Will AI replace Painting, Coating, and Decorating Workers?
AI reaches little of this job’s work.
5/100
Low exposure
More exposed to AI than 11% of US workers.
- AI already used in
- 0% of the work
- As AI tools mature: up to
- 11% of the work
What the job involves
Paint, coat, or decorate articles, such as furniture, glass, plateware, pottery, jewelry, toys, books, or leather.
Where AI reaches the work
The job’s main tasks, heaviest first, by how far AI reaches them.
Within reach(1)
- Select and mix ingredients to prepare coating substances according to specifications, using paddles or mechanical mixers.
Out of reach(8)
- Apply coatings, such as paint, ink, or lacquer, to protect or decorate workpiece surfaces, using spray guns, pens, or brushes.
- Examine finished surfaces of workpieces to verify conformance to specifications and retouch any defective areas.
- Clean and maintain tools and equipment, using solvents, brushes, and rags.
- Read job orders and inspect workpieces to determine work procedures and materials required.
- Clean surfaces of workpieces in preparation for coating, using cleaning fluids, solvents, brushes, scrapers, steam, sandpaper, or cloth.
and 3 more
Also called
Decorator · Glazer · Painter · Spray Painter · Hand Painter · Glass Decorator · Balloon Dipper · Brush Painter
Related jobs
What these numbers mean
The score is the share of this job’s work, weighted by how important and frequent each task is, that AI could do in half the time: tasks an AI model could do alone count in full, tasks that need software built on AI count half.
“AI already used” is the share of the work in tasks where people are recorded using AI today. “As AI tools mature” counts every task AI could halve, with or without extra software.
The percentile compares the score with every job’s, weighted by how many people in the US do each one. Exposure means AI could change how the work is done, not that the job goes away. These are estimates for the typical job, not predictions.
Sources
- O*NET 31.0 Database, U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration
- GPTs are GPTs: Labor market impact potential of LLMs (task labels), Eloundou, Manning, Mishkin & Rock (2023), OpenAI and University of Pennsylvania
- Anthropic Economic Index: labor market impacts (task penetration), Anthropic
- Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025 (national and metropolitan areas), U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics