Guides

Should you quote a job from photos?

By Ashton Foran, director. Published 27th August 2026. Updated 6th September 2026.

Quote from photos for the jobs where the photo shows the whole risk: a room to repaint, a run of fence, a bathroom you can see all of. Do not quote from photos where the cost hides in what the camera cannot show, like damp, old wiring or the state of the plaster underneath. Ask for six specific shots and attach one assumption line to the price.

An hour across town, an hour looking, an hour back, for a job you have maybe a one in three chance of winning. Do that three times a week and you have given away most of a working day.

Quoting from photos gets that day back. It also loses people money, which is why plenty of good tradespeople will not do it.

The difference is knowing which jobs it suits and what to write down when you send the price.

When photos are enough

Photos work when the job is visible and the surfaces behind it are sound.

• A repaint where the walls are in decent order
• Anything you price by counting: rooms, doors, windows, radiators
• Work you have done a hundred versions of, where you already know the hours
• A customer who can tell you what was done last time and when

When photos will cost you

Photos flatten a room and they hide everything under the surface. These are the ones that turn a tidy quote into an argument on day two.

• Anything behind the finish. Damp, rot, filler over old cracks, three layers of wallpaper. A photograph of a painted wall shows you a painted wall
• Access. Stairwells, tall halls, anywhere you need a tower rather than a ladder. Nobody ever photographs the awkward bit
• Ceiling height. A phone camera makes every room look standard height. A four metre hall does not price like a bedroom
• What is already on it. Whether the last coat was oil or water based decides how many coats you are doing, and no photo will tell you
• Very old properties. Surfaces are rarely what they appear and prep is rarely what you allowed for

If the job is on that list, the photos are still worth having. They just tell you whether the trip is worth making rather than replacing it.

How to ask for photos you can price from

Most useless photos are useless because nobody said what to take. Tell them which shots you want.

• One wide shot from the doorway, so you can see the whole room and how it is laid out
• Close ups of anything damaged, and the walls either side of it
• Something for scale in the frame. A door is a known height and it is the quickest way to size a wall
• A shot from each end if the room is long, because one photo never covers it
• The ceiling and the skirting in at least one shot
• The windows and frames, which people forget are part of the job
• Daylight, curtains open, main light on. Dark photos hide exactly the things that cost you

Six decent photos beat twenty bad ones, and it takes a customer under a minute.

The three questions to ask alongside

Photos answer what it looks like. These answer what it is.

• When was it last done, and by whom?
• Has anything ever leaked, damp or otherwise?
• Is there anything you would want me to see in person?

That last one does more work than it looks. People tell you about the patch in the corner when you invite it, and they say nothing if you do not ask.

The line that makes it safe

Never send a photo price as a flat number. Send it with the assumption written beside it.

This price assumes the walls are sound underneath. If we open it up and find damp or old paper, I will ring you with the difference before I go any further.

One sentence. It keeps the quote honest, it protects your margin, and customers do not object to it because it sounds like someone who has done the job before.

Without that line it is a guess with a number on it.

Doing it with no tools at all

You can run all of this through WhatsApp this afternoon and it costs nothing. Ask for the shots above, ask the three questions, send the price with the assumption attached.

It starts to get messy at volume. Photos spread across a dozen chats, answers in one thread and the address in another, and no record of what you quoted when they ring back in November.

That is the only thing worth paying to fix, and only once the volume is real.

When it is worth a tool

We built one for exactly that point, and it runs on a painter's site in Cork. You send the customer a link, they photograph the job and answer a few taps on their phone, and it lands in your inbox as one email with the photos, their answers and their number, ready to price.

It never puts a price on anything. Software cannot see the prep behind a photograph, and a wrong automatic price costs you the job or the margin. You look, you price, you answer.

How the photo quote tool works · Get a free quote