Residential Painting Company

Before you can start a painting company, you need to have a name for it. You can’t register your painting business without a name for the business, which is one of the first steps to getting started.

Over the last 5 years I’ve started 5 painting companies and I’ve had several friends start their own painting companies. While you shouldn’t get stressed out about a name, there are some basic guidelines I always like to follow when creating a new company.

I also work with hundreds, if not thousands, of painting companies. I’ve seen lots of great company names, and some hilariously bad ones. I really have laughed out loud at some of the names I’ve seen.

Here are some basic things you should do and you shouldn’t do when choosing a name. At the bottom, I’ll list some of our companies names, and some other companies names I’ve seen that are great.

Do…

• Choose a name that you like. You are the one who is gonna be involved with the business more than anyone else. Make sure you like the name. I never start a business if I don’t like the name.
• Include the word “painting” or “painters”. This might seem obvious, but I’ve heard some really bad names that don’t symbolize painting at all. If I just heard the company name, I wouldn’t even know what service they offer. Make it crystal clear.
• Keep it simple. It should be easy to spell, easy to remember, and not a lot of words.
• Tie in some sort of local aspect to your name… People love to hire local.
• Come up with 15-20 ideas, and then narrow them down. Your first idea is not your best. Brainstorm and anything goes.
• Google “local painting company” “Denver painting companies” “Denver Painters” etc… which could help you come up with names. Or search for companies in other cities to come up with ideas.
• Once you have narrowed it down to a few that you like, do a quick local search for that name. Make sure it’s not already “owned” by another company. For example, we were considering 5280 Painting for our Denver branch. Once we checked on google, another company already exists that is 5280 Roofing & Exteriors (which includes painting) so we didn’t want to go that route.
• You want to make sure if people search your company name, you are the only one they can find. The last thing you want is someone searching for you, and finding someone else. All of your work ends up going down the drain.

Don’t…

• Use your personal name in your company name. This is not a deal breaker. But I prefer not to have my business linked directly to me. In case I ever want to sell it, or I ever want to not be a big part of it, I can stay kind of ‘hidden’.
• Use too many words. More than 3 is probably too many. Maybe 4 if it’s easy to remember.
• Use cliche’s… A Cut Above the Rest
• Say “and More”. Just be a painting company. If you want to do other things, just state it in your marketing materials. If you are doing an entirely different service like roofing, set up your company to say “Foothills Painting and Roofing”. Or start another company and own “Foothills Painting” and “Foothills Roofing”
• Be too general. Professional Painting, for example, is too general. So is “Denver Painters”. That is a heavily searched keyword on google, so even if customers are trying to find YOU, they are going to find the company that is highest on google. It’ll be hard for you to even own the top of google for your own company name.
• Pigeon hole yourself… If you use the word “residential” it’s going to be hard to get into commercial painting. If you use the word “commercial” people who want residential painting will be more inclined to go with a company that doesn’t “focus” on commercial. Even if that’s not your focus, they think it is because it’s your company name.

Here are some names to get you thinking… Notice that they are easy to spell, simple, easy to remember, and they have a local feel.

Foothills Painting (Colorado along the foothills)
Great Plains Painting (Kansas City)
White River Painting (Indianapolis)
Michigan Pure Painting (Southeast Michigan)
Imperial Painters (Denver)

Also, we always register our businesses as LLC’s.

Once you have a name, here’s more resources for you:

How to get painting leads and market your business

How to sub contract

How to estimate paint jobs

How to start a painting business from scratch (I did it for $200)

If you are serious about starting a business, check out Painting Business Pro. That course will teach you everything from setting up your business, marketing systems and scripts, sales systems & scripts, production systems & scripts – everything that we used to start and grow our business to several hundred thousand dollars.