Where painting contractors lose money
5 things cost painting contractors money without ever becoming a line item, and each one traces to a step you can install. Painting contractors average 18% gross margin, 13% overhead and 5% net profit at $1M–$5M of revenue. The CFOS target at that size is 22% gross margin, 12% overhead and 10% net, and the 5 points left on the table is where those mechanisms live. Figures for all 7 revenue bands are in the table below.
Painting ranks 5th of 6 in interiors and finishes on net profit, and it has leaner overhead than the 48-trade average. Here is every figure, across all 7 revenue bands.
Painting by revenue band
| Metric | $1M–$5M | $5M–$10M | $10M–$25M | $25M–$50MModeled | $50M–$100MModeled | $100M–$500MModeled | $500M+Modeled | CFOS target at $1M–$5M |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overhead | 13% | 12% | 11% | 10% | 9% | 8% | 8% | 12% |
| Gross margin | 18% | 20% | 21% | 22% | 24% | 25% | 27% | 22% |
| Net profit | 5% | 8% | 10% | 12% | 15% | 17% | 19% | 10% |
| Metric | $1M–$5M | $5M–$10M | $10M–$25M |
|---|---|---|---|
| Overhead | 12% | 11% | 10% |
| Gross margin | 22% | 22.5% | 23.5% |
| Net profit | 10% | 11.5% | 13.5% |
Modeled extension of the survey curve, not reconciled against the licensed CFMA Benchmarker. That applies to the 4 bands above $10M to $25M, and no CFOS target is published for them.
Gross margin and overhead come from CFMA, Jones Maresca and SPM's own trade data, because those are the figures those sources report by trade and size. Net profit is calculated from them as gross margin minus overhead, so the three rows tie. That makes it an operating profit figure: what is left before interest, other income and expense, and the tax planning choices owners make, such as bonuses, depreciation methods and retirement contributions.
Surveys report net income before taxes after those items, so a reported net can run below the figure here. At the typical contractor the difference is small: CFMA's 2025 medians are 7.1 percent before interest and taxes and 6.7 percent net income before taxes. It grows with size. Against the separate measured net profit dataset, the calculated net runs 0.8 points higher at $1M to $5M, 2.2 points at $5M to $10M and 3.5 points at $10M to $25M, because the gross margin and overhead rows change faster with size than reported net profit does.
Above the $10M to $25M band the gross margin and overhead rows are a modeled extension of the same curves. They have not been reconciled against the licensed CFMA Benchmarker, and the calculated net there runs well above survey medians, so read those bands as a model and not as a survey result.
Run On CFOS. Run On CFOS Trade Benchmark Reference: Painting. 2026. Sulphur Prairie Operations, LLC. https://runoncfos.com/trades/painting. CC BY 4.0.
Figures on this page were last revised 2026-08-21. Published under CC BY 4.0, which permits reuse of any figure here, including commercially, as long as the credit above travels with it. The same figures in machine-readable form: /benchmarks.json.
Trade level gross margin and overhead come from figures CFMA, Jones Maresca and other sources publish, and Run On CFOS derives net profit as gross margin minus overhead. The CFOS targets beside them are from the book CONTROL: C.F.O.S. Construction Financial Operating System, published with the full reference at runoncfos.com.
- 2024 Construction Financial Benchmarker, Executive Summary, Construction Financial Management Association, 2024.
- 2025 Construction Financial Benchmarker, Executive Summary, Construction Financial Management Association, 2025.
- 2025 Performance Benchmarks, Construction Companies, Jones Maresca and Company, 2025.
- Run On CFOS Trade Benchmark Reference, Sulphur Prairie Operations, LLC, 2026.
Sourcing and method: the methodology page.
Which bands are measured. The 4 bands above $10M–$25M extend the survey curve further out and have not been reconciled against the licensed CFMA Benchmarker. How every figure was built is explained on the methodology page.
5 problems specific to painting
Forty gallons of factory-tinted coating stay in your shop because the designer went one shade cooler, and the supplier's answer is no. Primer goes on, every taped joint and screw pop lights up, and the fix comes out of your labor budget and not the drywall sub's. Paint went up eight percent and you barely felt it. You bid it at a buck ten a foot, the job closed months ago, and you still can't tell anyone what a foot cost you.
Each one below points at the item, the unit, the clock, or the party that makes it a painting problem, and it says which step fixes it.
| Mechanism | Why it's specific to this trade | Step |
|---|---|---|
| Tinted material is a write-off the day it ships | Every other trade orders material to a dimension. You order material to an opinion, and the opinion belongs to a designer or an owner who's allowed to change it right up to the day you spray. Conduit and studs get returned or moved to the next job; a drum of custom-tinted urethane in somebody's brand color has one job it can ever go on, and that's it. | Software and bookkeeping alignment |
| Primer finds the drywall defects and you pay to fix them | Every other finish trade inspects the surface before it commits money to it. Your inspection tool is your own first coat, which costs labor and material to apply and can't be undone. That timing is what makes somebody else's defect yours: the proof and the liability hit in the same minute, at 6 a.m., with no written substrate acceptance anywhere in the file. | Standards and accountability |
| Your escalation clause protects the wrong 15% | Subcontract escalation language got written for steel, copper, and fuel, because that's where general contractors have been burned. No general contractor has ever offered a painter a labor escalation clause. Public work doubles the exposure: Davis-Bacon attaches at $2,000, and prevailing wage plus fringes governs essentially your entire contract value because you've no material mass to dilute it with. | Estimating system |
| You bid square feet and spend man-hours | A square foot price hides every single thing that drives production: cut-in ratio, ceiling height, occupied versus vacant, and spray versus brush and roll. On pre-1978 repaint it hides the biggest one, because EPA RRP containment and OSHA 1926.62 controls presume manual scraping, sanding, heat gun work, and spray application at up to ten times the PEL until monitoring says otherwise. The square footage doesn't change, the hours run two or three times higher, and your estimate priced one number for both conditions. | Job cost structure |
| The bid paid for two trips and you made eleven | You work on the one surface every following trade damages, and the spec line covering it reads touch up as required until final acceptance. That's an open-ended scope priced against a closed number. When the flooring installer scuffs a corridor wall, there is no way to prove which trade did it, no backcharge gets written against anyone, and the repaint comes out of your labor. | Project management |
Painting against the other 47 trades
| Metric | Painting | Interiors and finishes average | All 48 average | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overhead | 13% | 13.3% | 15.1% | 1st of 48 |
| Gross margin | 18% | 19.7% | 22.1% | 44th of 48 |
| Net profit | 5% | 6.3% | 7% | 42nd of 48 |
Painting sheds 5 points of overhead between $1M–$5M and $500M+, against 5.3 for interiors and finishes as a group. Inside that group, Acoustic ceiling, Tile and stone all keep 8%, the most in the group, and Acoustic ceiling, Drywall, Interiors and 1 more all run 13% overhead, the leanest. The leanest one is this trade.
Other interiors and finishes trades
What owners ask
What overhead should a painting contractor run?
Painting shares its overhead figure with 4 other trades at this revenue, which is what the published data resolves to. It averages 13% at $1M–$5M and 8% at $500M+, as a percentage of revenue. That is 0.3 points below the interiors and finishes average of 13.3%. The CFOS target at $1M–$5M is 12%. The CFOS target is one point leaner than your trade's industry average at your revenue.
What gross margin should a painting contractor run?
Painting shares its gross margin figure with 4 other trades at this revenue, which is what the published data resolves to. It averages 18% at $1M–$5M and 27% at $500M+, as a percentage of revenue. That is 1.7 points below the interiors and finishes average of 19.7%. The CFOS target at $1M–$5M is 22%. The CFOS target recalculates at your revenue: whatever gross margin produces the net profit target once overhead is paid, never below your trade's own industry average.
What net profit should a painting contractor run?
Painting shares its net profit figure with 2 other trades at this revenue, which is what the published data resolves to. It averages 5% at $1M–$5M and 19% at $500M+, before taxes, as a percentage of revenue. That is 1.3 points below the interiors and finishes average of 6.3%. The CFOS target at $1M–$5M is 10%. The CFOS target recalculates at your revenue: 10 percent before taxes, or 3.5 points better than your trade's industry average, whichever is higher.
What profit margin should a small painting business run?
Owners usually mean net profit when they say profit margin, and for painting at $1M–$5M that's 5%. Gross margin is a different number, 18%, and it's what's left after job costs but before overhead. Overhead is the 13% between the two. A small painting business holding 5% net is at the published figure for its size, and the CFOS target at that revenue is 10%.
Does painting get more profitable as it grows?
Overhead is the number that moves. Painting sheds 5 points between $1M–$5M and $500M+, which is in line with the 5.3 points interiors and finishes sheds as a group. Net profit starts 2 points under the 48-trade average, so the room is in the overhead line before it's anywhere else.
Where does painting rank against the other trades?
Painting ties 1 trade in interiors and finishes on net profit, all at 5%. Acoustic ceiling, Tile and stone are the most profitable at 8%. Its overhead is the leanest too, level with Acoustic ceiling, Drywall and Interiors. Gross margin ranks 44th of 48 and overhead ranks 1st.
That's the industry average and the CFOS target for painting at every size. Want your own books set beside them? The Financial Health Snapshot builds a CEO Report from your last twelve months, sets every figure against your trade, and walks you through it on a 60 minute call. SPM The Construction CFO (Sulphur Prairie Management, LLC) is a separate firm, and the same author runs it.
Everything on this page is something you can install yourself, and CONTROL is the order to do it in. If you would rather buy the finished result, SPM The Construction CFO does this work for painting contractors as a service. It is a separate firm, Sulphur Prairie Management, LLC, run by the same author.
Wrote CONTROL, the 8 step system behind these figures. More about the author.