97% of NZ painter reviews are five stars. The most common complaint is a painter who never turned up.

Choosing a house painter by the star rating means choosing between businesses that are, to the nearest tenth of a star, the same. Top5.nz looked at 5,726 Google ratings for the 201 painters it ranks across New Zealand. 97% are five stars. Nine painters in ten are rated 4.8 or higher, and the median is a perfect 5.0. No other trade that works on houses gets five stars as often: plumbers, builders and roofers are all at about 92%.

So we read the reviews behind the ratings, sorting every review rated one to three stars and the 400 most recent positive ones against a fixed list of themes.

What a five-star painter review says

The finish is what people describe most, in 57% of positive reviews. Four in ten name the job: an exterior repaint, a lounge and hallway, a roof, a villa. A third mention communication, and a third say the painter turned up when promised. The preparation, the washing, sanding, filling and priming before any colour goes on, is described in 11%.

A review is written when the job is done, and on that day a finish looks the same whether or not the boards under it were prepped. The one review in nine that describes the preparation is describing the part that decides whether the job lasts five years or fifteen. About one positive review in four says nothing you could check at all.

What the complaints are about

Not the paint, mostly. Of the 77 reviews rated one to three stars, 28 describe a job that never started or never finished: a no-show for the quote, a quote promised and never sent, or a job postponed, dropped for bigger work, or left part done. For 15 of them that was the whole complaint. Conduct is the most common single theme, and in about half of those cases no painting had happened. Four of the 77 are about how a signwritten company vehicle was driven. Faults with the paintwork itself appear in 29%.

What painter reviews never say

Price comes up in 23% of positive reviews, but only 1.5% say the final bill matched the quote. Four in ten reviews name a tradesperson by first name, and an undisclosed subcontractor is the complaint in 6% of the low ones, so the name in the review and the name on the ladder are not always the same person. Lead paint is mentioned in nine positive reviews out of 3,951.

So ask the painter directly: is the quote fixed, who will be on the job, and, on an older house, do they test for lead before sanding. The reviews will not say.

The full analysis, with the method and the numbers behind every figure here, is on Top5.nz.

Top5.nz ranks New Zealand tradespeople and professionals from public review data using a published method. No business can pay for a place in its rankings.