When aircraft maintenance budgets get tight, paint and interiors are the first things to get put off. This may be part of the reason our latest survey of paint shops turned up fewer top-rated shops than the one we did five years ago. Natural selection is weeding out shops that don’t deliver in quality and service. The good news for anyone with paint so tired it blends in with a canopy cover is that prices have barely moved-perhaps even dropped slightly if corrected for inflation-and there are still several high-skill shops in business around the country (with the seeming exception of the Pacific Northwest). You should be able to find a place to get great paint without crossing multiple time zones. 
Our Methodology
We polled the readership of our sister publication AVweb for owner experiences with paint shops, and then sifted through over 250 responses looking at both tangibles, such as price and meeting delivery deadlines, as we’ll as subjective perceptions such as customer service and value for the cost. This is an admittedly skewed sample as it over-represents people who got great service and want to rave, as we’ll as disgruntled customers with a bone to pick. Comparing with our previous surveys and using follow-up calls, we still see consistent trends that warrant recommendations.
Prices vary fairly widely for piston singles, with even some recent jobs going for as little as $6000, including stripping, and others reaching over $20,000. The delta seems mostly due to how much prep work and damage repair the shop had to do. By far, the fat part of the curve was at $10,000 to $12,000 for a light single to be fully stripped and repainted by most shops. Paint prices for twins start in the mid-teens and move up into the high-twenties or more, depending on the extent of the job.
Patience is more that a virtue with paint; its a survival skill. This comment about Eds Aircraft Refinishing in New York was common. “Delays in completing the project are my only gripe. Quality and communication were excellent. You can find lower cost shops, but the attention to detail was amazing.” Eds was dinged for tardiness more often than other top shops, even though quality and value was rated nine or 10 out of 10 across the board.
When projects came though exactly as planned, people made a note of it, as with this $25,000 Cessna 340 job: “Reese Aircraft delivered on time and on budget. Their workmanship and attention to detail is excellent.” There were these comments about Prestige Aircraft in Vermont, “They hit it out of the park on price, attention to detail, quality, customer relations, and timeliness” and “Prestige did what they said, when they said and for the price they said.”
We also looked at recency of the paint jobs and saw the same thing this owner mentioned: “The quality of paint shops is not constant.” He had an excellent experience with Artcraft in California less than a year ago, as were several other recent Artcraft jobs. Looking deeper at a mixed review of an Artcraft job, we saw is was several years ago: “We used [Artcraft] because it was the cheapest and could do both paint and windows. The top shops in California also had wait times of up to six months at the time. The plane still looks great as long as you don’t look too close.”
Apparent deterioration of service is why some shops that made our tops list in the past arent there today. There are also new faces, but these turned out to be small shops that do a couple of airplanes a month, such as Wiregrass: “Workmanship and realistic advice on costs of elaborate designs, excellent workmanship and attention to detail. Though hard to schedule and not email savvy, he was on time and on