Painting Richmond

Repainting Richmond, where half the houses are somebody's rental

Half of Richmond rents, and the municipal code tells those owners when to repaint: before the exterior finish has substantially deteriorated. Since January 2025 every rental unit in the city sits on a three-year inspection cycle, and flaking paint is one of the things a notice lists. Owner-occupied houses answer to a different section, the public nuisance list, which names checking, cracking, peeling and chalking outright.

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  • Rules on this page checked against 15 public sources, October 2026
Repaint rule for rentals
RMC 6.40.040: before the finish substantially deteriorates
Rental inspection cycle
Every three years citywide, under Ordinance 02-25 of January 2025
Share of residents renting
50 percent, by the city's adopted 2023-2031 housing element
Permit for a repaint
None: RMC 6.02 exempts painting, papering and finish work

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Free to request, and you agree the scope and price with the person you hire before work starts. In California, a job over $1,000 in labor and materials, or one that needs a building permit, must be done by a contractor licensed by the CSLB in the right class. Ask for the license number and check it at cslb.ca.gov.

Richmond from the air, seen from above the west end of the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge
Richmond from the air, seen from above the west end of the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge. Photo: Dicklyon, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
A painter in white overalls on a ladder, brushing paint along the top edge of a gray wall
A painter in white overalls on a ladder, brushing paint along the top edge of a gray wall. Photo: Lukeroberts, CC BY-SA 2.5, via Wikimedia Commons.

The houses here

Shipyard-decade walls, Victorian streets at the Point

Census figures in the city's housing needs assessment put 13,661 Richmond homes in the 1940 to 1959 window, about 35 percent of the stock against 19 percent across Contra Costa County, with another 4,547 already standing in 1939 or earlier. That is where the brushwork is. Atchison Village, the 1941 defense housing beside the shipyard, is described by the Park Service as single-story Minimal Traditional in wood and stucco, with multi-pane double-hung sash in wood or metal frames: trim, sash and stucco crowded onto one small elevation, every coat of it older than the federal 1978 line. The city's visitor page calls the look at Point Richmond Victorian. Newer work exists, 8,508 units from 1980 to 1999 by the same table, but it is not what a Richmond quote usually lands on.

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The work

Five paint calls this city keeps generating

  1. The repaint a fail notice asks for

    Chapter 6.40's exterior standards read as maintenance rather than decoration. Walls must be weathertight and watertight and free of deterioration, holes, breaks or loose coverings; cornices, moldings, lintels and sills must be in good repair; glazing sound; exterior doors weathertight and rodent-proof. The paint clause is second on that list, and it says that where the exterior finish is paint or stain the building is to be repainted or re-stained before that finish has substantially deteriorated. Scope reaches driveways, landscaping, accessory structures and fences on the same parcel, so a shed and a side fence can end up in the same job as the house.

  2. Prep on a house from the shipyard decades

    The two decades that built most of this city fall entirely on the older side of the federal 1978 cutoff, so paid prep work routinely sits inside EPA's renovation rule: the firm certified by EPA, the renovator trained in its practices, containment up before a scraper touches anything. Outdoors that means sheeting on the ground, windows shut nearby, no open-flame removal, and a shroud with a HEPA vacuum on any power sander. Richmond's adopted housing element includes a program to develop lead-based paint and asbestos abatement for older housing and to seek grant funding for it, which says something about the share of the stock involved.

  3. Where the wash water and the rinse end up

    The Water Resource Recovery division publishes its own instruction for this trade. Clean latex equipment in a sink connected to the sanitary sewer. Paint brushes and rollers out as far as they will go before washing them. Reuse solvents on oil-based work and take what is left to the hazardous waste facility. Never wash equipment into a gutter, a street or a storm drain. Chapter 12.22 stands behind the advice: it prohibits non-stormwater discharges to the city system, and its list of exempt discharges runs to things like residential car washing, pool water and lawn irrigation, with nothing resembling paint on it.

  4. Picking a new color inside an -H district

    The zoning code puts four historic overlay districts on Richmond's map, and Point Richmond is the residential one. Its maintenance article does not block ordinary maintenance or repair of an exterior feature so long as nothing changes in design, material or appearance, and then it answers the question a repaint actually raises: a change in existing paint color is not construed as a change in appearance or design unless that color was reviewed and approved as part of a previous discretionary review. Swapping the cladding itself is another matter, and the same article leaves a standing duty to keep the exterior in good repair.

  5. What the scraper turns up on 1940s siding

    Scraping doubles as a survey. The city's nuisance list names dry rot, warping and termite infestation in the same sentence as an exterior finish gone far enough to permit decay, excessive checking, cracking, peeling and chalking, so soft wood found mid-prep is a repair rather than something to coat over. Worth knowing where the permit line sits before the quote is written: painting and papering are exempt from a building permit, as is replacing a window with another of the same shape and size, while new siding, framing repairs and a reshaped opening are not.

Permits and local rules

Four Richmond papers a paint quote runs into

  1. Chapter 6.40's additional exterior standards

    The Residential Rental Dwelling Unit Inspection and Maintenance chapter covers every existing rental unit inside the city limits, with parking lots, driveways, landscaping, accessory structures and fences named in its scope. Beyond whatever code was in force when a house was built, it adds exterior standards of its own, and the second of the nine is the finish: maintained, and repainted or re-stained before substantial deterioration. The trigger is condition, not an interval, which is why two identical houses on one street can be due at different times. The chapter is supplementary to the city's other housing, property-maintenance and nuisance ordinances rather than a replacement for them.

    Richmond Municipal Code 6.40.040 (opens in a new tab)

  2. The inspection program that enforces it

    The Building Division runs the Residential Rental Inspection Program under that chapter. On January 7, 2025 the City Council passed Ordinance No. 02-25 N.S., ending self-certification, widening the units covered, putting every rental dwelling unit on a three-year inspection cycle and adding yearly registration and processing fees to the per-unit inspection fee. A unit that fails gets a notice listing each substandard condition with a date for re-inspection, and the division explains that the time allowed varies: short for life-safety items such as unstable stairs or exposed wiring, longer for non-safety items, where its own worked example is peeling paint.

    Source: City of Richmond Building Division (ci.richmond.ca.us)

  3. Paint color under the historic overlay

    Article 15.04.303 establishes the -H overlay districts, names Point Richmond, Winehaven, the Richmond Shipyards and the Civic Center, and defines an exterior architectural feature to take in the kind, color and texture of the building materials. Its maintenance and upkeep section lays a duty on owners to keep structures in good repair, and defines disrepair to include unreasonable deterioration of exterior walls, plaster or mortar and ineffective waterproofing. It then exempts ordinary maintenance that alters neither design, material nor appearance, and states that a change in existing paint color is not such a change unless the color came from an earlier discretionary approval.

    Richmond Municipal Code 15.04.303.140 (opens in a new tab)

  4. Flaking paint as a specified nuisance

    Section 9.22.090 reaches any building whose exterior finish has become so deteriorated as to permit decay, excessive checking, cracking, peeling, chalking, dry rot, warping or termite infestation, where the disrepair risks harm to the public or counts as visual blight. It sits in a list that also covers a wall or fence substantially defaced by graffiti. The chapter puts the maintenance duty on every owner of real property in the city, and on occupants, lessees and anyone else holding an interest alongside them, whatever any agreement with a third party may say about who handles repairs.

    Richmond Municipal Code 9.22.090 (opens in a new tab)

State license for this work: C-33 Painting and Decorating. Look up a contractor's license on the CSLB website (cslb.ca.gov).

Part by part

Three Richmond addresses where the answer shifts

  • Point Richmond

    The oldest settlement in the city and the residential one of the four -H districts, so the duty to maintain and the certificate process both apply here. The useful part for a repaint is the exemption written into the maintenance section: a new color is not a change in appearance unless the existing one came out of a discretionary approval. Zoning Administrator review still confirms that an exemption is warranted.

  • Atchison Village

    The 1941 defense housing built for shipyard workers, which the Park Service describes as single-story Minimal Traditional in wood and stucco with multi-pane double-hung sash in wood or metal frames. It is privately owned houses under cooperative management today, so an exterior scheme is not one household's call, and every painted surface on the place predates 1978 by decades.

  • Parchester Village

    Roughly 400 houses that opened in 1950, built by Earl W. Smith, whose nickname Flat Top came from exactly the roof many of them still wear. A flat-topped house gives a painter one long horizontal fascia band and very little overhang above the wall beneath it, so the top course and the wall weather as one surface.

Timing

The clock once a notice lands

Richmond's nuisance process runs on dates. A notice of violation names the conditions and sets a period to correct them; miss it and an administrative citation can follow under Chapter 2.62 for each day the violation continues, then a noncompliance notice and order. An appeal of that order goes to a hearing officer, filed within ten calendar days with the Police Department's Code Enforcement Unit, on its own form. A hearing officer who upholds it orders abatement within ten calendar days, or longer where ten is not enough, to a limit of sixty. A rental runs on a different clock: the Building Division fixes the re-inspection date, with more time allowed for non-safety items than for life-safety ones.

Before you hire

Four things to settle with a Richmond painter

  • If the house is tenanted, ask whether the quote covers everything the exterior standards list: walls, projections, glazing, exterior doors, the fence and the shed.
  • On anything from the 1940s or 1950s, ask which renovator on the crew holds EPA renovation training, and who keeps the records afterwards.
  • Ask where brushes and rollers get rinsed. The city's own answer is a sink on the sanitary sewer, never a gutter or a storm drain.
  • Once labor and materials pass the state's thousand-dollar line, look up the C-33 Painting and Decorating number at cslb.ca.gov.

Free, no obligation. Next, add your details in the request form.

Questions

Richmond paint questions, answered from the code

Do we need a permit to repaint a house in Richmond?

Not a building permit. The city's building regulations administrative code lists painting, papering and similar finish work among the work exempted from one, in the same list as fences under six feet and replacing a window with another of the same shape and size. Two other things still apply. If the house is a rental, Chapter 6.40's exterior standards and the inspection program reach it. And inside an -H historic overlay district, work that changes design or material, as distinct from color, goes through the certificate process.

We rent out a house here. When does the city expect the exterior repainted?

The code sets the trigger by condition rather than by date: where the exterior finish is paint or stain, the building is to be repainted or re-stained before that finish has substantially deteriorated. Inspections now run every three years for every rental unit in the city, a change the City Council made with Ordinance No. 02-25 N.S. on January 7, 2025. The Building Division's own example of a non-safety item that earns a longer correction window is peeling paint.

Can the city cite us for flaking paint on a house we live in ourselves?

The nuisance chapter is written to reach it. Section 9.22.090 lists any building whose exterior finish has deteriorated enough to permit decay, excessive checking, cracking, peeling, chalking, dry rot or warping, where the disrepair risks harm to the public or amounts to visual blight. Every property owner in the city carries the maintenance duty separately. Enforcement goes from a notice of violation to administrative citations for each day the violation continues, and on to abatement the city can charge against the property.

Our house is in the Point Richmond Historic District. Does a new color need approval?

Usually not. The maintenance and upkeep section of Article 15.04.303 says a change in existing paint color is not construed as a change in appearance or design, unless that color was reviewed and approved as part of a previous discretionary review. Ordinary maintenance that alters neither design, material nor appearance is not restricted either, although the Zoning Administrator reviews whether an exemption is warranted. Change the cladding or a window opening and the certificate of appropriateness comes back into it.

What happens to the half-full cans when the job is finished?

Keep what you want for touch-ups, in the original labeled can with a tight lid. The rest goes to the West County Household Hazardous Waste Facility on Pittsburg Avenue, open Thursdays, Fridays and the first Saturday of the month, which takes leftover paint from residents at no charge and blends all of it into a primer anyone can collect in five-gallon buckets. The city also suggests donating large quantities to a school, theater or church, and putting dried brushes, rollers, tarps and empty containers in the trash.

Where these facts come from

Checked against these public sources in October 2026. Rules and programs change: confirm permit requirements with the city before work starts, and a contractor's license on the CSLB website.

Painting work in Richmond? Tell us what you see.

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