Commercial Painting Profit Margins: What Contractors Really Make and How to Improve ROI
Commercial painting looks simple from the outside. You price the job, buy paint, roll walls, cash the cheque. Anyone who has stood in a cold parkade at 2 a.m. pushing a sprayer knows better. Margins shift by the hour. One change order can save a month, and one lift rental can erase it. If you work in commercial painting Edmonton, you already feel this tension. This piece lays out real numbers, the forces that move them, and practical ways to raise ROI without gambling on risky projects.
What profit margin means in commercial painting
Profit margin is the percentage of revenue left after all costs. Contractors often mix up markup and margin. If you mark up direct costs by 30 percent, your margin is lower than 30 percent once you add overhead. For commercial painting, gross margin usually refers to revenue minus direct job costs: labour, materials, equipment, site expenses, and subtrades. Net margin is what remains after overhead: office salaries, rent, vehicles, insurance, software, marketing, and owner pay.
Across Western Canada, a healthy commercial painting contractor might see typical figures like these:
- Gross margins: 30–45 percent on interior repaints and tenant improvements, 20–35 percent on new construction, 35–55 percent on high-skill specialty coatings.
- Net margins: 8–15 percent for stable companies with sound job costing. Lean operators can hit 18–20 percent in a strong year, but that is not common.
These ranges shift with market heat, weather, and general contractor payment terms. In Edmonton, exterior seasons are short. Winter work often means interiors on compressed schedules, night shifts, or coatings with strict ventilation demands. Those factors hit cost and margin.
Revenue per hour and the baseline math
Margins look different when you break them into hourly production numbers. Here is a simple frame I use in bids:
- Field labour burdened rate: $38–$52 per hour for a painter in Edmonton when you include wages, EI/CPP, vacation/stat holidays, WCB, benefits, small tools, and downtime. Foremen run higher.
- Material factor: 8–15 percent of revenue on standard latex work, 15–25 percent for epoxies, urethanes, and intumescent coatings.
- Equipment and site costs: $2–$6 per labour hour on average, higher on projects with many lifts or complex hoarding and heat in winter.
- Overhead load: 10–20 percent of revenue for a stable shop, depending on size and sales volume.
If you target a 38 percent gross margin and carry 15 percent overhead, your net lands near 23 percent before unforeseen items. Real life friction takes bites: punch lists, return trips, parking, site orientation, and holdbacks. After that, 12–15 percent net is a win on steady commercial work.
Why Edmonton jobs swing more than spreadsheets suggest
Seasonality matters. Exterior season often runs May through September. Shoulder months are risky. A two-week rain stretch in June can stack labour into unproductive days and force re-coats. Temperature swings push cure times, which delays handoff and retention. Winter interiors often require night shifts to avoid tenants and keep airflow in check, which drags productivity.
The market mix also matters. The downtown core, Old Strathcona, and Whyte Avenue house many tenant improvements with tight timelines and strict building rules. West Edmonton and the South Edmonton Common area have high-traffic retail with overnight access windows. Industrial corridors near 170 Street or the Yellowhead often bring coatings that need surface prep and safety oversight. Each zone creates different margin pressure: access limits, union requirements, or security check-ins add hours that do not show on the wall count.
Where profit leaks happen
I have walked projects where every painter moved fast and still watched the job slide red. The leaks were elsewhere. Here are the common culprits in commercial painting Edmonton jobs:
Estimating from drawings without site validation. Ceiling heights turn out to be 14 feet, not 10. The lobby requires lift work you did not include. Sheet count is right; conditions are not.
Scope creep disguised as coordination. The GC calls a “quick touch-up” on a different floor. The property manager asks to include columns or fire doors while you are on site. Those hours drift unnoticed unless someone tags and prices them in real time.
Protection and access underestimates. You priced walls but not the poly, taping, and floor protection for polished concrete. Or you need negative air machines to control odour during business hours. Those rentals chip at margin daily.
Change order lag. The crew keeps moving, and office approval for a change lags five days. By the time the CO clears, the labour is already spent.
Punch list churn. You finish, the client brings in shelving, and now you return for dings and scrapes. If your contract language does not limit damage after substantial completion, those hours belong to you.
Payment timing and holdbacks. Net 45 with a 10 percent holdback can starve cash. You pay staff weekly and suppliers on 30-day terms. Financing costs are real margin drag.
Realistic gross margin targets by project type
New commercial builds. Expect tighter numbers. The schedule runs long, and trade stacking slows production. Aim for 25–32 percent gross. Save higher margins for specialty zones or supply-and-install packages like door frames and wallcovering where you carry more risk and value.
Tenant improvements and office repaints. These carry better margins due to speed and access to decision makers. Experienced crews and low setup time can reach 35–45 percent gross. Night work or downtown parking can pull that down by 3–5 points unless priced in.
Retail rollouts. National chains paint many sites with the same spec. Margins rely on repetition. If you can standardize labour and material, 30–40 percent gross is achievable. Miss one floor protection requirement, and you lose two points fast.
Industrial and specialty coatings. Blasting, epoxy, urethane, and intumescent fireproofing pay well if you manage prep and QA. Material percentages rise, and you need tech data discipline. Gross margins of 35–55 percent are realistic when the team understands mixing ratios, dew point checks, and recoat windows.
Exterior commercial recoat. Weather risk is the headline. Build contingency into the Click to find out more schedule. Lifts, wash, and repair time increase. A sensible band is 28–38 percent gross with a weather clause that protects both parties.
The pricing backbone: production rates that hold
Production rates drive your estimate more than anything else. Many contractors use round numbers that feel familiar. Better to build a library from your own data. On typical Edmonton jobs with standard drywall and a mid-grade acrylic, I often see:
- Rolling open office walls: 250–350 square feet per painter-hour for one coat over a sound base, 150–250 for two coats with colour change.
- Doors and frames: 0.6–1.2 hours per side for brush and roll, faster with a small sprayer and proper masking.
- Ceilings in occupied spaces: 80–150 square feet per painter-hour due to protection, cut-ins, and cleanup.
Your numbers will differ. The important step is to track what happens in real conditions: winter, night access, downtown parking, freight elevator limits, and tenant traffic.
Materials and how to avoid waste
Material is the smallest line in many budgets yet a frequent profit killer. Three mistakes show up again and again. First, colour changes with poor hiding. If the landlord insists on a deep shade over a light grey and refuses primer, you will pay in labour. Quote the primer or present a documented coverage plan, then stick to it. Second, overbuying specialty coatings. Epoxy with a 12-month shelf life does not help if you stock extra “just in case” and the next project uses a different spec. Buy per job, not per wish. Third, mixing errors. One missed ratio on two-part products can cost a day. Train a lead on mix logs and wet film thickness checks.
Vendor relationships matter. Local Edmonton suppliers will help with submittals, data sheets, and rush deliveries. That support prevents job stoppages, which are margin killers. A 5 percent price break means less than avoiding one lost shift.
Labour: the lever that decides your month
Labour productivity sets your margin. Good painters are worth more than their rate. Here is what changes outcomes:
Crew makeup. Pair a lead who can read drawings with two journeymen and one apprentice on a complex site. On repeat interiors, two strong painters can beat a larger unbalanced crew, because they move with less coordination friction.
Pre-start checks. Send the foreman with a checklist 24 hours early. Confirm access, power, water, and storage. Walk the path from parking to work area. Count door types and inspect substrate. This one habit avoids dead hours on day one.
Tooling. Keep a dedicated spray kit for trim and doors, separate from wall rigs. Store nozzles and filters in a labelled bin. Replace worn rollers before the job, not during. Tools are cheap compared to labour.
Short dailies. Five-minute check-in at 7 a.m. What is the day’s target in square feet or rooms? Where are the risks? Who talks to the site super? Close the loop at end of day with a quick status and photos. This keeps the office in sync and stops scope drift.
Contracts and terms that protect your margin
A fair contract saves fights and preserves relationships. Three clauses carry outsized value:
Clear scope with exclusions. Name what you paint and what you do not. If you exclude fire doors, ceiling grids, or back-of-house areas, put it in writing. Add a simple acceptance signoff on colour and sheen. In tenant improvements, show a reflected ceiling plan markup so the client can see limits.
Change order process. State that out-of-scope work requires written approval before work proceeds. Use a simple form and present a rate sheet. If you know you will get small add-ons, include a minimum service call fee. It stops death by a thousand cuts.
Holdback and interest. Alberta projects often carry a 10 percent statutory holdback. Spell out release timing and conditions tied to lien periods. Add late payment interest. You may never charge it, but its presence guards your cash flow.
Bidding strategy in a competitive Edmonton market
The low bid often loses money. The high bid often never gets a call. Winning bids share one trait: they show control. When a GC sees a clear scope, specific materials, and a thoughtful schedule, they assume fewer surprises. Price still matters, but your professionalism shifts the conversation to total value and risk.
I treat bids like this. For repeat GCs who pay well, I price firm and leave a little room for lumpy scheduling. For new relationships, I vet the super’s reputation and payment history. If I do not like what I hear from trades who worked with them, I pass. Saying no is a margin tool.
Here is a simple two-minute bid filter I use before sinking time into a takeoff:
- Is the schedule real, and do I have confirmed start windows with access?
- Do I have full drawings, specs, and finish schedules, or am I estimating from an email summary?
- Can I talk to the site super or PM before bid to confirm site rules and sequencing?
- Do they accept a change order process that preserves approvals?
- Will they agree to staged draws on long projects?
If three answers land weak, I keep the price high or step aside. That discipline raises ROI more than any secret calculator.
Boosting ROI without squeezing crews
Some companies try to fix margin by pushing crews to work faster. That approach burns people and increases rework. Better to raise ROI by removing friction and pricing risk where it lives.
Invest in preconstruction. A one-hour call with the GC to plan access, sequencing, and protection saves days. Ask for floor plans in CAD or PDFs where you can count openings. Request the door and frame schedule early. Nail down colour approvals before paint hits the site. You earn profit when you remove guesswork.
Standardize repeat tasks. Build a standard kit for vinyl base painting touch-ups, door frame spraying, or corridor repaints. Label bins and load sheets. A lean kit saves twenty minutes of rummaging per shift, which adds up across months.
Document with photos. Quiet documentation ends many disputes. Snap before-and-after photos of every room, damaged areas, and any pre-existing conditions. Store them in a simple folder named by date and area. When a client asks about a scuff that appeared after tenant move-in, you have proof.
Train foremen on job costing. Give them a simple dashboard: budgeted hours, spent hours, and a forecast for completion. If they see they are trending over, they can adjust sequencing, ask for more access, or request a CO. Too many companies hide numbers from the field. Share the target and invite problem solving.
Respect punch lists. The final five percent consumes the last 15 percent of effort if you let it. Set a hard walk-through with painters and the client. Tag every item. Fix them in a single sweep. Do not drip crews back for weeks; it drains morale and margin.
Material choices that reduce callbacks
Paint choice can increase margin by reducing rework. In Edmonton’s dry winters, low-VOC products with good open time handle large offices without lap marks. Semi-gloss or urethane-alkyd hybrids on doors and frames resist scuffs in retail and school settings. For parkades, a moisture-tolerant epoxy reduces bubbling on damp concrete. The cheapest can on the shelf is the priciest if it doubles your labour or leads to callbacks.
Work with local reps. On a downtown high-rise corridor repaint, we moved from a standard eggshell to a scrubbable acrylic with higher film build. It cost about $10 more per gallon. It saved a full pass during handover because scuffs from movers wiped off instead of needing touch-ups. That single decision lifted gross margin by roughly three points.
Scheduling and sequencing that keep money in the job
Tight schedules kill productivity if you do not own the sequence. Ask for floors, zones, or stacks that allow continuous movement. Leapfrogging between scattered rooms costs hours in setup and cleanup. If the client insists on fragmented access, price it. Show them a simple sketch: one color-coded plan with zones and days. It becomes a shared reference that reduces surprises.
Night work deserves a rate adder. It drains productivity by 10–20 percent due to setup limits, supervision requirements, and fatigue. Do not treat night work like day work. Price it by the numbers and avoid resentment later.
Safety and compliance as margin protection
Safety programs feel like overhead until a claim lands. In Alberta, one lost-time incident can raise WCB rates for years. Training, gear checks, fall protection refreshers, and lift certifications protect people and profit. More quietly, a strong safety culture wins you access to sites with stricter requirements, where fewer bidders compete and margins improve.
On solvent and epoxy projects, enforce ventilation and PPE. Poor controls lead to headaches, rework from trapped solvents, and schedule stalls while building management complains about odour. A portable air scrubber and a clear method statement cost less than a delayed handover.
Cash flow and the hidden cost of slow pay
Commercial painting Edmonton projects often carry 45–60 day payment cycles plus holdback. You can survive that if you plan. Front-load mobilization fees where possible. Break long jobs into milestones with progress draws tied to clear deliverables: primer complete, first coat complete, final coat and protection removed.
Talk to your supplier about terms that match your draw schedule. Many will extend to 45 days for stable accounts. A small discount for early payment sometimes costs less than interest on a line of credit. Late payers deserve a price premium or a pass.
Technology that helps without becoming busywork
Software does not save a bad process, but it reduces friction when used well. A simple field app to track hours by area, upload photos, and flag RFIs beats paper. A digital colour approval form signed by the client stops back-and-forth when two shades of grey look the same at 7 p.m. under fluorescent light. Keep tools simple. If a foreman cannot use it on a lift with gloves on, it will not stick.
What property managers and GCs look for in Edmonton
They want fewer headaches. If you show up with a clean site plan, clear signage, and respectful crews, you get callbacks. You improve ROI by reducing sales effort and cutting bid churn. Many of our best projects came from one site super who liked that we kept washrooms spotless and left a daily note with progress. That tiny habit turned into steady work along 104 Avenue over two years.
For clients who need quick wins, offer off-hours painting with a focused scope: stairwells, lobbies, and washrooms. Price it cleanly. Show before-and-after photos in your proposal. Be clear about odour control and cure times. These small packages move fast, pay well, and lead to larger base-building contracts.
Local factors that change the math
Cold snaps. Exterior work can halt at -10°C, and even interior paint suffers in buildings without heat. If you expect hoarding or temporary heat, include it and specify the responsible party. Do not fund a heater out of your margin.
Downtown logistics. Tower work means elevator bookings, dock times, and union security in some buildings. A 15-minute wait repeated ten times a day is a full hour gone. Price it, or ask for dedicated windows.
Fire code and intumescent work. Edmonton’s growth includes tilt-up warehouses and mixed-use buildings that use fireproofing. If you carry this line, invest in training and documentation. Inspection failures erase gains fast. When done right, these projects can become your most profitable line.
How Depend Exteriors approaches commercial painting Edmonton
We operate with a simple promise: clear scope, clean work, and steady communication. The crew shows up with a plan and the right tools. We price projects to protect both sides. We draw on local suppliers for fast support and access to data sheets and product reps. If a job requires night work downtown or specialized coatings in an industrial bay near the Yellowhead, we state the requirements, build a schedule you can see, and stick to it.
Clients call us for office refreshes in Strathcona, retail fit-outs in West Edmonton, or exterior repainting on commercial plazas in Mill Woods. The reason is consistent: we keep sites safe, document changes, and hand over a space that looks right under the light it lives in. That is profitable for us and practical for you.
Simple steps to lift your next project’s ROI
Here is a short checklist we use before kickoff:
- Confirm access, parking, and elevator bookings in writing.
- Walk the site and log substrate issues with photos.
- Lock colours, sheens, and product lines with a signed sheet.
- Set change order rules and share contact points for approvals.
- Build a zone plan that reduces daily setups and cleans.
Follow those five and your gross margin climbs without squeezing production speed.
What contractors really make in a solid year
Across a 12-month cycle in Edmonton, a well-run commercial painting company can target 12–15 percent net profit on revenue with steady cash flow. In a good mix of tenant improvements, retail, and a few specialty coatings, 16–18 percent can happen. New construction heavy years pull that down. Weather hits pull it down more. The companies that stay profitable over time all share two habits: they price risk with a straight face, and they say no to work that will not pay.
If you manage the variables we covered — production rates, scope control, access, materials, and payment terms — your margin stops feeling random. You shift from hoping to planning.
Ready to price or start a project in Edmonton?
If you want a proposal that reads like a build plan rather than a wish, bring us your drawings or invite us for a walk-through. Depend Exteriors delivers commercial painting Edmonton property managers, GCs, and owners can count on, from downtown offices to industrial bays along 170 Street. We will map the scope, quote the schedule, and show the costs that affect ROI before work starts. Request a consultation today, and let’s build a clear, profitable path to a clean finish.
Depend Exteriors provides commercial and residential stucco services in Edmonton, AB. Our team handles stucco repair, stucco replacement, and masonry repair for homes and businesses across the city and surrounding areas. We work on exterior surfaces to restore appearance, improve durability, and protect buildings from the elements. Our services cover projects of all sizes with reliable workmanship and clear communication from start to finish. If you need Edmonton stucco repair or masonry work, Depend Exteriors is ready to help.