A Guide to The Best Painters In Manhattan: Understanding ‘Top Painters’ Lists
Finding the best of the best is our goal. As painters, we enjoy surveying the home improvement market to provide insightful options while learning about other businesses. Manhattan is our target area, so in a bid to understand the competition better, we tried to identify the best local painting company. Unlike our NYC Post, besides Yelp, we have also conducted our research on Angie’s List & on Kev’s Best.
Best Manhattan Painters in Yelp
Here is where it counts — how customers feel. Yelp relies on a superb technology to show only the most relevant, trustworthy and authentic reviews for each business. But, if one wanted to rely on Yelp to find the best local painters, their search results may be misleading. In particular, Yelp seems to prioritize listings of paid advertisers. So, if an advertiser is paying Yelp, their listing is often placed above all other businesses - regardless of how much this is deserves, how many reviews it has or the average number of stars the business has. Secondly, Yelp algorithms often include businesses that are located out of a particular geographic area. Yes, businesses can target many areas with their services, but if one wishes to hire a truly local business, Yelp results often seem misleading.
To counter the above mentioned disadvantages, we manually reviewed all Yelp painting-related listings in Manhattan and used a very strict criteria to find truly the best painting company.
Criteria for finding the best Manhattan painters on Yelp:
The painting business must have a 5-stars average on Yelp- sorry 4.5 stars businesses; you are good, but not the best!
The painting business must be located in Manhattan - sorry New Jersey, sorry Brooklyn & Queens.
The business must have at least 10 reviews on Yelp. The number is somewhat arbitrary, but our findings show 10 is a good number to support the 5-stars average.
Out of 160+ Manhattan painting businesses displayed on Yelp, only 6 qualify to be named the best:
Manhattan Painters. 5 stars on Yelp.
Recent Review: Brett was able to come in, give an estimate (which was 100% accurate), and start work the next day. It only took a day and a half, and the whole process from starting to talk until the end was literally 1 week.
The paint looks amazing, and my apartment looks totally fresh, crisp, and new.
I was amazed with communication, accuracy in quote, efficiency in getting the job done, and how well it was done.
Brener Construction. 5 stars on Yelp.
Recent Review: We hired Brener Construction for a relatively significant renovation (Kitchen, floors, minor demo, etc...) and found Gal & Amos to be reliable and trustworthy. They worked with us through some change orders and unexpected issues and made sure that we were completely thrilled with the finished project. I would absolutely recommend them to anyone.
212 Painter. 5 stars on Yelp.
Recent Review: Hired Damian and his team to paint my son's new condo in Brooklyn. Damian was extremely professional to work with, started the job on time and finished early, and did an excellent job painting. It was a pleasure working with them!
A&D Construction. 5 stars on Yelp.
Recent Review: They turned out to be a full, one-stop shop solution for the work. And most importantly, they were quick, on time and their work quality is great. Because of COVID, the renovation has to be on hold for a few months. They came back to continue the work as soon as we entered into Phase 1 in NYC.
Lexington Painting. 5 stars on Yelp.
Recent Review: Very nice to deal with, they were very responsive and professional. They were flexible with timing and got the job done quickly. The paint job was perfect. I will definitely use them again and I highly recommend them.
Jerry’s Painting Services. 5 stars on Yelp.
Recent Review: We bought a couch that did not easily fit down our narrow interior hallway. To get it into our living room, the delivery people were forced to wedge it through. Well, naturally the 100-year-old plaster wall was damaged from this and we needed to fix it ASAP. I found Jerry on Yelp and he reached out within an hour.
The list above contains truly outstanding Manhattan painting companies that have been in business for a while, but maintain 5-stars ratings and have a decent number of good authentic reviews.
Best Manhattan Painters on Angie’s List
The apparent search bar greets you, where you can type in “best painters in Manhattan” or you could scroll down and locate “Painting & Staining” under popular services. Either option will take you to a more detailed page where you must specify whether it’s interior or exterior painting, wallpapering, paint removal or cleaning, etc.
We’re painters too; we know customers expect this list of services from every painting business, and it felt like an unnecessary added step. If that wasn’t off-putting enough, the need to specify which area needs painting, such as doors, fireplace, trim, and others, is frankly annoying. Let’s say you selected the ceiling- the next part of your experience as a user is a real kicker.
You would expect to see all the information you need once you have painstakingly selected the area requiring a paint job. However, Angie’s List has a questionnaire to be filled in before showing any results. At this point, we’re close to shutting the browser. Nonetheless, fueled by our passion for finishing this research; we press on- but this navigation experience needs work.
According to a survey done by consumerreports.org, Angie’s List rates its listing (or painting business, in this case) by providing a grade ranging from A to F like a report card. When the painting business has two reviews and an average B grade, they are eligible for advertising but must offer discounts and coupons to help with the ranking system. The survey states an increased exposure for current performing listings is unfair because it gains 12 times more profile views than a listing that doesn’t pay for ads. Interestingly enough, 70% of the company’s revenue comes from paid advertising.
Forbes did a follow-up article with the headline “Why Consumer Reports Says You Can’t Trust Angie’s List” where founder and CEO of Angie’s List, Angie Hicks, said the platform was built on fairness and transparency. She went on to say that the company puts itself through an outside audit to ensure fairness in its data-handling. The company’s investment disclosures state, “we cannot guarantee the accuracy of our review” in its 2017 annual report.
Angie’s List has no competitive edge in user experience or results; thus it’s probably best to disqualify it’s search results entirely.
Best Manhattan Painters on Kev’s Best
Although not an online-rating services platform, Kev’s Best offers fuss-free information that’s digestible to new users. You can tell this platform is engaged in quick SEO play because articles are categorized by State where you’ll find various topics in the following format: Top 5 (Services Business) in (State). When searching for the best painters in Manhattan, the article “5 Best Painters in New York” pops up.
Before revealing the 5 best painting businesses, Kev’s Best provides a backlink to a long set of key factors on how Kev’s Best reviews these businesses. It states that they publish articles about the best businesses and that they can’t pay to be listed. Since this is not an online-serving rating platform, there is no list of reviews to go through, and all listing details have been provided on the write-up. Since the results are one-off (not updated regularly), we find them unreliable and not worth trusting.
The answer to your question?
Based on our observations, Angie’s List or Kev’s Best cannot be trusted to find the best painter in Manhattan. As mentioned above, consumers do not trust Angie’s List. As for Kev’s best, it’s results seem to be random, outdated and subpar, not even closely following the consumer sentiment.
Yelp with it’s superb review system seems to be providing the most comprehensive overview of painting businesses in Manhattan. While it also seems to prioritize paying businesses in any search results, our approach above helped us to establish some of the best painting businesses in Manhattan.
So, here is our ultimate list of best painting companies in Manhattan again:
Manhattan Painters. 5 stars on Yelp.
Brener Construction. 5 stars on Yelp.
212 Painter. 5 stars on Yelp.
A&D Construction. 5 stars on Yelp.
Lexington Painting. 5 stars on Yelp.
Jerry’s Painting Services. 5 stars on Yelp.
We hope this compilation helps cut your search time in half and get you to the best painters in Manhattan. Feel free to contact all the painting companies above, but we hope you would also consider getting a quote from us.