How much does a painter and decorator cost?

Condition of the surfaces, more than anything else. Sound walls that need a light sand and two coats are quick. Walls with filled cracks, flaking paint, old wallpaper adhesive or damp staining need genuine preparation, and that is where the hours go. A decorator quoting from a photograph is guessing; one who has seen the room is pricing.

How many colours and finishes are involved. A single colour throughout is faster than walls in one shade, ceiling in another, and woodwork in a third — each change means cutting in, and cutting in is the slow, skilled part.

Woodwork is often underestimated. Skirting, architrave, doors and window reveals take disproportionate time relative to their area, particularly if old gloss needs sanding back.

Height and access. Stairwells are consistently among the most expensive spaces in a house to decorate, because working safely over a staircase needs proper platform equipment and takes far longer than a flat floor.

And whether the room is clear. Working around furniture is slower and riskier than working in an empty room.

For a defined space, ask for a fixed price. It is the norm for room decorating, and it puts the risk of the job overrunning on the decorator rather than you. It also forces a conversation about scope, which is where misunderstandings usually start.

Day rates of £150–£250 make sense for open-ended work — a list of odd jobs, snagging, or a property being done room by room over time. If you are paying by the day, agree what a day means: most decorators work roughly eight hours, but confirm rather than assume.

Whichever you use, get the scope written down. Specifically: how many coats, whether ceilings are included, whether woodwork is included, whether filling and sanding is included, and who supplies the paint. Those five points cover almost every dispute in decorating.

Both arrangements are common. Decorators buy at trade prices and can often get better paint for the same money, but some prefer you to supply it so there is no argument about colour choice.

If they are supplying, ask which brand and range. There is a real difference between contract emulsion and a quality trade emulsion, and between trade and retail versions of the same brand name. Cheap paint covers poorly, needs more coats and marks easily — false economy on a job where labour is most of the cost.

If you are supplying, buy more than you think and buy it all at once. Colour varies slightly between batches, and running out mid-wall is a genuine problem.

Either way, keep a note of the exact colour, finish and brand. You will want it for touch-ups long after the decorator has gone.

A good decorating job is mostly preparation. Filling, sanding, caulking gaps, sealing bare plaster with a mist coat, masking and protecting floors — none of it is visible in the finished room, and all of it determines how the finished room looks.

This is why quotes vary so much for what sounds like identical work. One price may include two coats onto whatever is there; another includes a day of preparation first. They are not the same job and should not be compared on price alone.

When you get quotes, ask each decorator what preparation is included. The answers will tell you more than the numbers do. A decorator who talks in detail about surface condition is one who intends to do it properly.

New plaster deserves a specific mention: it needs a thinned mist coat before anything else, and skipping it means the finish coat peels later.

Clear the room yourself. Move furniture out, take down curtains and pictures, and lift what you can. An empty room is quicker to work in and you are not paying skilled labour to carry your wardrobe.

Do the easy preparation. Washing walls down and removing old fixings is unskilled work you can do in an evening.

Keep it simple. One wall colour, one ceiling colour and white woodwork is meaningfully cheaper than a feature wall and three finishes, because it is faster to cut in.

Do several rooms at once. Setting up, masking and mobilising happens once, so a whole floor costs less per room than one room at a time.

Book off-season if you can. Decorators are busiest before Christmas and in late spring; quieter periods often bring better prices.

And get at least three quotes with the same written scope, so you are comparing the same job rather than three different ones.