Overspray lands on things nobody hired you to touch.

General liability

Third-party bodily injury and property damage — the line nearly every contract names by default.

Without it — Drift from a sprayer settles on cars, glass and neighbouring buildings, and every one of those belongs to somebody who was not your customer.

Workers compensation

Required in almost every state the moment you have employees. Priced on payroll and class code, which is why the class code is worth arguing about.

Without it — Exterior and commercial work is performed from ladders, lifts and swing stages, and a fall is the injury that ends a career.

Contractors pollution liability

Bodily injury, property damage and clean-up caused by a pollutant your work released — chemical drift, run-off, fuel spills. The standard general liability form excludes all of it.

Without it — Solvents, strippers and blast media are pollutants when they reach soil, a drain or the air, and the general liability exclusion reaches them.

Inland marine & equipment

Tools, equipment and property in transit. It picks up exactly where commercial property stops, which is the moment the item leaves the building.

Without it — Sprayers, compressors, lifts and staging are portable and are the first things taken off an unattended site.

Commercial auto

Vehicles the business owns and the people who drive them for work.

Without it — Crews travel between sites daily with material aboard, and solvent in a van changes what a fire looks like.

Contractors errors & omissions

Covers faulty workmanship and professional mistakes — the cost of the work itself being wrong, which general liability excludes by design.

Without it — A coating specified for the wrong substrate fails as a system rather than as an accident, and the remediation is the whole elevation.

Commercial property

Buildings and contents, valued at what it costs to rebuild today rather than what you paid.

Without it — Solvent-soaked rags and stored thinners are a recognised fire cause, and the shop and stock still need replacing.

Umbrella & excess liability

Extra limit stacked above general liability, auto and employers liability. Usually the cheapest million dollars on the policy.

Without it — A fall from height or a fire in an occupied building exhausts a primary limit quickly.

Is overspray actually covered?

The damage it causes generally is — the repaint of a neighbour’s car, the cleaning of a glass facade, the replacement of landscaping. What is not covered is repainting your own work. The reason overspray matters more than its severity suggests is frequency: it is a claim that happens on ordinary jobs that went otherwise fine, and a run of small overspray claims moves a renewal price further than one large loss. Masking, containment and wind-stop rules are worth documenting, because underwriters ask.

What happens if I work on pre-1978 housing?

It becomes an underwriting question rather than an incidental detail. Disturbing lead-based paint in older residential property is regulated work with its own certification and containment rules, and a great many general liability policies carry a lead exclusion that removes the exposure entirely. If you do that work, you need to know whether your policy excludes it, and if it does, whether the account belongs somewhere that will write it. Discovering the exclusion after a claim is the bad version of this conversation.

Does spraying versus brushing change my premium?

It changes the questions. Spray application raises the overspray and inhalation exposures and, on industrial coatings, the flammability of what is being atomised. Abrasive blasting is treated as its own class again. None of it makes an account unplaceable, but an application that says "painting" without saying whether the work is interior residential brushwork or exterior industrial spray is answering neither question, and the price that comes back reflects the uncertainty.

How much of my exposure is the height I work at?

On workers compensation, most of it. Interior residential painting and exterior commercial work above two storeys are different severity classes, and swing stage or boom work narrows the market further in the same way it does for glaziers and roofers. It is the number that most changes what the account costs, so it is worth stating precisely rather than approximately.

What do general contractors ask painters for?

Additional insured for ongoing and completed operations, primary and non-contributory wording and a waiver of subrogation, the same stack as any other subcontract. Painting is usually last on site, which means the certificate is often chased at the point the job is ready — send the contract to us when you bid it rather than when you start it.