.
If you don’t have money at the start, then you can get the basic tools such as brushes, rollers, scrapers and drop cloths. Resist the temptation of buying cheap items, and invest your money in tools that last.
Here are some major tools you will need in an interior painting business:
- Brushes
- Rollers
- Extension pole
- Painter’s tape
- Drop cloths
- Putty knife
- Protective gear
- Caulking
- Sandpaper
- Sponges
- Ladder
- Paint trays
When the business grows, you will need to have a car or motorcycle that will enable you to transport your tools and equipment to be able to work in faraway locations within the city.
Step 7: Build a Great Team
At the start you might want to operate the painting business as a one-man business, as time goes by you will like to scale it up to meet the desire of the customers. Working as a team would be the best option at this stage.
Build a solid team that understands the goal and purpose of the business.
Read: 16 Profitable List Of Home Business Ideas
Step 8: Protect Your Business (Get insurance)
Every business needs insurance to protect it from any possible danger or damage that occurs in future. So, protect your interior painting business at all costs.
There are different types of insurance you can choose to protect your business; the type of insurance you apply for depends largely on the scale of your painting business. However, common insurance to apply for includes, general liability insurance, health insurance, motor insurance, worker’s compensation and most importantly equipment and tools coverage which helps protect your equipment in case they are stolen.
Step 9: Promote your interior painting business
No one ever makes it big without promoting their business. If you want to scale your interior painting business and increase sales and make money, you will need to promote and market your business.
You can start promoting your painting business by creating business cards and distributing them to your local neighbourhood. Also, give your card to any potential customers you come across.
You can also promote your interior painting business through the use of stickers and billboards. These traditional methods of marketing still work 100% in branding a new business.
Word of mouth should not be left out, tell others about your business, and talk to friends and family and surrounding neighbours.
Use social media as another daily promotional strategy, everyone uses a phone, which makes it easier to get to potential customers. Share your stickers on social media pages and groups. With permission from customers, you can always take pictures before and after a successful interior painting. This will serve as evidence of your good work and bring to attention your professionalism to the public.
The last promotional strategy you can employ is to provide special discounts to friends and families. This method will also help bring you, customers.
Step 10: Create a website for your interior painting business
To increase your visibility to the general public, you will need to create a website for your business.
A website will help to get more customers, especially those that do online searches in searches for professional painters.
A website will help create brand awareness about your painting business. Website will also help increase customers’ trust and build credibility in your business.
Step 11: Connect with other painters
Connect with other painters and work together as a team. You will always learn something from others even from your competitors. Join social media groups on Facebook, WhatsApp, etc. and network with others.
When you network with other professional painters, you will learn new skills and techniques that will overall lead to better performance in the operation of interior painting services.
Final Conclusion
The interior painting business is an easy business everyone can venture into it. It’s highly profitable and requires no special academic certificate to start. You can run it as a one-man business, a family business or build a great team and operate it as a company.
To be successful in this type of business, you will need to get the required skills, and experiences, buy all necessary tools, get a license and insurance and most importantly network with other professional painters.
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