The comparison
Blind Quote vs Visible Quote
A Blind Quote is a number. A Visible Quote is the job you can see. Use this to read the quotes already sitting on your kitchen table, whoever wrote them.
A Blind Quote
A painting quote that gives you a price without showing you the work. The surfaces are not named, the preparation is not named, the paint system is not named, access is not named, and the total cannot be taken apart. It is not dishonest. It is the format the whole trade inherited, and it makes three quotes on one house impossible to compare.
A Visible Quote
A painting quote written after someone walked the property, naming the surfaces, the preparation per surface, the product as a brand plus system plus coats, the access and height, and the timeline, with the price tied to those lines. Remove a line and the price moves. That is the test.
Five things one shows you and the other does not
These are the five places where two quotes on the same house separate by thousands.
How the price was reached
Photo estimate
A number produced from photographs you sent, or from a description over the phone. Nothing that decides a painting price survives a photo: the state of the substrate, what is under the last coat, how far the ladder has to reach.
Walked quote
Someone stood on the property first. The price is written after the walk, which means the surfaces in the quote are the surfaces that exist rather than the surfaces that were described.
What the work is called
Lump sum
"Prepare and paint interior as discussed." One total at the bottom. You cannot tell whether the ceilings are in, whether the skirtings are in, or what "as discussed" covered three weeks ago.
Named work
Rooms, walls, ceilings, eaves, fascia, gutters, doors, skirtings, each named. If a surface is not on the page it is not in the job, and you can see that before you sign rather than afterwards.
Preparation
Silence, or "prep as needed"
Preparation is the largest variable in a paint job and the easiest thing to quietly reduce on site. A quote that does not name it has left the biggest number in the job undefined.
Prep as lines
Prep is named per surface: sand the weatherboards, fill and prime the fascia, treat the mould on the south wall, seal the VJ panels. Named prep is prep that has to happen.
Paint
A brand, or nothing
"Premium paint" or a bare brand name. A brand is not a specification. The same brand sells products that last four years and products that last twelve, at very different prices.
Brand plus system
The brand, the product line, and the number of coats. Dulux, Taubmans, Haymes and Wattyl all make systems worth naming, and naming one is what lets you compare two quotes on the same wall.
Access and height
Not mentioned
Access is the classic variation. It is left off the quote, discovered on day two, and arrives as an extra cost when you have already committed and the furniture is already moved.
Named before you sign
Ladders, scaffold, swing stage, boom lift, roof anchors, and the storeys involved, priced in the original quote. A cost you were told about is not a variation.
Put a number on it
The Quote Visibility Score runs ten checks over any painting quote and returns a number from 0 to 10, plus the missing lines in plain English. It works on a quote from any company. Here is what it asks:
- Was the site walked, not photographed?
- Are the surfaces named?
- Is the preparation named?
- Is the product named, brand plus system?
- Is access or height named?
- Is the warranty in writing?
- Is the QBCC licence number on the quote?
- Is the timeline in writing?
- Is the crew named, or the variations rule written down?
- Is the price tied to those lines?
Walk required
Stop comparing totals. Compare work.
Book a walk and we will write the surfaces, the prep, the product, the access and the timeline, with the price tied to those lines. Or score what you already have first.
1300 229 880 · QBCC #15130869 · 5-year written workmanship warranty · Brisbane, Gold Coast, Sunshine Coast, Ipswich