A painting company can run the same ad, in the same market, with the same monthly budget, and end up with two entirely different businesses depending on which job the campaign is selling. One books 60 interior repaints at $2,900 a ticket. The other books 24 exterior repaints at $7,500 a ticket. The second one produces more revenue on fewer leads, fewer estimates, and less windshield time.
Most painting contractors do not make that choice on purpose. They run one "painting" campaign year-round, take whatever comes in, and then wonder why August is packed and February is dead. The leads are behaving exactly the way the campaign told them to.
Here is how the two buyers actually differ, what each ticket is worth, and the math for deciding which one carries your budget in any given month.
Why do exterior and interior painting leads behave like two different businesses?
Because they are two different purchases with two different triggers and two different clocks.
The exterior buyer
This homeowner is looking at peeling siding, chalky fascia, a front door that has faded three shades, or a neighbor who just had their house done. Sometimes it is a home sale, an HOA letter, or a realtor telling them the curb appeal is costing them $15,000 at listing. The trigger is visible from the street, which means the whole neighborhood is reinforcing it.
Ticket: $4,000 to $15,000. Sales cycle: estimate in the first week, decision inside two to three weeks, work scheduled weeks out. Close rate on a good exclusive lead: 20 to 30 percent, because the homeowner is usually collecting two or three quotes on a purchase this size.
The hard constraint is weather. In most of the country you have roughly seven to eight usable months, and the demand curve inside that window is steep. Every exterior dollar you spend in July is competing against every other painting company in your zip code. Every dollar you spend in early March is not.
The interior buyer
This homeowner is repainting a living room before the holidays, doing the whole house after moving in, freshening up before listing, or finally dealing with the kids' bedrooms. Sometimes it is cabinets. The trigger is private, which means there is no neighborhood effect creating urgency.
Ticket: $1,500 to $6,000 for most jobs, higher on whole-home repaints and cabinet work. Sales cycle: shorter, often closed at the estimate or on the phone. Close rate on a well-worked exclusive lead: 25 to 35 percent, because the decision is smaller and fewer companies bother chasing it.
Interior work does not care about weather. That is its entire strategic value: it is the only thing standing between your crews and a dead winter. The campaigns that book it look nothing like the campaigns that book exteriors, which is why our painting lead generation page builds them as separate campaigns with separate budgets and separate offers.
What is a painting job actually worth in 2026?
You cannot set a cost-per-lead ceiling until you know your real ticket mix. Square footage, story count, prep condition, and regional labor move these, but the ranges are typical.
| Scope of work | Typical price | Buyer type |
|---|---|---|
| Scope of workSingle interior room | Typical price$400-$900 | Buyer typeComfort / refresh |
| Scope of workInterior trim, doors, and ceilings package | Typical price$1,200-$3,500 | Buyer typeRefresh / pre-listing |
| Scope of workWhole-home interior repaint | Typical price$4,000-$10,000 | Buyer typeMove-in / renovation |
| Scope of workKitchen cabinet painting or refinishing | Typical price$3,000-$9,000 | Buyer typeRenovation-driven |
| Scope of workSingle-story exterior repaint | Typical price$4,000-$8,000 | Buyer typeCurb appeal / maintenance |
| Scope of workTwo-story exterior with heavy prep | Typical price$8,000-$15,000 | Buyer typeDeferred maintenance |
| Scope of workDeck, fence, or detached structure add-on | Typical price$800-$3,500 | Buyer typeBolt-on upsell |
The pattern matters more than any single line. Moving one homeowner from a $2,900 interior repaint to a $9,000 two-story exterior is worth more than winning three extra interior jobs, and it usually costs you fewer estimate appointments to get there.
The formula that sets your lead ceiling
Run this per campaign, not per company.
Max cost per lead = (average job value x gross margin x close rate) / 3
Exterior campaign: $7,500 x 0.45 margin x 0.28 close = $945, divided by 3 = a $315 maximum cost per lead.
Interior campaign: $3,200 x 0.45 margin x 0.30 close = $432, divided by 3 = a $144 maximum cost per lead.
Those numbers are not close to each other. If you run one blended painting campaign and hold it to a $144 ceiling, you will get outbid on every exterior homeowner worth having in May. If you hold it to $315, you will overpay on interior leads all winter and convince yourself painting leads do not work. That single gap is the reason to split the campaigns.
Why is cost per lead the wrong number for painting contractors?
Because the price on the invoice ignores how many other companies were handed the same homeowner, and painting is one of the most crowded shared-lead categories there is.
| Channel | Cost per lead | Typical close rate | Cost per acquired job |
|---|---|---|---|
| ChannelReferrals and past customers | Cost per lead$0 | Typical close rate40-60% | Cost per acquired jobNear $0 |
| ChannelGoogle Business Profile / organic | Cost per lead$0-50 | Typical close rate20-40% | Cost per acquired job$100-250 |
| ChannelShared marketplace leads | Cost per lead$20-70 | Typical close rate5-12% | Cost per acquired job$250-1,200 |
| ChannelLocal Services Ads | Cost per lead$20-65 | Typical close rate15-30% | Cost per acquired job$120-400 |
| ChannelMeta advertising | Cost per lead$25-100 | Typical close rate10-20% | Cost per acquired job$200-900 |
| ChannelExclusive leads (performance partner) | Cost per lead$50-200 | Typical close rate20-38% | Cost per acquired job$200-900 |
| ChannelExclusive booked estimates | Cost per lead$200-400 | Typical close rate25-40% | Cost per acquired job$550-1,400 |
A $35 shared lead closing at 8 percent costs $438 per job, and the job it closes is usually the cheapest one, because you won it by being the lowest of four bids. A $110 exclusive lead closing at 30 percent costs $367 per job, and the ticket is typically higher because you are not in a race to the bottom on the same house. The full breakdown of why that math almost always favors exclusive is in our guide on exclusive vs. shared leads.
There is a second cost almost nobody tracks in painting: estimate time. A proper exterior walk-around with measurements, prep assessment, photos, and a written proposal is 60 to 90 minutes plus travel. At an 8 percent close rate you are running twelve estimates to sell one job. Price that at your estimator's loaded hourly cost and shared leads stop being cheap somewhere in the second week.
When should each campaign carry the budget?
The budget split is a calendar problem, not a preference. Here is the framework most painting companies should be running.
- January and February — interior carries 70 to 80 percent. Cheapest lead costs of the year because half the painting companies in your market stopped advertising. Sell whole-home interiors, cabinets, and pre-listing refreshes. Start warming exterior audiences at the end of February.
- March and April — flip to exterior at 60 to 70 percent. This is the single highest-leverage month pair on the calendar. Homeowners plan exterior work weeks before they call, and the companies that fill April and May booked those estimates in March.
- May through August — exterior carries 75 to 85 percent. Highest competition, highest lead costs, highest tickets. Push the budget ceiling here, not in the off-season. Keep a small interior campaign alive so the machine does not go cold.
- September and October — exterior at 50 to 60 percent, tapering. Sell the "get it done before the weather turns" angle honestly and hard. Start moving interior messaging back up in October.
- November and December — interior carries 80 percent or more. Holiday-ready rooms, cabinets, trim and doors. This is the budget most contractors cut, which is exactly why the leads are cheap.
The mistake that kills painting companies is cutting ad spend the month the phone gets busy. You are not buying leads for this week. You are buying the estimates that fill the calendar six to eight weeks out. Our breakdown of seasonal contractor marketing covers the timing lag in more detail.
If you want the split built for your market, ticket mix, and season, get started here and we will map it against your numbers.
How many painting leads do you need to hit a revenue target?
Work backward from revenue, not forward from budget.
Say the goal is $600,000 in added painted revenue.
Exterior path: $600,000 divided by a $7,500 average ticket = 80 jobs. At a 28 percent close rate that is 286 leads a year, roughly 24 leads a month. At a blended $110 per lead, that is about $2,640 a month.
Interior path: $600,000 divided by a $3,200 average ticket = 188 jobs. At a 30 percent close rate that is 625 leads a year, roughly 52 leads a month. At a blended $70 per lead, that is about $3,640 a month.
Same revenue. More than twice the lead volume, more than twice the estimates, and more crew days on the interior side. That does not make interior work bad — it makes it the thing that keeps your people employed in February. It just means you should stop treating the two as one line item in a spreadsheet.
What kills painting leads after they come in?
Three things, in order.
Slow response
Painting is a low-switching-cost purchase. The homeowner who filled out your form filled out someone else's twenty minutes later. A five-minute callback is not a nicety here, it is the entire difference between a 30 percent close rate and an 8 percent one. If you cannot answer during a job, you need someone who can. The mechanics are in our guide to speed to lead.
Estimates that are just a number in a text
A $9,000 exterior repaint texted as "$9,000" loses to a $9,800 proposal that shows prep scope, paint product, warranty, and photos of the last three houses on the same street. Price is only expensive when nothing else is explained.
No follow-up past day three
Painting decisions frequently involve a second homeowner who was not home for the walk-around. Contractors quit at two touches. The job goes to whoever was still politely present at day ten.
What budget should a painting contractor run?
A usable starting range, assuming you can service the work:
| Monthly ad spend | Realistic exclusive lead volume | Revenue target it supports |
|---|---|---|
| Monthly ad spend$1,000-$1,500 | Realistic exclusive lead volume10-18 leads | Revenue target it supports$250K-$400K annualized |
| Monthly ad spend$2,500-$3,500 | Realistic exclusive lead volume25-45 leads | Revenue target it supports$500K-$800K annualized |
| Monthly ad spend$5,000-$7,500 | Realistic exclusive lead volume55-95 leads | Revenue target it supports$1M-$1.8M annualized |
Those are ad-spend numbers paid directly to the platform out of your own account. They assume a real offer, real finished-work photography, and someone answering the phone. Campaigns with none of those three underperform the bottom of every range above.
The structural question underneath all of it: whoever runs your campaigns should be running them inside your ad account, under your company name, so the pixel data, audiences, and brand recognition stay with you when the season ends. A homeowner who has seen your finished exterior work four times before they ever fill out a form is a fundamentally cheaper lead than one meeting you at the form.
If you want exclusive painting leads that come in under your own brand, with the exterior and interior campaigns split the way the math says they should be, book a call and we will walk your numbers.
Frequently asked questions
Should painting contractors run separate campaigns for exterior and interior work?
Yes. Exterior jobs average two to three times the ticket of interior jobs and sell in a compressed weather window, so the two have different maximum costs per lead and different seasonal timing. Blending them into one campaign forces you to judge a $9,000 exterior repaint by the economics of a $2,800 interior job.
What do painting leads cost in 2026?
Shared marketplace painting leads typically run $20 to $70 each but close at 5 to 12 percent because three to five companies get the same homeowner. Exclusive painting leads generally run $50 to $200 and close at 20 to 38 percent. Meta advertising for painting usually lands between $25 and $100 per lead depending on market and season.
When should exterior painting campaigns start?
Six to ten weeks before your local paint season opens, which for most of the country means starting in late February or early March. Homeowners plan exterior work weeks before they call, and estimate-to-start lag plus weather delays means the companies that fill April and May are advertising in March.
How do you keep painting leads coming in the winter?
Shift budget to interior work in Q4 and Q1 and change the offer, not just the photo. Interior repaints, cabinet painting, trim and door work, and holiday-ready rooms all sell in cold months, and lead costs are usually lower because fewer painting companies are bidding in the auction.
How many painting leads do I need to add $600,000 in revenue?
It depends on ticket mix. At a $7,500 exterior average and a 28 percent close rate you need roughly 286 leads a year, about 24 a month. At a $3,200 interior average and a 30 percent close rate you need about 625 leads a year, roughly 52 a month. Same revenue, more than twice the lead volume on the interior side.
Frequently asked questions
Should painting contractors run separate campaigns for exterior and interior work?
Yes. Exterior jobs average two to three times the ticket of interior jobs and sell in a compressed weather window, so the two have different maximum costs per lead and different seasonal timing. Blending them into one campaign forces you to judge a $9,000 exterior repaint by the economics of a $2,800 interior job.
What do painting leads cost in 2026?
Shared marketplace painting leads typically run $20 to $70 each but close at 5 to 12 percent because three to five companies get the same homeowner. Exclusive painting leads generally run $50 to $200 and close at 20 to 38 percent. Meta advertising for painting usually lands between $25 and $100 per lead depending on market and season.
When should exterior painting campaigns start?
Six to ten weeks before your local paint season opens, which for most of the country means starting in late February or early March. Homeowners plan exterior work weeks before they call, and estimate-to-start lag plus weather delays means the companies that fill April and May are advertising in March.
How do you keep painting leads coming in the winter?
Shift budget to interior work in Q4 and Q1 and change the offer, not just the photo. Interior repaints, cabinet painting, trim and door work, and holiday-ready rooms all sell in cold months, and lead costs are usually lower because fewer painting companies are bidding in the auction.
How many painting leads do I need to add $600,000 in revenue?
It depends on ticket mix. At a $7,500 exterior average and a 28 percent close rate you need roughly 286 leads a year, about 24 a month. At a $3,200 interior average and a 30 percent close rate you need about 625 leads a year, roughly 52 a month. Same revenue, more than twice the lead volume on the interior side.