What to put on a painter’s quote-request form

Why the form matters more than you think

For many painting businesses the website quote form is the first real conversation with a new customer. If it asks too little, you end up ringing back for basics you could have had in the first message: is it inside or outside, how many rooms, which suburb. If it asks too much, people give up halfway down the page on their phone and ring someone else.

The goal is not a perfect quote from a form. No painter can price preparation, repairs and access properly without seeing the job. The goal is a brief that is good enough for you to decide the next step: book a site visit, ask for a few photos, refer the job on, or politely say it is outside your patch.

The essentials: fields worth making required

Keep the required list short. These are the fields most painters need to decide what happens next:

• Name and preferred contact method. Let the customer choose phone or email, and ask for the one they picked. Do not require both.
• Suburb or town. Suburb is usually enough at this stage. A full street address can wait until you have agreed to visit.
• Interior, exterior or both. This single choice changes almost everything about how you scope the job.
• A short description of the job. A free-text box with a helpful prompt, such as “Which rooms or surfaces, and anything we should know?”, often gets better detail than a dozen tick boxes.

That is four or five fields. Everything else can be optional, or asked later once you know the job is a fit.

Useful optional fields

Optional questions help customers who know the answers without blocking those who do not. Good candidates for a painting form:

• Rough size. For interiors, the number of rooms is easier for most homeowners than square metres. For exteriors, the number of storeys is a practical stand-in.
• Surface condition. A simple choice such as “good”, “some peeling or flaking”, or “not sure” gives you an early signal about preparation.
• Property type and occupancy. House, unit, townhouse or commercial; occupied or empty. This affects scheduling and how you protect furniture and floors.
• Approximate age of the home, if known. Older homes can need extra care with preparation (see the lead paint section below).
• Preferred timing. “Within a month”, “in the next three months” or “just planning” helps you prioritise without asking for a fixed date.
• Budget range. Some painters find this helpful, others find it puts people off. If you include it, keep it optional and make clear it is not a commitment.
• Photos. Only if your form can handle uploads securely. Ask for photos taken safely from the ground or inside the home, never from a ladder or roof.

Make the optional status obvious, for example by labelling fields “(optional)”, so nobody feels they have to guess.

Questions to leave off the first form

Some questions feel useful but tend to cost you enquiries or create risk:

• Full address, date of birth or anything not needed to respond to the request. Under the NZ Privacy Act 2020 you should only collect personal information you actually need for the purpose. The Office of the Privacy Commissioner has plain-language guidance.
• Detailed colour or product choices. That conversation is better in person, with samples.
• Exact measurements. Most homeowners do not know them, and a wrong guess can lead to a misleading first impression of price.
• “How did you hear about us?” as a required field. It is fine as an optional question, but making it required adds friction for no benefit to the customer.

Older homes and lead-based paint

Plenty of New Zealand homes, from Dunedin villas to Auckland bungalows, have layers of old paint. Health New Zealand advises that if a building was built in the 1980s or earlier, it is best to presume it has been painted with lead-based paint until tested (Health NZ: lead-based paint). WorkSafe also publishes guidelines for managing lead-based paint.

An optional “roughly when was the house built?” question can flag jobs that may need extra preparation, testing and containment. Your form should not try to assess the risk or give safety advice. It simply helps you plan the right conversation at the site visit.

Set expectations right next to the form

A short note above or below the form does a lot of work. Tell people:

• Which suburbs or areas you cover, so out-of-area customers are not left waiting.
• Roughly when they can expect to hear back, using a timeframe you can actually keep.
• That a site visit is usually needed before a firm price, and whether you charge for it.
• Whether prices you quote include GST. For GST-registered businesses, being clear about this from the start avoids awkward surprises later.

Keep it honest. Do not promise same-day callbacks if you are up a scaffold most days, and do not imply a booking is confirmed when the form has only been received.

Make it work on a phone

Many homeowners fill in quote forms on their phone, often in the evening. Check yours on a real phone, not just a desktop browser:

• Use the right input types so the number pad appears for phone numbers and the email keyboard appears for emails.
• Use large tap targets and plain labels above each field, not grey placeholder text that disappears once someone starts typing.
• Show clear error messages that say what to fix.
• After submitting, show a confirmation that repeats what happens next.

Then send yourself a test enquiry every so often and confirm it lands in the inbox you actually check. A form that quietly fails is worse than no form at all.

Follow up the right way

When an enquiry arrives, reply through the contact method the customer chose and stick to their request. Someone asking for a quote has not signed up for your newsletter. Keep any marketing permission separate and opt-in; sending unsolicited commercial emails or texts can breach the Unsolicited Electronic Messages Act 2007.

It also helps to keep a simple record of each enquiry: date, suburb, job type, whether it was a fit, and what happened. Over a few months that tells you far more about your form than any guess.

A simple example layout

• Name
• Best way to contact you: phone or email (plus that detail)
• Suburb or town
• Interior, exterior or both
• What would you like painted? (free text)
• Number of rooms or storeys (optional)
• Surface condition: good / some peeling / not sure (optional)
• Roughly when was the home built? (optional)
• Preferred timing (optional)

Adjust it to the work you actually do. A commercial painter, a roof-painting specialist and a residential repaint business will each want slightly different questions.

Where a website assistant can help

Some painters prefer a conversational step instead of, or alongside, a form: the visitor answers a few questions in turn and the painter receives a tidy summary. Tradie Future is piloting that kind of website enquiry assistant for NZ trades. It gathers job details using questions you approve and hands them to your team; it does not price jobs or book work, and it will not suit every business. If a well-built form already works for you, keep it.

If you would like to compare approaches, see how a painting enquiry flow works, read whether a website chatbot suits your business, or check pilot pricing and get in touch.

Frequently asked questions