Painter & Decorator Rates UK: Pricing by Room

Painter and Decorator Rates UK: Pricing by Room

A painter and decorator’s rate is really a day rate wearing a disguise. Whether you quote a set price for the lounge or a day rate, the number that matters is what you clear per working day once prep, materials and travel are accounted for. Room pricing is how customers want to buy. Day rates are how you should think.

Why customers ask for a room price

Homeowners cannot picture a day rate. They can picture a room. “How much to decorate the front bedroom?” is a question about their budget, not about your hourly cost, and if you answer with a day rate you have handed them homework they did not want.

So price by the room. Just do the arithmetic in day rates behind the scenes, then present the total. That way the customer gets the certainty they asked for and you keep control of the margin.

Work out your own day rate first

Before you can price a room you need a number to price it against. Take your target take-home pay for the year, add everything the business swallows — van, fuel, insurance, tools, phone, accountant, materials you never manage to bill on — then divide by the days you will realistically be on the tools.

That last figure is where most decorators go wrong. You are not working 250 days. Between quoting, chasing invoices, weather-hit exterior work, holidays and the odd quiet week, a busy sole trader might be productive for something closer to 200 days a year. Divide by the real number and your day rate jumps by a quarter. That gap is why decorators who feel busy still end the year short.

Rates vary widely across the UK. A decorator in central London charges a different number to one in the north-east, and both are right for their market. Ring round a few local firms as a customer and you will learn more about your area’s ceiling in an afternoon than any national average will tell you.

Building a room price from days

Once you have a day rate, pricing a room becomes a question of how many days it takes.

Walk the job, don’t guess from the doorway

Measure the room. Count the walls, note the ceiling height, check the woodwork — a room with a picture rail, deep skirting, a bay window and panelled doors is a different job to a bare box of the same floor area.

Count coats, not just surfaces

Two coats is the honest default. Going from a dark feature wall to a pale neutral may need three, or a stain block first. Fresh plaster needs a mist coat before anything else. These are not extras you discover on site; they are decisions you make while quoting, and each one costs you hours.

Add the awkward stuff

Ceilings over stairwells, high hallways, anything needing a tower or a hop-up rather than a step ladder — all of it slows you down. So does working around a family who are still living in the house.

Then convert back

Days on site multiplied by your day rate, plus materials, plus any access equipment hire. That is your room price. Present it as a single figure per room, or one total for the job, with a short line saying what is included.

Prep is where the margin goes

The single most common pricing mistake in decorating is quoting the painting and absorbing the prep.

Filling, sanding, caulking, stripping old paper, washing down greasy kitchen walls, sealing stains, easing a door that has been painted shut, masking and sheeting up — none of it shows in the finished job, and all of it takes real hours. On a tired room, prep can take as long as the painting.

Two habits fix this:

Quote prep as a visible line. Not a single lump sum for “decorate bedroom” but a short breakdown that names preparation as its own item. It stops the customer thinking the paint is the whole job, and it makes the number defensible when they compare quotes.

Write down what your price assumes. For example: sound walls, no wallpaper stripping, no plaster repairs beyond minor filling. Then, if you pull off the old paper and find blown plaster underneath, you are not arguing — you are pointing at a line you both agreed. A one-line note like “any wallpaper stripping or plaster repair quoted separately once exposed” saves days of goodwill.

Materials and mark-up

You are buying paint on a trade account, carrying it, storing it and taking the risk if a colour is wrong. Charging trade cost with nothing on top means you are running a delivery service for free.

There are two clean ways to handle it, and both are honest:

Supply and apply. You quote one price covering labour and materials. The customer sees a total and does not itemise your paint. Simplest for repeat and landlord work.

Materials at cost plus a stated handling charge. You show the paint cost and add a clearly labelled percentage. Some customers prefer this because it looks transparent, and it protects you if they change their mind on a colour.

What causes arguments is a third option: quoting labour only and letting the customer supply the paint. You have no control over quality, you get blamed when a cheap trade white needs a third coat, and you cannot stand behind the finish. If a customer insists, price the extra coats in and put in writing that the finish depends on the materials they have chosen.

Pricing repeat landlord work

Landlord and letting-agent work is a different animal to private domestic. The jobs are usually voids between tenancies, the spec is “make it lettable” rather than “make it lovely”, and the client cares about two things: cost and how fast you can be out.

That gives you levers a private job does not. You can standardise: one agreed neutral throughout, a fixed price per room type, a two-coat spec with a defined level of making good. Repeat volume and a predictable spec justify a keener price per room, because your day rate holds up when you are not re-quoting from scratch every time.

Two cautions. First, agree the making-good limit in writing before the first job — voids throw up damage, and “while you’re there” is how a fixed price becomes a loss. Second, watch the payment terms. A steady stream of work on 60-day terms can strain your cash flow harder than sporadic private jobs paid on completion.

Quoting so you actually win the work

Turn up when you said you would, quote within a couple of days, and put it in writing. A surprising number of decorating jobs are won purely because someone else never sent their quote.

Keep it short but specific: rooms covered, number of coats, what preparation is included, what is excluded, materials arrangement, rough timescale, payment terms. Add a couple of photos of similar work you have done. Then send it — and follow it up once, politely, a few days later.

Do not race to the bottom on price. If you are consistently losing on cost alone you are probably being compared with someone who has not priced their prep, and they will either cut corners or take the hit. Neither is a business you want to copy.

Where the next job comes from

Pricing well only pays if there is enough work coming through to be selective about. Decorators tend to run on word of mouth, which is brilliant until the referrals go quiet for a month.

Trade Pilot is built to fill that gap without the standing cost. It is free to join, and you only pay when a real local job lands in your inbox — no monthly fee ticking away in a slow week. Each lead is sold to a maximum of three trades in the area, so you are not one of ten decorators ringing the same homeowner within the hour. Reviews are tied to verified invoices, so the feedback on your profile reflects work you were actually paid for.

FAQ

Should I charge a day rate or a price per room?

Quote per room, think in day rates. Customers want a total they can budget against, but the room price should always be built from how many days the work will take multiplied by your day rate, plus materials.

How do I price a room I haven’t seen?

You do not. A ballpark over the phone is fine if you are clear it is a ballpark, but a firm price needs a look at the walls, the woodwork and the ceiling height. Quoting blind is how you end up eating two days of filling.

Should the customer buy the paint?

It is usually better if you do. You control the quality, you buy on trade terms, and you can stand behind the finish. If the customer insists on supplying, price for the possibility of extra coats and put that in the quote.

How much should I add for prep?

There is no fixed percentage — it depends entirely on the state of the room. The important thing is that you measure it during the walkaround and quote it as a visible item, rather than folding it invisibly into the painting price.

Is landlord work worth taking at a lower rate?

It can be, if the lower price per room is bought with repeat volume and a standardised spec. It stops being worth it when the making-good is open-ended or the payment terms stretch your cash flow.

Do I need to be VAT registered?

Only once your taxable turnover passes the £90,000 registration threshold in any rolling 12-month period, though you can register voluntarily below that. Check the current position on gov.uk, and talk to an accountant if you are close to the line — the decision affects how you price to domestic customers.

Related reading: plasterer day rates · carpenter day rates · day rate vs price work · how to price a job