What Is the Average Cost of a Painter and Decorator? UK Pricing Guide 2026

Last updated: 2026-06-02

A professional painter and decorator in the UK charges £280 to £420 a day in 2026, averaging around £340. A single room costs £300 to £1,200 to paint depending on size, and a full interior repaint runs from about £950 for a one-bedroom flat to £8,500 for a five-bedroom house. Those figures cover labour and standard trade paint. Premium paint, heavy preparation, high ceilings, or a London postcode push the price up.

Use the painting and decorating cost calculator for a per-room estimate tailored to your borough, condition, and paint quality — or the decorator day rate calculator to sanity-check what a contractor is charging you.

I run All Well Property Services across South East London — Bromley, Dulwich, Clapham, Greenwich, Croydon, and the rest. We've costed and priced over 100 painting and decorating jobs since 2020, and the numbers below are what I see week to week, not a national average pulled from a survey.

Painting and decorating cost by property size (2026)

The figures below cover a full interior repaint of walls, ceilings, and woodwork using standard trade paint, by a professional decorator. London and the South East sit at the top of each range.

Property	Full interior repaint	Working days
1-bedroom flat	£950 – £1,700	2 – 4
2-bedroom flat	£1,600 – £2,800	4 – 6
2-bedroom house	£2,100 – £3,400	5 – 7
3-bedroom house	£2,900 – £4,800	7 – 10
4-bedroom house	£4,200 – £6,400	10 – 14
5-bedroom house	£5,800 – £8,500	12 – 18

A single room painted on its own costs more per room than the same room as part of a whole-house job. Setup, travel, parking, and minimum-charge effects all spread better across a larger project. If you only need one room, expect to pay 15-25% above the per-room cost implied by a whole-house quote.

How much to paint a 3 bedroom house

£2,900 to £4,800 in 2026 for a full interior repaint in London. A standard three-bedroom Victorian or Edwardian terrace with three bedrooms, a bathroom, kitchen, two reception rooms, hallway, and landing comes in around £3,800 mid-market. Seven to ten working days on site with a two-person team.

What moves the price inside that range:

• Period features add 10-20%. Cornicing, picture rails, panelled doors, ceiling roses — all need careful cutting-in.
• Wall condition. A house that's been let on short tenancies for years and needs filling, sanding, and patching adds 15-25% over a smooth-walled house that just needs paint.
• Paint specification. Standard Dulux Trade is in the base price. Farrow & Ball or Little Greene adds £500-£900 to the materials alone for a three-bed.
• Stairwells. Two-storey halls with high ceilings need access equipment and slow the team down. Budget an extra half-day.

How much to paint a 4 bedroom house

£4,200 to £6,400 for a full interior repaint. Ten to fourteen working days. The cost climbs above the three-bed range because a four-bed almost always means an extra reception room or office, a second bathroom, and longer hallways and landings. More cutting-in, more woodwork, more wall area.

A typical 1930s semi or Edwardian terrace with four bedrooms, two bathrooms, two reception rooms, kitchen-diner, and hall/landing/stairs sits around £5,200 mid-market for a complete interior repaint with standard trade paint.

How much to paint a 5 bedroom house

£5,800 to £8,500 for a full interior repaint. Twelve to eighteen working days, often with a three-person team. A five-bedroom house usually means three or more bathrooms, multiple reception rooms, and either a large hallway/landing or two staircases. The job stops being a two-person, two-week project and starts needing scheduled trades that don't trip over each other.

If the property is in a conservation area with original cornicing, panelled doors, and timber sash windows that need careful prep, push the upper end of the range. A modern five-bed new-build with smooth walls and minimal woodwork lands at the lower end.

Painter and decorator day rates 2026

UK day rates for a professional painter and decorator in 2026 sit at £280 to £420 per day, averaging around £340. London and the South East run 25-30% above that — most South London decorators charge £340 to £420 per day. Outside the capital, £280 to £340 is typical. Plug your borough into the decorator day rate calculator for a borough-adjusted range.

Hourly rates, where charged, are £35 to £45 in London and £28 to £36 elsewhere. Most professional outfits price by the job rather than the hour, because hourly billing creates a perverse incentive to slow down. A fixed-price quote with a clear schedule of works is the standard for projects above one day.

A two-person team painting an average-size room takes one to two days end to end, including filling, sanding, priming, two coats on walls and ceilings, gloss or eggshell on woodwork, and a final clean.

Average painting cost per square metre

For interior wall painting in 2026, £10 to £20 per square metre is the labour-only rate. The £10 end covers a smooth, well-prepped wall in a large room with two coats of trade emulsion. The £20 end is what you pay on smaller rooms, awkward access, or walls that need significant filling and sanding first.

For a whole-house floor-area cost, £40 to £60 per square metre is the right rule of thumb in London — that's all interior surfaces (walls, ceilings, woodwork) priced against the property's habitable floor area, including standard trade paint. A 100m² three-bedroom Victorian terrace at £45/m² lands at £4,500, which matches the table above.

Exterior painting runs £20 to £35 per square metre depending on scaffold access and surface preparation. Render and pebbledash sit at the top of the range because of paint absorption.

Labour cost of painting per square foot

UK pricing is metric, but the per-square-foot figure for interior wall painting in 2026 is £0.90 to £1.85 per square foot labour-only, or £3.70 to £5.60 per square foot on a whole-house floor-area basis. Higher in London, lower in the regions. The metric rates above are the more useful benchmark — UK trade quotes are almost always priced per m² or by the job.

What changes the price

Wall condition and preparation

The single biggest swing factor on any painting job. A house that's had a rental cycle of patch-and-paint over five tenancies needs every wall stripped, filled, sanded, and primed before any topcoat goes on. That can add 20-30% to a quote. New-builds and recently-decorated houses move the other way — less prep, smaller margins, lower price.

What pushes prep cost up:

• Cracks, dents, screw holes, picture-hook damage — fill and sand
• Peeling or flaking paint — scrape, sand, prime
• Damp patches — investigate the cause first; a competent decorator won't paint over active damp because it'll be back in eight weeks
• Smoker's residue or kitchen grease on ceilings — wash, prime with a stain-blocker, recoat
• Wallpaper removal — strip, wash, repair underlying surface, prime

Paint specification

Standard trade emulsion (Dulux Trade, Crown Trade, Johnstone's Aqua) is in the base price most decorators quote. Step up to designer brands and the materials cost rises sharply:

• Farrow & Ball estate emulsion: ~£60 for 2.5 litres. Roughly 2.5× standard trade.
• Little Greene intelligent matt: ~£55 for 2.5 litres. ~2.3×.
• Paint & Paper Library: ~£70 for 2.5 litres. ~3×.
• Mylands: ~£60 for 2.5 litres. ~2.5×.

For a three-bedroom house repaint, the materials uplift from standard to designer paint is £500-£900 on top of the labour quote.

Property size and type

Property size is the largest driver of price; the table at the top covers it. A few patterns sit behind those numbers:

• Flats cost less than houses of the same bedroom count. Lower ceilings, no stairwells, less woodwork. A two-bed flat is usually £400-£600 cheaper than a two-bed terrace.
• Period properties carry a premium. Victorian and Edwardian terraces especially — decorative cornicing, picture rails, ceiling roses, six-panel doors. Budget 10-20% above the table for an intact period property.
• High ceilings. Standard rooms are 2.4m; period properties run 2.7-3.2m. The extra height isn't linear because of access — a tower scaffold for a stairwell adds half a day.

London uplift

London and the South East are the most expensive part of the UK for painting and decorating, 25-30% above the national average. Labour costs, congestion, parking restrictions, permit charges, and material delivery all feed into the rate.

Inside London, variation is smaller than people expect. A decorator working across South East London charges broadly the same in Bromley as in Dulwich — same trade, same overheads, same fuel costs. What moves the price within London is the property and the preparation, not the postcode.

Per-room and per-task pricing

Useful reference points for smaller jobs:

Task	2026 cost
Small bedroom (under 10m²)	£350 – £550
Medium bedroom (10-20m²)	£450 – £750
Large bedroom or reception (20-30m²)	£650 – £1,100
Bathroom	£350 – £600
Kitchen (walls/ceilings, not units)	£450 – £750
Hallway and landing (terraced)	£600 – £1,100
Hallway and landing (Victorian, full height)	£900 – £1,500
Door (both sides, including frame)	£85 – £110
Ceiling per m²	£15 – £20
Wallpapering per m² (labour)	£14 – £18
Woodwork per m²	£15 – £20
Exterior masonry per m²	£20 – £35

How to spot a fair quote

Three things separate a fair quote from a sketchy one:

1. Itemised, written, and fixed-price. Every fair quote breaks down labour, materials, scaffold/access if needed, and any contingency. A single round number on a Whatsapp message isn't a quote.
2. The decorator has seen the property. A quote from photos alone is unreliable. Wall condition, ceiling height, period detail, and access all need to be assessed in person. Most fair decorators do a 30-60 minute walkthrough before quoting.
3. The payment terms are sensible. A deposit of 10-20% on contract, stage payments tied to work milestones, balance on completion. Cash-only, full upfront, or "to a personal account" are all warning signs. On our jobs everything goes BACS to All Well Property Services Ltd against Companies House No. 12721034.

Frequently asked questions

Can I save money by supplying my own paint?

Sometimes. Most decorators have trade accounts and can buy standard trade paint 30-40% below retail. You won't beat that on Dulux Trade. Where supplying your own paint can save money is on designer brands — Farrow & Ball, Little Greene, Mylands are sold at retail to trade and consumer alike, so there's no trade discount to lose. Bring the colour codes and litres to your quote conversation; we factor it in either way.

Do painters and decorators charge VAT?

If they're VAT-registered, yes. The threshold is £90,000 annual turnover (2026). Many sole-trader decorators sit below the threshold and don't charge VAT. Larger outfits — anyone running multiple teams, holding accreditation, paying employees — almost all charge VAT. The total should always be clear on the quote.

How long does interior painting take?

Single rooms: 1-2 days end-to-end. Full house repaints: see the property-size table above. Schedule allows for filling, sanding, priming, two topcoats on walls and ceilings, gloss or eggshell on woodwork, and a final clean. Drying times between coats are non-negotiable — pushing wet paint shortens the finish lifespan.

What's the difference between a painter and a decorator?

In UK trade usage, they're the same role. "Painter and decorator" covers interior and exterior painting, wallpapering, woodwork, basic plaster repair, and some surface prep. A specialist plasterer or wallpaper hanger may be brought in for higher-end work, but a competent painter and decorator handles the full scope on residential projects.

Should I get the painter to handle plaster repairs?

For minor cracks, holes, and surface damage — yes, every decorator does this as part of prep. For larger areas of damaged plaster, a fresh skim coat, or replastering a whole wall, a dedicated plasterer is faster and cheaper. The decorator follows two days later once the plaster is dry. On our projects this is coordinated by the project manager so trades don't trip over each other.

What time of year is best for exterior painting?

Late April through early October in London. The drying-temperature minimum for most exterior paints is 8-10°C with no rain forecast for 24 hours. Booking exterior work in mid-summer means weather is rarely an issue. Booking in shoulder seasons (April or October) means there's a queue and slots get pushed.

Why do London prices run higher?

Labour cost is the main driver — a London decorator's living costs are 25-30% above the regional average, and that gets reflected in day rates. Parking, congestion charge, ULEZ, and material delivery to inner-London postcodes also add £30-£60 per day in overheads. Within London the variation is small; a Bromley decorator and a Clapham decorator charge broadly the same.

Is it worth getting a second quote?

For anything above a single room, yes. Three quotes is the standard recommendation — it gives you a range and a sense of which contractors actually understand the job. For smaller jobs, two quotes from contractors with verifiable reviews is enough.

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