Step by step. Official links included.
This is not legal, tax, or insurance advice. Read the official pages linked here. Partner offers are optional and labeled.
Houston paint fights humidity. Exterior work has a narrow dry window, and interiors in The Heights deal with older plaster while Katy and The Woodlands are larger drywall scopes. After a flood, painting is not the first trade, and your page should not imply you coat over water damage. Stain and mildew prep belong in the description.
a mix of pier-and-beam bungalows inside the loop and slabs on gumbo clay in the suburbs Gulf humidity, hurricane season, and street flooding that reaches houses the maps called safe Humidity-aware exteriors, interior repaints, and a clear no on painting over active leaks.
Start the route in The Heights, Meyerland, and Katy. Add The Woodlands and Pearland when you can reach them the same day. After a storm, people hire whoever answers with a real service area. The rest of the year they hire the crew that explains the job without a marketplace in the middle.
The Texas guide has the filing office and the LLC fee we could verify ($300). This page is the local version: what the first jobs are, which permit counter to call, and how to price a day here.
Some boxes are labeled Partner. ServiceBase has not joined those programs. The links go to each company's own homepage, not a tracking link. If a program later approves us, the address will change and we may earn a commission. You can file, insure, and bank anywhere. Official government links are not partner links. Nothing on this page is a discount code.
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The guide stays public. An account saves your state, city, and trade, and lets you mark each filing as you go. The advertising credit is reserved when you register. It can be spent after the free website is live.
Create a free account to track your progresspainter names that work here are plain. Use one you can spell from a driveway in The Heights.
Search it at the Texas Secretary of State business filings before you order magnets. The voicemail, the invoice, and the Google profile should use that spelling.
Painters often start as sole proprietors and form an LLC when the jobs get larger than a few rooms or when a general contractor wants a company on the certificate. Either is a real start. The LLC filing does not decide whether a city wants a home-improvement registration. Read that separately. Ask an accountant if you are hiring painters as employees and still thinking of them as subcontractors.
The Form 205 instructions linked from the Texas Secretary of State list the certificate-of-formation filing fee. When those instructions were read for this site, the fee was $300. The same office says it cannot tell you which entity to choose. Open the instructions and confirm the number before you pay. A sole proprietorship can still be you, under your own name, without this filing. The fee is not a suggestion to form an LLC.
If your customers are in Houston, the registered-agent address still has to satisfy Texas. Read the filing office's rule. A neighbor's kitchen table is not always an acceptable address.
An employer identification number is the business tax ID. The IRS issues it online at no charge and says you never have to pay a company to get one. If you form an LLC, file with the state first. The IRS says an EIN application can stall when the state filing is not done. A sole proprietor can often start with a Social Security number and get an EIN when a bank or a hire requires it.
Apply on the IRS page if you want the number yourself. LegalZoom, the partner beside this step, can request it while they form the company. That service is optional. The IRS fee is still zero either way.
Check the contractor or home-improvement board for painting, and read any project-cost threshold on that site. Exterior repairs that go past paint can be a different license. Ask the city about a business license either way.
State page: Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation. TDLR licenses some trades, including electricians and air-conditioning contractors. Its program list does not include a general landscaper license. Irrigation and pesticide work have their own offices below. Cities can still require a registration.
City of Houston permits is the local counter for work in Houston. We are naming that office, not linking a fee schedule we have not read. Call them or open the city's own site and ask what a new painter has to register before the first job in Meyerland.
The Texas guide has the longer license note for this trade, including the official pages we could verify.
General liability for overspray, floors, and a ladder falling the wrong way. If you spray, say so to the insurer. Commercial auto when the van carries ladders and paint as the business. Workers' compensation before a second painter is on a ladder. A certificate is a normal request from a contractor who hired you for the interior.
Workers' compensation is a state program. Before anyone works with you, including a friend, ask an insurer and the state labor office whether you must carry it. This guide does not quote a headcount, because those rules differ and the state page is the source. The SBA page describes the common policies. It does not sell them. Buy the policy before you work in a house in Houston.
Deposits on paint and the final check should hit a business account. Material stores will put the company name on the receipt if the card matches. Keep the deposit schedule on the proposal so you are not funding a whole interior on a personal card.
The bank will usually ask for your ID, the EIN or your Social Security number, and the formation papers if you filed an LLC. A checking account and a habit of setting tax money aside are enough at the start.
Price interior and exterior separately. Rooms or elevation, occupied or empty, and what prep includes: caulk, patch, sand, primer. Color advice is optional. Prep is the job. Cabinets are their own price.
Climate decides when exterior paint will fail and when you can apply it. Build dry time into the schedule. Do not quote a whole exterior from photos without asking about the surface: stucco, wood, brick, or previously painted siding.
Gulf humidity, hurricane season, and street flooding that reaches houses the maps called safe a mix of pier-and-beam bungalows inside the loop and slabs on gumbo clay in the suburbs That is why a price copied from another metro will miss. Humidity-aware exteriors, interior repaints, and a clear no on painting over active leaks.
Write the price you want for the common job in The Heights and the price you want for a far stop in Pearland. If the second number is not worth the drive, leave Pearland off the service area.
Claim the Google Business Profile for Houston, TX. Set hours you answer. The service area should list The Heights, Meyerland, and Katy if those are real stops, and it should leave off towns you will not drive.
Ask for a review after a clean job, and ask them to mention the neighborhood and the task. A review that says the work and The Woodlands helps the next search. A review that says 'great service' does not.
Google Business Profile with photos of your own edges and the neighborhoods you work. Reviews should say interior or exterior and the area. The website splits those services and the form asks for rooms or elevation and timing. ServiceBase turns that into a public page and a list of requests.
When the name and the phone are real, create the free painter site with Houston already filled in. Quote requests land in your list. The site does not replace City of Houston permits.
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Signup asks for an email and a password. No card. This guide opens the next step with the trade and city filled in. You can change every line after.
Pick the service you can finish, search the name at the Texas Secretary of State business filings, get the free EIN from the IRS, read the license page (Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation), call City of Houston permits, insure the work, open a business account, and publish a page that names The Heights and the jobs you want. Humidity-aware exteriors, interior repaints, and a clear no on painting over active leaks.
Check the contractor or home-improvement board for painting, and read any project-cost threshold on that site. Exterior repairs that go past paint can be a different license. Ask the city about a business license either way. Start at the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation. Then ask City of Houston permits what the city adds.
Price interior and exterior separately. Rooms or elevation, occupied or empty, and what prep includes: caulk, patch, sand, primer. Color advice is optional. Prep is the job. Cabinets are their own price. Gulf humidity, hurricane season, and street flooding that reaches houses the maps called safe Time the first ten jobs in The Heights and Katy before you copy a price from another city.
You can draft it. Put it in public under the name you will actually use, with the phone you answer. If the state requires the license before you advertise the work, wait. The free ServiceBase site does not file the company. Signup can open with painter and Houston filled in so you are not retyping them.
Texas filing and license · Free painter website in Houston, TX · All trades in Houston, TX
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