Permits and rules for commercial painting in the Florida Keys

Florida does not run a painting license. Section 489.117 of the Florida Statutes names painting and pressure washing among the scopes for which a city or county may not demand a license, and it bars a local license as a condition of getting a permit for them. Local occupational licenses issued before 2021 lapsed on July 1, 2025, under s. 163.211.

One narrow exception covers tall roofs. A local government that held a license before January 1, 2021 may keep it for rooftop painting, coating and cleaning above three stories. We check for it on any job with a roof above that height.

Section 489.105 makes a general contractor's license unlimited as to the kind of work. Romco Builders is a licensed Florida general contractor, which helps when a repaint comes bundled with repair work.

Islamorada has put it in writing. The village's list of work that needs no permit includes painting of commercial buildings, provided no signage is part of the project. The same list says a permit is always required for roofing over one roofing square, for structural work and for anything tied to floodplain rules. The list says it may not cover every situation, so a repaint with repairs goes to the department first.

Key West reviews color in its historic district. The city's Minor Projects application for a Certificate of Appropriateness has a table for painting or repainting, with each element's current and proposed color. A city notice says that from March 10, 2025 the Certificate is filed separately from the building permit, and another city page says the two are being combined, so we ask which process is in use.

For Marathon, Key Colony Beach and unincorporated Monroe County we found no published painting rule. Marathon lists commercial permit forms on its Building page, and Key Colony Beach lists its own Building Department. The county's 2026 permit exemption covers single-family dwellings only, so it does not reach a commercial building. We call the office for the parcel and keep the answer in the job file.

Two federal rules touch old paint. EPA's lead rule for renovation, repair and painting covers paid work that disturbs paint in pre-1978 homes and in child-occupied facilities. That second category can be a room inside a commercial building: a day care, preschool or kindergarten class that the same child under six attends regularly.

When EPA's rule applies, only an EPA-certified firm may do the job, and it must follow lead-safe work practices. Tiny jobs are excused: no more than 6 square feet of painted surface in a room indoors, or 20 square feet outdoors, so long as no banned method is used. EPA itself runs this program in Florida, which has not taken it over.

The second rule protects workers. OSHA's lead standard for construction, 29 CFR 1926.62, applies anywhere a worker could be exposed to lead, and it lists painting as construction work. An older wood building in Key West is the clearest example.

On a scaffold, OSHA requires fall protection once a worker stands more than 10 feet over the level below. A swing stage or other suspended scaffold calls for two things together: a personal fall arrest system and a guardrail. A competent person has to supervise putting any scaffold up, moving it and taking it down.

A worker in an aerial lift wears a body belt with a lanyard clipped to the boom or basket. For an open edge, OSHA's general duty to protect starts at 6 feet.

Rope access puts a duty on the building's owner. Under 29 CFR 1910.27, the owner must confirm to the employer in writing, before a rope descent system is used, that every anchorage has been identified, tested, certified and maintained. That rests on a yearly inspection and a certification at least once in ten years. For rope work we ask for those papers at the scoping stage.

Florida's section 553.899 sets a milestone inspection for a condominium or cooperative of three or more habitable stories. It is due by the end of the year the building turns 30, then every 10 years. Where the local agency finds conditions such as salt-water proximity, it can pull the first inspection forward to 25 years.

Section 718.112 makes every condominium budget set money aside for building painting. For buildings that qualify, the structural integrity reserve study also lists waterproofing and exterior painting. What those reports find often settles what gets repaired before anything is painted.

The Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary has its own rule. Under 15 CFR 922.163, discharging or depositing material into sanctuary waters from within its boundary is prohibited, apart from a short list that includes fishing bait, routine vessel deck wash-down and graywater, and cooling water. Discharges that start beyond the boundary and injure a sanctuary resource are also prohibited, with exceptions that include discharges authorized by Monroe County land use permits or state permits.

We did not find a rule written for building wash water in the Keys. Florida DEP says discharging wastewater to stormwater systems without a permit is prohibited, and the sanctuary rule reaches the water itself. Our standard is simple: wash water, paint chips and rinse stay out of storm drains, canals and the ground, and the scope says how they are captured.

Waste is the contractor's job. Monroe County's solid waste page says businesses must arrange service with local providers, and that household hazardous waste collections run only several times a year. Leftover coatings, solvent rags and containers are sorted and removed on our schedule, not the county's.

Monroe County owns and runs both Key West International and Florida Keys Marathon International, and says each holds FAA Part 139 certification. Who may work where is a matter of federal security law. Under 49 CFR 1542, a person entering a secured area unescorted needs a fingerprint-based criminal history check and must show the airport's ID, or else be escorted.

The airport operator issues the badges and sets the escort rules, and that happens before any work date is fixed. We found no public contractor-badging page for either airport, so we put the question to the operator.