Here is something most Denver homeowners never get told. Colorado does not license painters at the state level. Anyone can print a business card and call themselves a painting contractor tomorrow. That makes knowing how to vet one the most valuable thing on this page, and we would rather teach you that than sell at you.
Tell us about the house. We reply with an itemized estimate you can hold up against anyone else's.
This is the part of hiring a painter that almost nobody explains, and it is the part that protects you most. Read it even if you hire somebody else.
Among the construction trades, Colorado's Department of Regulatory Agencies licenses only electricians and plumbers at the state level. Painting is not a state-licensed trade. There is no state exam, no state board and no state credential for a painting contractor in Colorado.
That surprises most homeowners. It means the word "licensed" on a painting company's website could mean several different things, or almost nothing at all.
When a Colorado painter says licensed, they usually mean one of these:
Denver in particular runs its own contractor registration through the city's Community Planning and Development department, and it is among the more demanding programs on the Front Range.
Because the state credential does not exist, insurance and federal certification are what actually carry weight. Those are the documents to ask for.
The Environmental Protection Agency's Lead Renovation, Repair and Painting Rule applies nationwide, including Colorado. It covers any work that disturbs painted surfaces in housing built before 1978 or in child-occupied facilities. Firms doing that work are required to be EPA certified, and certified renovators must follow specific containment and cleanup practices.
Denver has a great deal of pre-1978 housing. Washington Park, Congress Park, Baker, Platt Park, Berkeley, Sunnyside, Whittier, Five Points and Park Hill are full of it. If your house is older and a painter has never mentioned lead, that is worth asking about directly.
Colorado law requires employers with employees to carry workers' compensation coverage. This matters to you as a homeowner more than most people realize. If an uninsured worker is injured on a ladder against your house, the question of who is responsible can land on your homeowner's policy.
Ask for it. A legitimate contractor will not be offended, and the certificate takes their agent about ten minutes to send.
Print this, screenshot it, or just keep it open on your phone during estimates. It works on us too. If any painter gets cagey on these, that is your answer.
Since Colorado has no state painting license, this question separates companies that know their own compliance from companies repeating a marketing word. A good answer names a specific city registration or a specific business license.
"Which city are you registered in, and can I see it?"Not a photo of a certificate. A current certificate of general liability insurance, sent from the agent, ideally listing your address. Photos can be old, edited or belong to someone else.
"Please have your agent email me the COI before we sign."If they have employees, Colorado requires it. If they use subcontractors exclusively, ask how those subs are covered. This is the single question most homeowners skip and the one with the largest downside.
"Who covers the crew if someone falls on my property?"If your house was built before 1978 and the work will disturb painted surfaces, this is a federal requirement, not a preference. A painter who does not know what RRP stands for should not be scraping your 1940s bungalow.
"Are you an EPA certified firm, and who is the certified renovator on my job?"Prep is the largest labor line on a proper exterior job and the first thing cut to win a bid. An estimate that says "prep and paint" is hiding the most important variable. You want washing, scraping, sanding, caulking, priming and repair described separately.
"Which surfaces get primed, and what are you priming with?"A brand name is not a specification. Sherwin-Williams and Benjamin Moore each make a dozen exterior lines with very different UV performance. Two coats on the body and one on the trim is a common quiet shortcut.
"Name the exact product and sheen for body, trim and doors."Employed crew or subcontracted crew, and who is the daily point of contact. Subcontracting is not automatically a problem, but you should know before, not on day one when strangers arrive in an unmarked truck.
"Will the person quoting this be on site, and how often?"Be cautious about large upfront deposits. A modest deposit to schedule and hold materials is normal. Half the job value before anyone arrives is not. Get warranty terms in the contract, not in conversation.
"What triggers each payment, and what exactly does the warranty cover?"We will send insurance certificates before work begins, put the scope and payment schedule in writing, tell you plainly who is coming to your house, and name the specific products on the estimate. Our public rating is 4.9 across 94 Google reviews that you can read without going through us. Search "Bighorn Painting" and look for yourself.
If you take this checklist to three companies and hire someone else because they answered better, that is a good outcome. A badly painted house is a five figure mistake, and the vetting is worth doing properly.
Most homeowners have no idea what a paint crew does all day, which makes it hard to tell whether a job is going well. Here is the real sequence on a typical single-family exterior.
Phases overlap. On a two-story home the crew is often scraping the north elevation while the south elevation is still drying from the wash. Weather moves everything.
The house gets pressure washed to remove dust, chalked coating and anything else holding moisture against the siding. Then it has to dry. Painting over a damp substrate is one of the most common causes of blistering, and in Denver's dry air that dry-out is usually fast, but it is not instant.
If a crew washes in the morning and starts coating that afternoon on a large wall, ask about it.
Scraping, sanding and feathering. This is the phase that makes homeowners nervous because the house looks worse than when the crew arrived. It is supposed to. Failed coating comes back to a sound edge, and the transition gets sanded so it does not telegraph through the finish.
Rotted trim, fascia and sill boards get cut out and replaced here. Then every joint where two materials meet gets caulked, and bare wood and patched areas get primed.
Body coats first, working the elevations to follow the shade rather than fighting direct sun. In July and August this also means watching the afternoon storm pattern. Then trim, doors and cut-in work, which is slower and more precise than the body.
The walkthrough. You and the crew lead go around the house together, in daylight, and you point at anything that bothers you. Touch-ups happen then, not next month.
You should know, without chasing anyone, what is happening tomorrow and whether weather has moved it. Colorado forecasts change fast and exterior schedules move with them. That is normal. Not being told is not.
For exterior work, no. One of our reviewers had their house painted while they were away on vacation and came home to a finished job. For interiors most people prefer to be around at the start and the end, but it is not a requirement. What matters is agreeing access before day one rather than sorting it out in your driveway at 7am.
Clear access around the perimeter, so move planters and patio furniture back a few feet. Let us know about pets, sprinkler schedules, and any window that does not open. For interiors, clear small items off shelves, counters and sills. We move the furniture.
Houses first. We do commercial work too, but this is a residential crew at heart, and most of what we do is somebody's home.
The bulk of what we do, and where Denver's climate makes prep non-negotiable.
Denver's dry air sets paint fast, which shows every lap mark if the crew is not adjusting for it.
The best dollar-for-impact job in a house. Days instead of weeks, a fraction of replacement cost.
Horizontal surfaces take the worst of Colorado sun and need a shorter maintenance cycle than walls.
These need breathable coatings. Seal them wrong and moisture gets trapped inside the wall.
Offices, retail, HOA and multi-family property, scheduled around your operations.
Every one of these is on Google under Bighorn Painting, with the reviewer's real name attached. We are not asking you to trust a testimonial we typed ourselves. Go read all 94.
"Love the result! Asa was very easy to work with. Price was reasonable and competitive. Crew was detailed and respected our property. Did things the right way to ensure a quality paint job! Fully recommend!!"
"I am very happy with the work that Big Horn Painting did on my home. We had new siding placed on the home a few months back, but the project looked incomplete due to the garage door, soffits, trim etc still being the old color."
"Bighorn Painting did a phenomenal job and no corners were cut. A lot of prep work needed to be done and the crew took a lot of pride in their prep work which made for an amazing finished product. We were away on vacation while the house was painted."
"We hired Asa and Bighorn for a massive month-long project in Winter Park. It involved dozens of wooden decks that were deteriorated, stucco, and rough cut wooden siding on a 5 story high building. Throughout the process, there was great communication."
"If you're looking to get your house painted this summer or fall, I cannot say enough good things about Bighorn Painting! What a stunning update! We went from brown with more brown trim to cream with bronze accents!"
Search "Bighorn Painting" on Google. The rating is 4.9 across 94 reviews. Three themes come up over and over without prompting: the prep work, the communication, and how the crew treated the property.
Homeowners often assume they are buying paint. You are mostly buying hours. Understanding that split makes every bid you receive easier to read.
This is the single most useful thing to understand when comparing three bids. A lower number almost always means fewer hours, and prep is the first place hours disappear from.
A properly prepped house and a badly prepped house look identical the day the crew drives away. They stay identical for about eighteen months. Then the badly prepped one starts failing in patches, usually on the south and west elevations first.
Patchy failure is worse than uniform failure, because you cannot touch it up. You repaint. So the cheaper job gets paid for twice inside the window the better job was still going strong.
Condition, above everything else. A house with sound coating needs a wash and two coats. A house with widespread failure needs scraping, sanding, rot repair and priming first. That can double the labor on the same square footage.
Access. Two and three story elevations need staging or lifts. That is a real cost, not padding.
Substrate. Wood, fiber cement, vinyl, stucco and brick each need different primers and different prep.
Color count. Body, trim, accent and door each add cut-in hours. Three colors costs more to execute than two.
Product grade. Premium exterior lines cost more per gallon and last materially longer at altitude. This is usually the worst place to economize in Colorado.
| Interior or exterior? | Exterior | Interior |
|---|---|---|
| Best season in Denver | Late April through October | Year round, best value November through March |
| Prep share of labor | Very high. Wash, scrape, sand, repair, caulk, prime. | Moderate. Patching, sanding, masking, protection. |
| Do you need to be home? | No. Access to the perimeter is enough. | Preferred at start and finish, not required. |
| Main Denver-specific risk | UV at altitude, freeze-thaw, hail damage | Low humidity setting paint fast, causing lap marks |
| Typical disruption | Low. Crew works outside. | Higher. Rooms out of use, furniture moved. |
| Biggest failure signal | Chalking, uneven fade, peeling, exposed wood | Scuffing, staining, fade near sunny windows |
| Weather can delay it | Yes, frequently. Plan for it. | Essentially never. |
Denver's housing stock changes character every few blocks, and so does the work. A 1920s bungalow and a 2015 infill build need almost nothing in common from a painter.
Original wood siding, deep eaves and detailed trim. The trim is where the labor actually is, and any bid that treats a 1920s bungalow like a modern box has not looked closely at it.
The critical point: homes built before 1978 fall under the federal EPA Lead RRP Rule when painted surfaces are disturbed. Parts of Denver also sit in designated historic districts where exterior changes can require review.
Brick body with painted trim, soffit, fascia and garage doors. Often the brick stays untouched and only the trim gets painted, which is a much smaller and faster job than most owners expect when they call.
These are also the homes where a color change on the trim alone transforms the whole elevation for a fraction of a full repaint.
Fiber cement, synthetic stucco and modern composites. These hit the ten to fifteen year mark and builder-grade coating gives out, usually first on the sun-facing elevations.
They generally need a product-matched primer rather than a general purpose one, and many sit inside HOAs with approved palettes that need checking before a color is chosen.
Not certain whether your address is inside the service area? Call 720-912-4676. It takes a minute to find out and costs nothing.
We are based in Arvada and work throughout the west and north metro: Arvada, Lakewood, Westminster, Wheat Ridge, Broomfield, Golden, Edgewater, Englewood and Littleton.
Listing photos, closing dates and inspection objections all come with a clock. Peeling exterior paint and exposed bare wood show up on Denver inspection reports constantly and can complicate FHA and VA financing specifically.
If you are under contract with an objection deadline, say so on the first call. Those jobs get scoped differently, because the goal is clearing the objection rather than a full cosmetic repaint.
The easiest interior job in existence is the window between closing and moving in. No furniture, no rooms to work around. If you are closing on a Denver house, that window is worth planning for early.
Not at the state level. Colorado's Department of Regulatory Agencies licenses electricians and plumbers among the construction trades, but painting is not a state-licensed trade. There is no state exam or state board for painting contractors. Regulation happens at the city and county level instead, and Denver runs its own contractor registration through Community Planning and Development. Because the state credential does not exist, the documents that actually carry weight are the general liability insurance certificate, proof of workers' compensation coverage, and EPA RRP certification for pre-1978 homes.
RRP stands for the federal Lead Renovation, Repair and Painting Rule, enforced by the Environmental Protection Agency. It applies nationwide to work that disturbs painted surfaces in housing built before 1978 or in child-occupied facilities. Firms performing that work are required to be EPA certified, and certified renovators must follow specific containment and cleanup practices. Denver has a large amount of pre-1978 housing, so if your home is older this is a direct question to ask any painter you are considering.
General liability insurance at minimum, and workers' compensation if they have employees, which Colorado law requires of employers. Ask for the certificate of insurance to be sent directly from their insurance agent rather than as a photo from the contractor, and ideally listing your address. This matters more than most homeowners realize. If an uninsured worker is injured on a ladder against your house, the question of responsibility can end up pointed at your own homeowner's policy.
A modest deposit to secure a start date and cover materials is standard practice. Being asked for a large share of the total before anyone has arrived on site is not, and it is one of the clearest warning signs in the trade. Whatever the arrangement, get the payment schedule written into the contract with each payment tied to a specific milestone rather than a date.
Compare structure, not totals. Read how prep is described on each one, since prep is the largest labor line and the first thing cut to win a job. A bid that just says "prep and paint" is hiding the biggest variable. Ask how many coats go on each surface, because two on the body and one on the trim is a common quiet shortcut. Ask for the specific product line rather than the brand name. Ask who will physically be on site. If one bid is dramatically below the others, the hours came out somewhere.
A typical single-family exterior runs about five to six working days, though larger homes or extensive repair work take longer. The sequence is usually a pressure wash and dry-out on day one, scraping and sanding on days two and three, wood repair with caulking and priming overlapping into day three or four, body coats on days four and five, then trim and cut-in work, and a final walkthrough. Weather moves all of it, which is normal in Colorado.
For exterior work, no. We need clear access around the perimeter and that is about it. One of our Google reviewers had their home painted while they were away on vacation. For interior work most homeowners prefer to be around at the start and again at the walkthrough, but it is not required. The important thing is agreeing access arrangements before the first day rather than working it out on the doorstep.
For exteriors, move planters and patio furniture back a few feet from the house and let us know about pets, sprinkler schedules and any windows that do not open. For interiors, clear small items off shelves, countertops and windowsills. We handle moving and covering the larger furniture and protecting the floors.
Yes, and it is worth sorting out early. A large share of Denver metro homes sit inside an association with an approved exterior color palette, and getting a color rejected after the work is finished is an expensive mistake. We will flag at the estimate whether your neighborhood is likely to require submission and can work directly from your association's approved list. Portions of Denver also fall within designated historic districts where exterior changes may require review.
For cabinets that are structurally sound but dated, almost always. A refinish runs well under the cost of new boxes and wraps up in a matter of days. Doors and drawers come off and get sprayed for a factory-smooth finish, boxes are finished in place, and hardware is removed and reinstalled. The step that determines whether it lasts is degreasing and bonding primer, which is exactly the step a rushed job skips.
Walk the perimeter on a bright day and look for six things. Chalking, which you test by rubbing the siding with a dark cloth to see if white powder transfers. Uneven fade between the south wall and the north wall. Caulk pulling away from joints around windows and doors. Peeling or blistering. Exposed bare wood, which is the urgent one. And chipping along lap siding edges from hail. Any two of these together means it is time to get quotes.
Three come up rarely and matter a lot. First, what does licensed mean to you specifically, given Colorado has no state painting license. Second, who covers your crew if someone is injured on my property. Third, which exact product line and sheen goes on the body, the trim and the doors. Any established contractor will answer all three without hesitation. Hesitation on any of them is useful information.
Ask us every question on this page. We will send insurance certificates before work begins, name the exact products on the estimate, and tell you plainly who is coming to your house.
Denver, Arvada, Lakewood, Westminster, Wheat Ridge, Broomfield, Golden, Edgewater, Englewood and Littleton.
A real person reads every one of these and replies with next steps.