Painter Job Description: Template, Duties, Requirements & Pay (2026)
A painter preps and coats surfaces — scraping, sanding, patching, masking, priming, then rolling or spraying — on residential repaints, commercial interiors, new construction or in-house maintenance. Below is a copy-paste painter job description template, the lead-paint and apprenticeship detail employers get wrong, and what it costs to reach painters on social, from Boostpoint's campaign data.
What a painter does
Painting is mostly not painting. It is preparation: covering floors and fixtures, scraping and sanding loose material, filling and patching, caulking, masking edges, priming bare substrate — and only then applying finish by brush, roller or sprayer. The finish coat is the visible part and the smallest part of the day. A posting that lists only "apply paint" reads to an experienced painter as written by someone who has never done the job, and it is one of the quiet reasons good applicants scroll past.
The BLS counts 326,900 painters in construction and maintenance in 2025, at a median of $23.75 an hour or $49,400 a year, with about 24,900 openings projected each year over the decade and no formal educational credential required to enter. Growth is 3% for 2025–35 — steady rather than dramatic, which means most of those openings are replacement rather than expansion.
The work environment matters in the ad, because it is what candidates are actually deciding about. The BLS names falls from ladders, muscle strains from lifting, and exposure to drywall dust and other irritants as the routine hazards, and notes that outdoor painting work may be seasonal. Most painters work full time.
Painter job description template
Copy this into your ATS or job board, replace the bracketed fields, and delete anything that does not apply. It is ordered the way tradespeople read a posting: pay, hours, where, what work, then the rest.
Job title
Painter — [Residential / Commercial / New construction / Facilities], [City]
Summary
[Employer] is hiring painters for [residential repaint / commercial interior / new construction] work in [city, state]. Pay is $[XX.XX]–$[XX.XX]/hour depending on experience and finish quality. Hours are [Mon–Fri, 7am–3:30pm], with [overtime available] and [occasional Saturdays in season]. Work is [within a 30-mile radius / on one site for the duration of the project].
Responsibilities
- Protect the work area: drop cloths, plastic, tape, fixture and hardware removal
- Prepare surfaces — scrape, sand, patch, caulk, degloss and prime as the substrate requires
- Apply finish coats by brush, roller and [airless sprayer] to the standard set on the job
- Cut clean lines, keep a wet edge, and match sheen and color across repairs
- Mix, tint and thin materials per the manufacturer’s data sheet
- Set up, move and work safely from ladders, [scaffolding] and [lifts]
- Clean equipment, store and dispose of materials correctly, and leave the space better than you found it
- Walk the finished area with the [lead / customer] and correct punch-list items
Requirements
- [1–2] years of painting experience, or completion of a painting apprenticeship
- Comfortable working from ladders and at heights up to [XX] feet
- Able to lift [50] lbs, stand and reach overhead through a full shift
- Valid driver’s license and reliable transport to the shop in [city]
- [EPA Lead-Safe certification, or willingness to obtain it — we pay for the course]
Preferred
- Spray experience: airless, HVLP, [lacquer or industrial coatings]
- Drywall finishing, wallcovering, staining or [cabinet and trim] work
- Commercial or occupied-space experience where noise, hours and access are controlled
- Own brushes and hand tools — [sprayers, ladders and PPE are provided]
Schedule and pay
- $[XX.XX]–$[XX.XX]/hour, reviewed at [90 days]
- [Mon–Fri, 7am–3:30pm]; [overtime paid at time and a half]
- [Year-round work — interiors keep the crew busy through winter]
- [Travel pay / per diem for jobs beyond XX miles]
Benefits
- Health, dental and vision from day [1 / 30 / 60]
- Paid time off and [6] paid holidays
- [401(k) with X% match]
- [Lead-Safe certification and OSHA 10 paid for]
- [Company vehicle / fuel allowance]; [posted path to lead painter]
Requirements: what to keep, what to soften, and what quietly costs you applicants
Painting postings tend to be vague about the work and rigid about the person. Both cost applications.
| Requirement | What to know |
|---|---|
| Experience | Preferred, rarely required. The BLS lists no formal educational credential for the occupation and moderate-term on-the-job training as typical. If you will train a careful worker with no trade background, say so — that sentence is worth more applications than any benefit line. |
| Apprenticeship | Name it if you offer it. Apprenticeship programs typically last 3 or 4 years and generally require a high school diploma or equivalent and a minimum age of 18. Employers who sponsor apprentices and do not mention it in the posting are hiding their strongest recruiting asset. |
| Lead paint | Get this right before you publish. The EPA provides certification for lead paint abatement, and some states require licensing for lead paint removal. If your work touches pre-1978 housing, either require the certification or pay for it — and write which, because painters read that line as a signal about how the company runs. |
| Heights and physical demands | Keep them, stated plainly. Falls from ladders and muscle strains from lifting are named hazards of the occupation. A specific height and weight figure is more useful and more legally defensible than “must be physically fit”. |
| Spray experience | Usually a preference, not a gate. Airless spraying is learnable in days by someone who can already prep and cut; requiring it filters out competent brush-and-roller painters for a skill you could teach in a week. |
| Seasonality | Disclose it in the first two lines. Outdoor painting work may be seasonal, and a candidate whose main question is “do I get laid off in November” will not apply to find out. If interior work carries the crew through winter, that is a headline, not a footnote. |
How to customize it for your setting
Residential repaint contractor
The customer is home. Say so, and say what that means: clean appearance, shoe covers, daily clean-up, and the ability to talk to a homeowner without friction. Those are real requirements and stating them attracts the painters who are good at them instead of surprising the ones who are not.
Commercial and new construction
Volume, schedule and coordination define the job. Name the typical square footage, whether the work is sprayed, and how the crew moves through a building relative to other trades. Overtime near turnover dates is a selling point if you state the months and the rate.
Facilities and in-house maintenance
This is a different candidate. Predictability, benefits and year-round indoor work beat a higher hourly rate for many experienced painters, especially those leaving contract work after a decade on ladders. Say what the non-painting portion of the job is, because there always is one.
Industrial and specialty coatings
Name the coatings and the standards. Painters who work to a spec — mil thickness, surface profile, cure windows — are a small pool who identify themselves by the vocabulary in the ad. A generic posting will not reach them, and a specific one barely needs anything else.
What it costs to reach painters on social
Across 35 skilled trades campaign-months in our 2026 Social Job Advertising Benchmark, the median cost per applicant was $14.14, with the middle half of campaigns landing between $7.58 and $21.49. The apply rate was 15% and the click-through rate 1.07%.
That apply rate is the number to act on. Trades candidates click at a healthy rate and then abandon the form — six in seven of them. The fix is not more budget; it is a shorter application, a mobile-first form and pay stated in the ad rather than discovered at the end of it. Our how to hire painters page works through the ad, the form and the pay line together. These are advertising costs only, and they buy an applicant, not a hire.
If you are hiring a crew rather than writing the description, the recruiting side — where painters actually are, what the ad should say, and what an applicant costs to reach — is on our how to hire painters page.
Writing the ad version
The template above belongs in your ATS and on your careers page. The advertisement that runs on Facebook or Instagram is far shorter and answers three questions in the first two lines: how much, what hours, where. Something like: "Painter — $26–$30/hr, year round, interiors all winter. Mon–Fri 7–3:30. [City]. We pay for your Lead-Safe cert. Apply in 60 seconds, no résumé."
Then two or three knockout questions on the form — years of experience, spray or brush, distance from the shop — and nothing else. Every extra field costs completions, and each screening question trades volume for precision. The mechanics are in our candidate conversion rate guide, and fifteen worked examples are in our help wanted ad examples library.
Frequently asked questions
What does a painter do?
Most of the job is preparation: protecting the space, scraping and sanding, patching and caulking, masking and priming. Finish coats go on by brush, roller or sprayer, with clean lines and consistent sheen as the standard. Painters also mix and tint materials, work safely from ladders and lifts, clean and store equipment, and correct punch-list items before a job closes.
How much do painters make?
The BLS median for painters in construction and maintenance was $23.75 an hour, or $49,400 a year, in 2025. That is the national midpoint across residential, commercial, new construction and facilities work, so local rates vary widely by market and by the finish standard the work demands. Stating your actual range in the posting is what separates a browsing painter from an applicant.
Do painters need a license or certification?
Not to enter the occupation — the BLS lists no formal educational credential and moderate-term on-the-job training as typical. Lead paint is the exception that catches employers out: the EPA provides certification for lead paint abatement, and some states require licensing for lead paint removal. If your work touches older housing stock, resolve that before writing the duty list.
Is painting seasonal work?
It depends on the mix. Most painters work full time, and the BLS notes that painting jobs done outdoors may be seasonal. Contractors with interior work carry crews through winter; exterior-only operations often cannot. Because layoff risk is the first question an experienced painter has, whichever is true for you belongs in the opening lines of the posting.
Other job description templates
See all job description templates — free, editable templates for frontline, trades, healthcare and warehouse roles.
Hiring painters?
The job description is the document; the ad is the thing that gets read. We write it, run it where tradespeople are actually scrolling, and report what each applicant cost — cost per applicant, not cost per hire.
Pay, employment, outlook, education, apprenticeship length, lead-paint certification, hazards and seasonality: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Outlook Handbook, Painters, Construction and Maintenance (last modified August 27, 2026; 2025 wage and employment data), read August 28, 2026. Cost-per-applicant figures: Boostpoint 2026 Social Job Advertising Benchmark — skilled trades role family, 35 campaign-months, advertising costs only. Cost per applicant is not cost per hire. Last updated August 2026.