Painting a commercial property is a different job to painting a house. There are tenants and staff to keep happy, customers walking past, safety rules to meet and usually a deadline that can’t move. Pick the wrong contractor and a two-week job can drag on for two months.
Here’s what we’d check if we were hiring commercial painters ourselves.
Be clear about the job first
Offices, shops, warehouses, cafés and strata buildings all need different things. An office refresh might be plasterboard walls and doors painted after hours. A warehouse could involve steelwork, concrete floors and line marking. A restaurant kitchen needs washable finishes that cope with steam and constant cleaning.
Write down the scope before you ask for prices, so every painter is quoting on the same thing. We explain what’s involved for each type of property on our pages for office painting, retail painting, hospitality painting, warehouse painting and real estate and strata painting.
Ask how commercial painters in Melbourne will work around your business
Good commercial painters plan the job around you. Ask them:
- Can you work nights or weekends so we can keep trading?
- Will you stage the job floor by floor or area by area?
- How will you manage paint smell, dust and access for staff and customers?
- Who is our one point of contact on site?
In occupied buildings, low-odour paints make a real difference to the people working around the job. Dulux has a plain-English explainer on low VOC paints if you’d like to understand the options.
Safety and insurance aren’t optional
Commercial work often means ladders, scaffolding, scissor lifts or boom lifts. WorkSafe Victoria has made falls in construction a prevention focus, and as the property owner or manager you want to know the contractor on your site takes it seriously.
Before the job starts, ask for:
- Public liability insurance that covers your site
- Safe work method statements (SWMS) for any high-risk work
- Proof that operators hold the right licences for elevated work platforms
- Their plan for keeping the public away from the work area
A professional contractor will have all of this ready and won’t mind you asking.
Get the paint specification right
On commercial work, the specification matters as much as the workmanship. Busy corridors need hard-wearing, scrubbable finishes. External walls need products made for UV and weather. Some buildings have sustainability targets that limit which products can be used. Paint manufacturers publish commercial coating systems and specifications for exactly this reason, and a good painter will follow them rather than swapping in something cheaper.
Compare quotes from commercial painters in Melbourne like for like
The lowest price rarely includes the same work. When you line quotes up side by side, check:
- Surface preparation and repairs
- Products and number of coats
- Access equipment and who supplies it
- After-hours rates
- Clean-up and rubbish removal
- Timeframes and how delays are handled
If you’re setting a budget, our article on what Melbourne property owners often miss when budgeting for commercial painting covers the costs that tend to get forgotten. For a step-by-step look at how a job runs, read what to expect during a commercial painting project.
Why Melbourne businesses work with Classico
We’ve been painting across Melbourne for more than 20 years and we’re fully licensed and insured. Our team paints offices, shops, hospitality venues, warehouses and strata properties, and we’re used to working around trading hours. You’ll deal with one person from the first site visit to the final walk-through.
Learn more about our commercial painters in Melbourne, or contact us for a free site inspection and quote.
