Colorado contractor license requirements
What you need before your first paid job in Colorado, one page for each trade. The license, the least insurance you must carry, whether the state asks for a bond, when you charge sales tax, and the deadlines that protect your right to be paid.
Plumbing in Colorado
- License you need
- Residential PlumberRenews every two years today
- Insurance you must carry
- $300,000plus $100,000 for property damage
- Workers' comp
- Required
- The license period is in the middle of changing. It is two years today and the current one ends on the last day of February 2027. Licenses issued or renewed from 1 March 2027 run three years.
- Colorado licenses the person and registers the business separately. To register a plumbing contractor you must be a master plumber or employ one full time, and that master can stand behind only one company.
HVAC in Colorado
- License you need
- Heating and Ventilating Class A Supervisor Certificate (Denver)Renews every three years
- Insurance you must carry
- No state minimumcustomers usually ask for $1,000,000
- Workers' comp
- Required
- Colorado does not license HVAC work. The state's own list of licensed trades has electricians and plumbers and nothing for heating or cooling, so your license comes from the city or county you work in.
- Denver and Aurora each run their own contractor licensing, and the rules change at the city line. Ask the building department before you quote a job in a city you have not worked in.
Electrical in Colorado
- License you need
- Residential WiremanRenews every three years
- Insurance you must carry
- No state minimumcustomers usually ask for $1,000,000
- Workers' comp
- Required
- Experience is counted in hours and in years at the same time. A journeyman needs 8,000 hours spread over at least four years, and a master needs 10,000 hours over at least five.
- Two of a journeyman's four years must be commercial or industrial work, and you must show 288 hours of classroom training. A 2025 law widened the window for those hours from the last four years to the last eight, so training you had written off may still count.
Across states
Can you charge sales tax on labor? The rule in 25 states. Which states tax the work itself, which tax only the parts, and how a repair differs from a new install.