Once a week or so I get a call from someone looking to get a quick phone quote on a paint job. They simply give me a number of rooms or the square footage and ask for a price. I think some people believe that by calling a whole bunch of painters they will be able to find the best deal out there. I can’t blame them for trying – paint job is a big ticket item.

In the age of internet, shopping for products has become much easier. Just figure out what you want, Say you are shopping for a “Sony XYZ” TV; you could google for prices from various venders and buy it from whoever holds the lowest price. Shopping for services such as painting, however, doesn’t work in quite the same way as shopping for flat screen TVs.

The fact is that one three-bedroom house is rarely the same as another house with three bedroom. There are a number of variables here to consider. To name a few: total number and sizes of rooms, types and numbers of windows and doors, number and intensity of paint colors, time required for protection of furniture and fixtures, quality and quantity of paint, and last but not least the extent of paint surface preparation needed. Any one set of the above variables, when compared to a different set of these variables, can mean a difference of tens or, in some cases, even hundreds of hours of work.

The fact is that the best price does not necessarily mean the best deal. I am not saying that price is unimportant; I think that it is important, but only to the extent that it represents the real value of work to be done. So, getting the best deal means getting the best value. It’s easy to compare the price but the key to getting the best deal is in being able to evaluate and compare the value offered for that price tag. (see How to Evaluate Painting Proposals.)

In comparing painting proposals, you must be able to compare the proverbial “apples to apples.” If you insist on only comparing prices, with no regard to the value those prices represent, there is a pretty good chance that you will end up with a proverbial lemon.