Painter day rates Cost Calculator

How this calculator works

Every figure in this calculator is the one published in the cost table on our painter day rates 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.

What actually drives a decorating quote

The ranges above are honest for a straight repaint, but the part that swings a decorating price isn’t the painting – it’s the prep. Filling, sanding, caulking gaps and stripping old wallpaper is slow, quiet work that happens before a brush is loaded, and a room that needs a lot of it can take far more labour than one that just needs a wipe-down and go.

What you’re decorating matters as much as how big it is. Ceilings, walls and woodwork are three separate jobs, and gloss on skirting and door frames is fiddlier and slower than rolling a flat wall. A quote for “the room” should really say which of those it covers.

Colour is a hidden cost. Going from dark to light, or covering a bold feature wall, can mean an extra coat or a coat of primer first, and every extra coat is more paint and another pass of the whole room. Two coats is standard; a big colour change can quietly need a third.

Wallpapering isn’t painting by another name. Hanging paper is a slower, more skilled job than rolling emulsion, and a pattern that has to be matched at every seam is slower still – so a papered room sits well above a painted one in the ranges above. Stripping whatever’s already up there, if it fights back, is a job on its own.

Height is the other thing a flat price can’t see. A hallway with its stairs and landing looks like a small area on paper, but the stairwell means working off a ladder or a small tower to reach the top of the wall safely, and that access time is why it’s priced like a proper room rather than a cupboard.

Worth knowing: some decorators quote a day rate and some price the whole job, and neither is automatically cheaper – a fixed price just shifts the risk of a slow day onto them. Ask what grade of paint is in the quote too, because a trade contract emulsion and a premium branded one cover very differently and cost very differently.