2024 Best Painting Schools in California

A degree in painting is more popular than many other degrees. In fact, it ranks #517 out of 1506 on popularity of all such degrees in the nation. As a result, there are many college that offer the degree, making your choice of school a hard one.

There was only one school in California to review for the 2024 Best Painting Schools in California ranking.

Jump to one of the following sections: * Degree-Level Rankings

• Best Overall Painting Schools List

Painting Rankings by Degree Level

The painting school you choose to invest your time and money in matters. To help you make the decision that is right for you, we've developed a number of major-specific rankings, including this list of the Best Painting Schools in California. If you'd like to restrict your choices to just one part of the country, you can filter this list by location.

In addition to our rankings, you can take two colleges and compare them based on the criteria that matters most to you in our unique tool, College Combat. Test it out when you get a chance! You may also want to bookmark the link and share it with others who are trying to make the college decision.

If you want to learn more about how we derive our rankings, see College Factual's Methodology.

Best Schools for Painting in California

If you aren't interested in a particular degree level and want to know which schools are the overall best at delivering an education for the painting degrees they offer, see the list below.

Top California Schools in Painting

1

School Removed

1

California College of the Arts
San Francisco, CA

Bachelor's Degree Highest Degree Type

California College of the Arts is one of the best schools in the United States for getting a degree in painting. California College of the Arts is a small private not-for-profit college located in the large city of San Francisco.More information about a degree in painting from California College of the Arts

Best Painting Colleges in the Far Western US Region

Explore all the Best Painting Schools in the Far Western US Area or other specific states within that region.

State	Colleges	Degrees Awarded
Washington	831	6
Oregon	587	10
Hawaii	267	0

View All Rankings >

Rankings in Majors Related to Painting

One of 13 majors within the Fine & Studio Arts area of study, Painting has other similar majors worth exploring.

Most Popular Related Majors

Related Major	Annual Graduates
Art Studies	4,220
Fine Arts	1,484
Art History	440
Jewelry Arts	125
Other Fine Arts & Art Studies	114
Intermedia/Multimedia	66
Drawing	23
Sculpture	15
Ceramic Arts & Ceramics	10
Printmaking	9

View All Painting Related Majors >

Notes and References

• The bars on the spread charts above show the distribution of the schools on this list +/- one standard deviation from the mean.
• The Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), a branch of the U.S. Department of Education (DOE) serves as the core of the rest of our data about colleges.
• Some other college data, including much of the graduate earnings data, comes from the U.S. Department of Education’s (College Scorecard).
• Removed schools reflect instances of new data identified post-publication that warrant removal of a school from this year’s ranking.
• Credit for the banner image above goes to Jorge Royan.

More about our data sources and methodologies.