Painting by room Cost Calculator
How much to paint a room in 2026? A standard double bedroom costs £320-500 for walls and ceiling, or £480-750 for a full repaint including woodwork. A hallway, stairs and landing runs £450-950, a whole 3-bed interior £2,500-4,200, and painting the front of a house…
Open the calculator →Price painting by room in 30 seconds
2 steps, using the figures from our cost guide.
How this calculator works
Every figure in this calculator is the one published in the cost table on our painting by room guide. Pick the option that matches your job and the calculator returns that published range, adjusted for your region - it does not model anything the guide does not already say.
That is deliberate. A calculator whose rates drift from the page it sits under is worse than no calculator, because two numbers on the same site disagree.
What it cannot know: access, the condition of what is already there, and anything structural. Those are what separate three real quotes from each other.
Published painting by room costs (2026)
| Option | Typical 2026 cost | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| 1-bed flat / studio | £800–£1,400 | |
| 2-bed flat / mid-terrace | £1,400–£2,400 | |
| 3-bed semi (typical UK home) | £2,500–£4,200 | |
| 4-bed detached | £3,500–£5,800 | |
| 5-bed family / large semi | £4,500–£7,500 | |
| 6+ bed / large detached | £6,000–£12,000 |
These are the figures from our painting by room cost guide.
What drives the cost of painting a room
Two rooms of the same size can be quoted hundreds of pounds apart, and the gap is almost always prep and scope rather than the paint itself. Walls-only is the cheapest job; adding the ceiling and then the woodwork — skirting, architraves, doors and window frames — is what turns a £320–£500 bedroom into a £480–£750 full repaint, because gloss and trim work is slow and fiddly. Heavy preparation is the other big lever: stripping old wallpaper, filling and sanding cracked plaster, or dealing with damp and stains can add £80–£300 to a single room before a brush touches the finish coats.
Access explains why hallways, stairs and landings cost more per square metre than an ordinary room — a tall stairwell needs ladder staging or a scaffold tower to paint safely, and that setup time is charged whether the wall is large or not. Colour changes matter too: going from a dark shade to a pale one, or covering a strong colour, often needs an extra coat, and premium trade paints cost more per tin but cover in fewer coats. Whether the room is empty or you are living around the work, and how carefully floors and furniture must be protected, rounds out the quote.
For the wider picture, our house painting cost guide covers whole-home and per-square-metre pricing, the painter and decorator day rate guide shows how labour is charged, and if you are pricing the outside at the same time, exterior painting and decorating costs sets out what changes once you are up a ladder.
Painting by room calculator — FAQs
In 2026, painting a standard double bedroom (12-16 m²) costs £220-360 for walls only, £320-500 including the ceiling, and £480-750 for a full repaint with woodwork. A small box room starts at £180-280 walls-only, while a large living room runs £320-520 for walls and up to £700-1,150 for the full job. Prices assume two coats of trade paint and standard prep; heavy prep such as wallpaper stripping or deep filling adds £80-300 per room, and London and the South East add 20-30 percent.
A hallway and landing costs £280-500 for walls only, £420-720 with ceilings, and £650-1,100 for a full repaint in 2026. A tall stairwell adds £380-650 walls-only, or up to £800-1,400 with bannisters and woodwork fully repainted. Most complete hallway-stairs-landing jobs land around £450-950 over 2-3 days. The premium over ordinary rooms is access: stairwell walls need ladder staging or a scaffold tower to paint safely.
A full interior repaint of a 3-bed semi costs £2,500-4,200 in 2026, taking 5-8 days with one to two painters. That includes all rooms, ceilings, woodwork, skirting and internal doors. A lighter-scope refresh can come in around £1,500-3,500. Regionally the whole-UK span runs from about £1,300-3,100 in the cheapest areas to £2,000-4,600 in London. Adding the exterior costs £1,500-3,200 more when done at the same time.
Painting just the front of a house costs £800-1,800 in 2026 - the typical job for terraces and semis, covering the front elevation's masonry or render plus the front woodwork and door. Scaffolding, if upper-storey access is needed, adds £400-900. A full exterior repaint of a 3-bed semi costs £1,800-4,500 including render, fascias, soffits and window frames over 4-7 weather-dependent days.
Preparation and access, far more than the paint. Stripping wallpaper, filling and sanding damaged plaster, or treating damp and stains can add £80–£300 per room. Painting all the woodwork on top of walls and ceilings roughly doubles a room’s labour, and stairwells cost more because they need staging or a tower to reach safely. Covering a dark colour with a pale one usually means an extra coat. A clear, empty room in sound condition is always the cheapest to decorate.
Related cost guides
- Painting by room cost guide — The full price guide
- All painting decorating services — Browse the hub
- All BestBuilders services — Every trade we cover
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