Commercial painting covers interior and exterior work on offices, retail storefronts, restaurants, warehouses, apartment buildings, and other properties where a business or landlord is the client rather than a homeowner. In New London that ranges from repainting a storefront on the water to touching up a multi-unit apartment building or coating a warehouse floor and walls between tenants. The scope is usually bigger than a residential job, the surfaces are more varied (drywall, block, metal siding, concrete), and the work often has to happen around a tenant's operating hours, which is where scheduling and crew size start to matter as much as paint quality.
What the work usually includes
- Surface prep: pressure washing, scraping, sanding, patching drywall or stucco, and priming bare or damaged areas
- Interior repaints of offices, common areas, hallways, and units between tenants
- Exterior repaints of siding, trim, stucco, or masonry, including caulking and minor rot repair
- Specialty coatings, such as epoxy for warehouse or garage floors, fire-rated paint, or graffiti-resistant finishes
- Line striping and signage prep for parking lots and loading areas
What to check before you hire
- Commercial experience specifically: a crew that's good at houses isn't automatically set up for a 20,000 sq ft office building or the liability that comes with it
- Insurance and licensing: ask for proof of general liability and workers' comp before anyone sets foot on the property, not after
- Written scope and timeline: how many coats, what prep is included, and how they'll work around your business hours or tenants
- References from similar jobs: a property manager or business owner who can speak to how the crew handled a live building, not just a finished photo
- Warranty terms: what's covered if paint peels or fades early, and for how long
We track 9 commercial painting businesses serving New London and score them on factors like review consistency, responsiveness, and how well they handle the specifics of commercial jobs (scheduling, scale, and communication with property managers). See the full breakdown and how each business stacks up in the ranked guide to New London painters. For a plain explanation of how we calculate those scores, read our methodology.