What to Look for When Hiring a Decorator in Hampshire

Why choosing a decorator is harder than it should be

The decorating industry has low barriers to entry. Anyone can call themselves a decorator, create a website and begin taking on work. There is no mandatory qualification, no required licensing, and no standard quality benchmark. For homeowners, this makes choosing a decorator more difficult than choosing an electrician or a plumber, where certification requirements provide at least a baseline of assurance.

Start with insurance and DBS checking

The minimum you should require from any decorator working in your home is public liability insurance and, if they will have unsupervised access, DBS checking. Ask to see evidence of both before work begins. A reputable decorator will have no hesitation in providing copies of their insurance certificate and DBS documentation. If they are vague or evasive, look elsewhere. Paintology is fully insured to £1 million and all team members are DBS checked.

Ask about preparation

The single most revealing question to ask a prospective decorator is: what does your preparation process involve? A decorator who is vague — who talks about “getting things ready” or “doing the usual prep” — is telling you something important. A decorator who describes specifically how they assess surfaces, what filling products they use and why, how they approach priming for different substrates, is telling you something equally important and more reassuring.

Ask whether they use subcontractors

Many decorating companies use subcontractors without disclosing this to clients. Ask directly: will the people quoting on this project be the people carrying out the work? If the answer is no, or evasive, understand that you have no control over who actually works in your home.

Reviews: what to look for

A strong review profile is a good signal, but not all reviews are equal. Look for reviews that are specific rather than generic — that mention the actual experience of having the decorator in the home, the standard of preparation, how the decorator communicated, and what the result looked like over time. Generic five-star reviews are easy to accumulate; detailed, specific reviews from real clients over a period of years are much harder to fake. Paintology holds 95+ consecutive five-star reviews, many of which are exactly this kind of detailed, specific endorsement.

Get more than one quote — but understand what you’re comparing

Getting multiple quotes is sensible. But a lower quote is not necessarily better value. Two quotes for the same project may reflect completely different levels of preparation, different product quality, and different levels of care. Ask each decorator to specify exactly what their quote includes. If one quote is significantly lower than others, ask why. The answer will tell you a great deal.

By Callum MacDonald - Founder of Paintology, decorating Hampshire's finest homes since 2012.