Painter and Decorator Resume Examples & Writing Guide

This sample is for a painter with nine years in the trade who came up through a union apprenticeship, spent three years on commercial jobs and now leads a residential repaint crew. The name and employers are invented. Copy the layout and swap in your own square footage, equipment and job types.

Most painting companies are small. The owner or a foreman reads the resume, often on a phone, and decides in under a minute whether to call. Here is what they are scanning for.

• Speed with quality. "Painted walls" tells them nothing. "3,500 sq ft a day sprayed and back-rolled, under 2% callbacks" tells them you can carry your share of a bid.
• Spray experience. Airless for walls and exteriors, HVLP for cabinets and trim. Name the equipment. Many painters can roll; fewer can run a sprayer without runs, tails or overspray on the neighbor's car.
• Prep and drywall repair. Contractors lose money on callbacks caused by poor prep, so they want to see scraping, sanding, caulking, patching and priming named as skills, not assumed.
• Job type. Residential repaint, new-construction production work, commercial, industrial coatings and cabinet refinishing are different speeds and different standards. Say which ones you have done and for how long.
• The cards. EPA RRP Certified Renovator for pre-1978 homes, OSHA 10 or 30, lift training. A valid driver's license and your own hand tools are often listed as requirements too.

“I do not need a paragraph about attention to detail. Tell me you can spray a ceiling without hitting the walls, that you have run a lift, and how many callbacks you had last year. If it says RRP certified I can put you on half my jobs the same week.”

The most common search behind this page is "painter resume job description." People want to know how to turn the duties into bullets. The trick is the same every time: add the surface, the method, the amount and the result. Eight rewrites below.

If you are writing a house painter resume for a small residential company, lean on repaint numbers, cabinet work and customer reviews. If you are aiming at a commercial or production painter job, lean on square footage, units per day, spray equipment and lift experience.

Keep the skills list to 10–14 items and put the ones from the job posting first. Group them the way a foreman thinks: application methods, prep, materials, equipment, then site and customer skills.

Application and prep skills:

• Airless spraying and back-rolling (name the unit: Graco, Titan, Wagner)
• HVLP fine finishing for cabinets, doors and trim
• Brush and roll, freehand cut-in on ceilings and trim
• Surface prep: pressure washing, scraping, sanding, caulking, spot priming
• Drywall patching, skim coating and texture matching (orange peel, knockdown)
• Wallcovering: hanging and removing vinyl and paper
• Staining and clear-coating decks, fences and woodwork
• Faux and decorative finishes, if you have them (the word "decorator" in the UK title covers this)

Materials and equipment a contractor will recognize:

• Waterborne and oil-based primers and enamels, lacquers, elastomeric coatings, epoxy floor systems, intumescent (fire-resistive) coatings if you have applied them
• Scissor lifts, boom lifts, extension ladders, pump jacks and pipe scaffolding
• Sanders, paint shavers, pressure washers, HEPA vacuums
• Estimating basics: measuring square footage and calculating coverage per gallon

Site and customer skills that get checked in the interview:

• Reading finish schedules and specs on commercial jobs
• Protecting floors, furniture and landscaping (a contractor's biggest source of complaints)
• Color and sheen advice for homeowners
• Leading a small crew and ordering material for the day
• Bilingual English/Spanish is a real advantage on many US paint crews; name it if you have it

Three or four lines under your name. Say what kind of painter you are, how many years, your daily output, your equipment and your cards. Versions for the common situations:

Painting is a trade with few mandatory licenses for the worker but several cards that employers ask for. Only list what you actually hold, with the year.

• EPA Lead-Safe Certified Renovator (RRP rule). Required for anyone disturbing paint in pre-1978 housing or child-occupied facilities. It is an 8-hour course from an EPA-accredited trainer, valid 5 years, then a 4-hour refresher. Residential contractors ask for this more than anything else.
• OSHA 10-Hour or 30-Hour Construction. Not legally required for painters in most states, but many commercial general contractors will not let you on site without OSHA 10, and lead painters are often asked for OSHA 30.
• Aerial and scissor lift operator training. Required under OSHA rules before you operate a lift; usually employer-provided and documented under the ANSI A92 standards. List it with the year.
• Respirator medical clearance and fit test. Needed for spray work and lead jobs; annual. Worth one line because it shows you can start spraying right away.
• Union card and apprenticeship. IUPAT (International Union of Painters and Allied Trades) runs a 3-year apprenticeship through the Finishing Trades Institute. Completion makes you a journeyman; list it under education or certifications.
• Contractor license. Painters working as employees do not need one. If you run your own jobs, some states require a specialty painting contractor license (California's C-33 is one example) and others require none. Check your state's contractor licensing board and list the license number if you hold one.
• Industrial coatings: SSPC/AMPP coatings application training (such as the C-7 abrasive blasting course) and confined-space training matter for plant and bridge work. Only list them if you have taken them.

Education is simple: a high school diploma or GED is the normal requirement. Put your apprenticeship or trade school above it. If you have neither, the education section is one line and your experience does the talking.

"Painter and decorator" is the standard job title in the UK and Ireland, and "decorator" there includes wallpapering, coving and decorative finishes. In the US the same trade is simply "painter," and wallcovering is often a separate specialty. If you searched for a painter and decorator CV example, here is what changes and what does not.

• The document is called a CV in the UK and a resume in the US. Two pages is normal in the UK; one page is expected in the US.
• UK CVs often include a CSCS card (Construction Skills Certification Scheme) and an NVQ Level 2 or 3 in Painting and Decorating. In the US the nearest equivalents are the OSHA card and a completed apprenticeship. Do not list a CSCS card on a US resume without explaining it in two words: "UK site safety card."
• Neither country expects a photo, date of birth or marital status. Leave them off in both.
• Spelling: US resumes use "color" and "skilled labor"; UK CVs use "colour" and "labour." Match the country you are applying in.
• What stays the same: square footage, job types, spray equipment and callback rate are what a decorating firm in Manchester and a painting contractor in Denver both want to see.

• One page. Even with 15 years, a painter's resume fits on one page. Older jobs can be one line each: title, company type, years.
• Order: name and contact (include "valid driver's license" and "own tools" if the posting asks), 3–4 line summary, skills, experience, certifications, education.
• Reverse chronological with dates in months and years. Contractors want to see how long you stayed on a crew; a skills-only format hides that and looks like you are hiding gaps.
• Plain layout, no photo, no graphics. Many painting companies post on Indeed or Craigslist and read on a phone. Bullet points beat paragraphs.
• Save as PDF named "Firstname-Lastname-Painter-Resume.pdf." If you apply in person, bring two printed copies.
• Gaps for seasonal slowdowns are normal in this trade. Write "Winter 2024: side jobs and cabinet refinishing" rather than leaving a blank.

The cvplex construction template used above is a single column with a bold skills block, which reads well on a phone screen and passes applicant tracking systems (ATS) used by larger contractors.