Learning To Color Consult
One question that I have got in the past is will I do color consulting for my customers. This is a good questions as there are several schools of thought on this subject. Yes color consulting is something you should offer your clients and no it should not cause you to think of it as liability if the customer does not like the color. While both have their valid points, let me explain why I choose to do color consulting for my painting company, B&K Painting, for the past 18 years.
Here is a phenomenon that I discovered very early on in my career. You can do an amazing paint job and choose bad colors and everyone that drives by will say it is a crappy paint job. On the other hand you can do a crappy paint job and choose great colors and everyone that drives by will say it is an amazing paint job. You need to understand how this can greatly affect your business. It is amazing how many calls for bids you will get from a yard sign if you just painted a house an amazing color scheme. What you have to realize is the majority of drive by lookers probably do not have a talking relationship with the homeowner and probably will not stop to ask how the painter performed their job. With this knowledge, your colors choices become very important.
Another interesting phenomenon I discovered early in my career is that if you do a lot of prep that is visible the neighbors driving by will think you are an amazing painter cause of the prep you do. What I realized is it is not necessarily the quality but the visual perception. White caulking shows up so do a lot of caulking for esthetic purposes of the final product. We use PeelBond primer which dries clear so we tinted it white so everyone knew how much priming we do. Prep for a quality paint job but also prep to gather the attention of those driving by. Now added with a paint job in a great color scheme and you just convinced most people you are the painter for their next project. Of course choosing colors for your customer comes with some liability.
I will discuss two things to consider that will significantly decrease your liability. In 18 years of painting, my choice of colors only caused me to have to repaint an exterior one time and I probably did the color consulting on 70% of the homes I painted. Most home owners are not confident with choosing colors and if they think they are they quickly realize their choice can be slightly off.  When you explain how color changes from inside to outside and how a small swatch can be a bad representation of the color they are wanting a customer will lean to you for advice. Now one tip and this is a very important tip to understand. The lone house I had to repaint because of my color choice was due to me convincing the customer to change her mind on colors she was sure she wanted. The colors she chose were not going to get me any jobs and were not a wise choice for exterior so I presented a different color scheme that she chose.