For painters
Quoting for painters
Painting is quoted by the room, the wall, the square metre or the day, and every painter has a view on which. Quote Desk does not care which you use. Put your rates on the list in the unit you quote by, count on site, and send before you leave the driveway.
Quote from Harbourline Plumbing
Hot water unit replacement
| Remove old unit and dispose | $180.00 |
| 250L electric unit, supplied | $1,290.00 |
| Install, valves and compliance | $420.00 |
| Total | $1,890.00 |
Sent from the ute. Follow-up goes out Thursday if there is no answer.
What gets in the way for painters
Prep is where the money goes
Customers see paint; you see sanding, filling and two coats of undercoat on bare timber. A line for prep, named and priced, is the difference between a fair job and a loss.
Who supplies the paint
Supply and apply, or apply only. A quote that does not say which one gets argued about at the tin. Say it on the line or in the note.
Three quotes on the fridge
Interior repaints are shopped around. The quote that is readable on a phone and can be accepted with a thumb is easier to say yes to than a PDF the customer has to download.
Colour changes after acceptance
A deep colour over a pale one is extra coats. The note is where you set out what the price covers and what a colour change costs, before anyone opens a tin.
A worked example
Painter work, with Quote Desk
Consider a fictional two-person team, Tidemark Painting, quoting interiors and exteriors. Their list: labour $75 an hour per painter, interior walls and ceilings per square metre two coats $22, doors and frames each $140, exterior weatherboard per square metre three coats $38, prep and minor filling per hour $75, premium low-sheen paint per litre $28.
A customer forwards a request to repaint a three-bedroom house inside, walls and ceilings, plus six doors. The painter measures on site: 310 square metres. Quote this, pick walls and ceilings per square metre x310, doors x6, prep per hour x8, paint per litre x45. Note: price includes GST, colours to be chosen from a standard range, one colour per room, furniture moved by the customer, five working days. Sent from the car. The customer accepts it two days later after the first reminder, and the painter orders paint.
The exterior of a weatherboard cottage goes out the same way, with a typed-in line for hiring a scaffold on the south wall and a sentence in the note that rotten boards found during prep are replaced at the hourly rate plus materials.
Talk of the Trade
Painters on Talk of the Trade
Talk of the Trade ranks painters by how many Google reviews they have. Figures as of October 2026.
See the lists on Talk of the Trade. Being listed there has nothing to do with using Quote Desk: no listing is sold and no rank changes.
Questions from painters
Can I quote by the square metre?
Yes. Put the item on your list with the unit square metre and the price per square metre, then set the quantity to the whole number of square metres on the job.
What about rooms with different rates?
One line per room or per surface type. Up to twenty lines fit on a quote, which covers most houses.
How many painters are on Talk of the Trade?
As of October 2026 the directory has 166 ranked lists of painters, with 1,395 businesses listed in New South Wales, 1,181 in Victoria and 946 in Queensland. Quote Desk is separate from the directory.
Also for
Other trades and shops
Send the next one from the ute.
Free is five quotes a month with no card. If you send more than that, Starter is $39 a month. Either way the set-up is typing in your price list.