Can I put the EPA Lead-Safe logo on my painting website?

Yes, if your painting company holds current EPA firm certification. The Lead-Safe Certified Firm logo belongs to the firm, not to a painter with a renovator card, and EPA’s guidelines allow it on websites, trucks, bids and invoices as long as your firm certification number stays legible. Use the custom file EPA emailed you. Without firm certification, the logo stays off the site, and so do offers of pre-1978 prep work.

Reviewed on 2026-10-13 against the federal rule text, EPA’s logo guidance and two state programs. EPA updates these pages; check the dates on them before relying on a detail.

What the logo actually certifies

The logo, in EPA’s words, “identifies a firm as certified under the Lead Renovation, Repair and Painting (RRP) Rule.” That rule covers paid work that disturbs paint in housing built before 1978 and in child-occupied facilities.

Painting is in the rule’s own definition of a renovation: “surface preparation activity (such as sanding, scraping, or other such activities that may generate paint dust).” EPA’s contractor page lists the trades it means, “Special trade contractors, including painters, plumbers, carpenters and electricians,” and adds “This includes all firms, even sole proprietorships.”

What falls outside, per the rule and EPA’s contractor page:

• Homes built in 1978 or later.
• Minor jobs that disturb 6 square feet or less of painted surface per room inside, or 20 square feet or less outside. Window replacement and demolition never count as minor, and jobs in the same room within 30 days count as one job.
• Components a certified inspector or risk assessor has found lead-free, or that a certified renovator has tested with an EPA-recognized kit or paint chip samples.
• Housing for the elderly or people with disabilities, and studio-type “0-bedroom” units, unless a child under 6 lives there or is expected to.

So a crew that only repaints new subdivisions doesn’t need firm certification for that work. A crew that scrapes and repaints a 1950s ranch needs it before it takes the job or offers it on its website. Showing the logo is still optional, as the FAQ below explains.

The firm certificate, not your card

The RRP rule has two certifications, and only one of them unlocks the logo.

EPA’s logo FAQ is direct: “Firms that are not RRP-certified may not use the Logo.” A sole proprietor who took the course but never applied as a firm has a card and no logo. The rule also requires a certified renovator to be assigned to every covered job, so a firm needs both.

EPA says applications take “a week or two,” and the approval email “will include a personalized ‘Lead-Safe Certified Firm’ logo and instructions for its use.” That custom file is the only version you should put on a page.

Advertising the work before you’re certified

The RRP rule doesn’t only regulate the job. 40 CFR 745.81(a)(2)(ii) says no firm may “perform, offer, or claim to perform renovations” in pre-1978 target housing without EPA firm certification. EPA’s contractor page puts it in plain words: “Firms cannot advertise or perform renovation activities covered by the RRP Rule in homes or child-occupied facilities built before 1978 without firm certification.”

On a painting website, these phrases are offers of covered work:

• “Exterior scraping and repainting for older and historic homes”
• “Cabinet refinishing, we sand and repaint” on a page aimed at homeowners in an older neighborhood
• “Lead-safe painting” or “RRP compliant” in a title tag or Google Business Profile description
• A service area page built around a neighborhood whose housing is mostly pre-1978

If the firm certificate is pending, write the pages for newer homes and commercial work first, and add the older-home pages when the approval email arrives.

EPA’s rules for showing the logo on a page

Here are EPA’s guidelines, applied to the places a painting company’s site uses them.

EPA’s list of approved places names “web sites” next to brochures, proposals, bills, signs, uniforms and vehicles, so the site, the truck and the estimate PDF can all carry the same file. EPA also says it “will monitor the use of all logos” and takes reports of misuse at 1-800-424-LEAD.

What customers check

EPA points homeowners to a searchable database to “locate lead-safe certified firms near you,” and to its hotline at 1-800-424-LEAD. A careful buyer with a 1940s house can type your firm’s name and see whether the certificate is real and current.

That makes the website the place to answer the check before it’s made. In our view, a service page for older homes works better with three things near the top:

1. The firm certification number in text, and the logo beside it.
2. One sentence on what changes for pre-1978 homes: containment, cleanup and the “Renovate Right” pamphlet you hand over before the job.
3. The year cutoff, stated plainly: “Homes built before 1978.”

The rule bans some of the shortcuts buyers ask about, like open-flame burning of painted surfaces, power sanding without a HEPA-equipped shroud, and heat guns at 1,100 degrees Fahrenheit or more. Saying so on the page answers a question before the estimate visit.

Authorized states run their own program

EPA runs the RRP program everywhere except where it has authorized a state or Tribe to run its own. EPA lists 15 states and one Tribe: Alabama, Delaware, Georgia, Iowa, Kansas, Massachusetts, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Oregon, Rhode Island, Utah, Vermont, Washington, Wisconsin, and the Bois Forte Band in Minnesota.

We read two of them for this post:

• Wisconsin. The Department of Health Services says “Any company that offers to conduct renovation work must be a certified lead company,” subcontractors included, and that companies “must be certified before even offering to conduct work.” A certificate can take up to 15 days after applying. DHS also recommends you “Include your lead-safe certifications in your advertising, such as on yard signs, brochures, and websites.”
• Washington. WAC 365-230-360 says “No firm may perform, offer, or claim to perform renovations for compensation” covered activities “without first being certified by the department.”

Both use the same “offer” language as the federal rule. The EPA logo identifies EPA certification, so a firm certified only by one of these states should show its state certification and number and ask the state program about marks. The other 13 states and the Tribe were not checked for this post. EPA also notes that a firm working across state lines “may need both EPA and state certification.”

What happens if the claim isn’t true

The rule says breaking it is a violation of the Toxic Substances Control Act, and violators “may be subject to civil and criminal sanctions” for each violation. The maximum civil penalty under that section is $49,772 per violation, for violations after November 2, 2015 where the penalty is assessed on or after January 8, 2025. That is the ceiling, not a typical amount.

For scale, one recent case: in June 2025 EPA’s Philadelphia region settled with a Pennsylvania kitchen remodeling firm for $2,000. EPA alleged three jobs in homes built in 1956, 1958 and 1961 done without firm certification, without trained workers, without the pamphlet sign-off and without work-practice records. That firm wasn’t a painting contractor, and we found no EPA case brought over a logo or an ad alone. The rule still reaches the offer, not only the job.

Painting contractors who get asked for a license number on every ad face the same idea at the state level: see Texas license number advertising rules and Florida contractor advertising rules. If your older-home work is concentrated in a few neighborhoods, service area pages are where the number and the year cutoff belong.

Start with the firm certificate and the custom file EPA sends with it. After that, the logo is a one-line footer edit, and LocalBiz can build the pages that need it.