Do it after you close.

It's not "just" the size of the space needing a different color. It's the rinsing of the paint gun, the paint wastage when you use less than a gallon but more than a quart for every extra color you add. It's needing to be lots more careful where the colors meet at every juncture. It's the extra time that the scaffolding will need to be on site. It's the extra time it will take affecting the schedule of the other trades that need access to the site.

And, it's the PIA tax the builder charges you for changing your mind from the original specs and making his job more difficult. It's a lot of things that go into something that seems so simple but expensive. All change orders will be this way. The builder wants you to have the home that you want, but he also wants to build exactly what he's used to building, so change order are usually discouraged by making them cost a lot more than the same "upgrade" would cost if you just accepted the home as designed and changed things after closing. You have to really really want something that will be hard to change later if you do any change orders. Because it will cost you a lot more than you think it should. As will every single item on your build.

You can ask your builder to talk to the paint sub, but if that's the price he's quoting, don't expect any real reduction. You should really examine your contract so you can know how change orders on the build are legally handled. I would expect that they would need to be in writing, signed by all parties, and introduced into the contract as an addendum. And there should be a stated fee for changing an item, plus the change in profit for the builder, plus the cost of the difference in material and labor from the sub. The wording on how to handle changes is one of the most important parts of the contract, and you should know it by heart in order to protect yourself. Written documents are your friend.

Our painter said we could have chosen five colors throughout the house without an extra charge.

My husband is a paint contractor. That upgrade charge is ridiculous, even if it was the entire room instead of one wall.

Think of it this way.

Walls that size for one color will be rolled ( too small to be sprayed) You have extra time. You have a couple of gallons per color(aprox) depending on coverage. It should be about 800.00 to 1000.00 if it really is an extra to the contract. Most would do it for less than that but I think your builder and are those that makes their profit in the change orders.

I think we were charged about $200 for every color change.

So 4000 sq ft all one color - $5000.
1 room another color $5200 (2 colors total).
8 rooms 8 different colors - $6400.

I hope that makes sense - so either way you are getting ripped off. Obviously, it makes sense to do this after closing. What you must now deal with is that your builder is going to kill you with any change orders since that is his MO.

Thanks all for the feedback. This site is a great resource for information as we negotiate this and other items with the builder.

Any change to a contract after a bid has been accepted or a price has been negotiated is not going to be a bargain so it is best to avoid such situations by making decisions earlier or asking for unit prices (not allowances) in the contract. A professionally written specification from your design consultant would normally include such protections.

Our builders' contract stated 2 colors were included. Any additional colors were $200 each--cleaning of the paint gun/sprayer noted as reasoning. The contract calls for one of the upper end Sherwin-Williams paints as standard. Additionally, rounded corners vs. straight edge corners was a $200 flat fee upgrade.

When you mention the part about 'depending on paint quality' it makes me wonder what the standard paint quality is that was originally quoted. How many total different colors are you planning in the house? Did the builder really only plan for 1 color all the way through? Are you building with a regional or national building chain, by any chance? They will nickel & dime you to death. When we talked with several different builders early on we found that if there was something we wanted that they didn't want to do, they wouldn't tell you 'no', they would simply make the upcharge either ridiculously high or cost prohibitive overall. That sounds like what you may be experiencing right now.

That's a complete ripoff for that much upcharge!!!!! What mydreamhome is more in line. Someone is trying to make allllllooot of money for doing very little! If your GC is marking it up this high....you might want to walk away from him/her. This is only the beginning.

Are you sure that price he quoted you wasn't actually the total allowance for painting the entire house vs. the upgrade charge?

Are you building with a custom home builder or a chain? Our custom builder gives you three paint colors included and then charges $300 for each additional color. That is pretty standard with custom builders in our area.

We will be meeting with the builder later this week and hope that there is some mistake, such as the suggestion that maybe the paint contractor quoted him the full price for those rooms, not just the upgrade. We are using a local builder and this is the first problem like this; other changes were made with no change fee, just his cost for a higher quality item.

Nini - where is your area?

We are building a custom house where pretty much everything is about as expensive as it can be (at least it seems that way!) and we have 2 colors included and pay a $200 upcharge for each different color we add. This is only charged once, so for example if we have a single blue wall in two different rooms but it is the same blue color, we only get charged once for the switch to that blue. I cannot fathom an upcharge that high and I would be having some serious words with someone if it is accurate.

Yes, it's high, but unless you nailed your specs down in the contract you signed, you really don't have much recourse if the upgrade change is one you want. Even if your contract specifies there will be no change order fee, I bet it does state that you will be charged however much over the original amount that the sub wants to charge for the service plus the material difference. That leaves the sub and the contractor to charge however much they want, even if you consider it to be unreasonable.

Green and others - so you are saying that if we had specified multiple colors prior to signing, the price would have been more realistic per the posted replies, but now they think they can screw us? That might make sense for a something like a deck, but we do know how to paint, so this doesn't seem like a winner, especially in the current economic environment. Maybe it is better this way after all given how many different sample cans we bought the last time we painted rooms, lol!

I see a lot of the same BS we just went through with our bldr. Nothing mentioned in contract about painting. Comes time to choose and we're told all walls and ceilings painted same color in flat finish. Can upgrade to eggshell for $200. Am told by super. that flat hides defects better. In other words hides poor sheetrock installation. Red flag! Any other color changes $200 ea. This was final straw. Got my agent involved and have voided contract with full refund due to being hopelessly deadlocked on differences. Many other issues including bldr. having selective memory. Moral: Have bldr. put any and every allowance, how many color choices you have, upgrade fees, cost of any additions, how much credit for deletions. In other words cross every T and dot every I. Thereafter, any statement your bldr. makes in relation to your house. Put it in writing and have him sign. If your bldr. balks or refuses, run, don't walk and never doubt your decision. Seems some in the business are very clever at deception and have selective memory loss by claiming they never said that or agreed to that. Been there.

No way I would agree to that much of an "upcharge." That figure is nearly equal to the TOTAL amount we paid (including paint and supply costs) to have the interior of our 3200 sq foot house painted including the ceilings! And we used eight (8) different colors including a deep red-brown that required a dark grey primer and still had to be coated about six time to finally come out looking even. Plus several of our rooms have accent walls that had to be rolled instead of sprayed. In fact, we used that deep red brown for an accent wall in the dining room and for a pony wall in the kitchen so our painters brushed and rolled those walls at least 7 times. Once for the special dark grey primer and then 6 coats of paint.

Sounds to me like your builder plans to spray paint everything the same color...which is very quick and very easy. So he has given you an upcharge figure to scare you away from forcing him to have to hire someone to do any brush/roller work.

Take the basic paint that's included in your contract, then paint it yourself in the color you want. It's been a while since I painted a room, but paint is less than $50/gallon, and it's not rocket science to get it on the walls -- especially if you do it before you do it before you move in your furniture.

I agree with MrsPete. And if you didn't want to paint it yourself, you could hire someone to paint a handful of walls for substantially less than your builder is charging for this change.

Builders like flat paint because it's easy to touch up, so if someone dings a wall after the painting is done, they can touch up the spot, instead of repainting the whole wall, like you'd need to do with eggshell to make it perfect. I wouldn't assume that a builder intends to have sloppy sheetrock just because they like flat paint.

This post was edited by zone4newby on Sat, Jul 13, 13 at 15:34

I can remember when rollers were prohibited in specifications, now spray painting is allowed. Painting it yourself might raise the quality as well as allow color experimentation. Benjamin Moore sells small samples.

I have a question re: paint in a home. This is kind of related to the original poster wanting multiple colors on different rooms.

My painter who redid many of our rooms before putting our home on the market suggested we paint our new home we are building all one color to start and then to wait at least a year to paint with colors after the home settles. He claims that with settlement of the home there will be cracks and you may have to do it again anyway.

Is this something that any of you who have built homes already have seen?? Just wondering.

Zoe52 - when our builder did his one year inspection he had the painter come through and fix any cracks and raised nail heads, etc. he then repainted the areas that were fixed. I don't know if this is standard practice or not.

Re the original posting. Our builder charged 1,500 to paint the downstairs (1,000 square feet) 3 different colors. This was the last upgrade that pushed us over our target but were so happy we had our house painted before we moved in.

Our contract allows for 3 colors and then $250 for each additional color.