Have you ever wanted to know how much it would cost you to hire a good quality Decorators?

Today we look at how much you can expect to pay wherever you live in the country, 

One of the most asked question I have seen on the internet is

How much does it cost to employ a good Painter and Decorator?

If you are like me, it's always a worry whenever you get any type of work carried out on your home or  buy something new it's a great feeling when you know you're not paying over the odds for a product or service. But then on the other hand you want to know your getting value for money., 

Hopefully we will help you reach a happy balance of quality workmanship and value for money. The best of both worlds, 

To make things easier to understand I have broken the article into three parts

To start with we will look at a few things that can increase the cost of having your decorating work carried out.

Secondly  we look at how we can save you some money when hiring a professional decorator

Finally and this is the interesting part we look at the actual cost to decorate an average room in the UK.

People are often shocked and surprised at how much it costs to use a professional painter and decorator and resort to using an alternative cheaper source of labour. 

This can sometimes turn out to be a false economy.

While sometimes this option works out reasonably well, a lot of the times things can go really wrong.

You are now left with two or more problem to sort out 

Firstly you’ll have to spend more time finding a decent decorator, with this in mind I wrote Secret Guide to Hiring a Decorator, to help you find the best painter and decorator to help you with your decorating project and stop the gamble of hiring a decorator.

The decorator will then have to either redo or complete the work. This can often incur extra cost as the previous work sometimes needs to be carried out again, for example poor preparation will need to be carried out twice.

There is also the chance that you may have the inconvenience of taking more time away from work to be around while the work is completed

You may need the work completed for a special occasion, and depending on the time of the year, you may struggle to find someone to complete your project on time.

Finally if your working to a budget you may not be able to afford to hire a second decorator, and find yourself in a worse situation than when you started.

Another factor that can have a big bearing on the costs of decorating work are the materials you choose to use. 

Recently there seems to have been an increase in customers wanting to supply materials for their decorator.

In my opinion this is one of the worst decisions you could make and again it can add to the original cost you were quoted.

Yes you can buy cheap paint, and normally its cheap for a reason. Most good, decent Trade paints will give a good solid finish you’d be happy with in two coats. 

However if you choose to use a cheaper paint, this could result in additional coats of paint to achieve a satisfactory finish. 

Which is fine however the saving you make on the price of buying the paint, will be more than lost with the cost of the extra labour you will have to pay at the end of the job.

It is also worth noting that the extra coats you apply to the walls and ceilings could result in the need to buy more of the cheaper paints to get the job finished.

After all one of the reasons you are using a professional decorator is to make use of their knowledge, expertise and experience, so would it not make sense for them to use the materials they know are good quality, reliable and give good results.

After all if you are going out to a restaurant for an evening meal, nobody takes a T Bone Steak with them and asks a chef to cook. Do they?

After spending the last few minutes showing you how decorating a room can cost you more money than you had planned for

Now let's look at a few ways to save your hard earned money.

• We will start with an easy one that can save a lot of time and therefore your money. Make sure the room you want decorated is ready for the decorator.

• This means making sure everything  as far as possible has been removed from the room.

• Any furniture left in the room is moved into the centre allowing you to walk around it.

• All curtains or blinds have been taken down.

• Finally remove any picture hooks or nails you don’t plan on using again.

This may seem like simple jobs to do but they do save a load of time at the start of the job.

Also I know that more and more decorators are starting to charge an additional fee if rooms aren’t ready for them to work in This could be anything from £50 to £175 so this could be time well spent.

Next whenever possible look to have a minimum of two rooms decorated at once.

The reason for this is because when decorating there is a lot of waiting for paint to dry.

It makes it more cost effective for your decorator to be working on one room while they are waiting for the other room to dry fully.

Finally in this money saving section

One of the biggest ways to save money is to consider the time of the year you would like the work carried out

Normally a Painter and Decorators year looks something like this each year

Roughly from April to September we are working on exterior decorating workSome of these jobs are booked in months if not years in advance. This is without doubt a decorators busiest time of the year.

Next we have the period from say October to Christmas. In this period we are completing interior work we have won from some our exteriorCustomers throughout the summer

Then we have the mad Christmas rush as everything has to be finished for the family or festive visitors

Now we move to normally the quietest time of the year and the best time for you to book your work in.

From January to around the end of March is usually the quietest months of the year for a Painter and Decorator. 

My advice would be to make contact with a decorator in the early part of the year. 

The reason for this is because as a rule all Tradespeople want to have work to return to in the New Year and in some cases would prefer to work for a lower rate than normal to keep busy.

I hope these tips can help you save some money if you are considering using a decorator in the future

On to the what you have been waiting for the Decorators prices.

Before we start every thing quoted here are averages, as there a numerous factors that can increase as well as decrease the price of decorating a room such as

• Preparation

• Materials to be used

• Timescales

The list goes on however for this example we have looked at the average size room in the Uk as of February 2020 which is 3m x 3.5m or 10ft x 11ft if your slightly older.

In the examples I have allowed for

• All the woodwork, that's skirtings, one door and one door frame to be undercoated and top coated

• The walls and ceilings to be prepared and to receive 2 full coats of Dulux Trade paints

Now that we know what we a going to paint lets make a start.

• Scotland a decorators day rate is around £120 to £160 per day and you can expect to pay between £240 to £320 for the complete room

• In the North East you will be looking at around £150 a day and your average room would be about £300

• In the Norfolk area you would be looking to pay around the same sort of cost

• Moving on to the spray tan capital of the country Essex you'd be looking to pay about £160 a day so your room would be £320

• Heading towards Kent, Sussex and the South Coast the rate increases to £180 per day making your average room in the region of £360 

• If we move towards the most expensive part of the country London and the Home Counties we are looking at £250 if not more and decorating your room would be a least £500 

• Surrey, Hampshire and Berkshire get a little less expensive at around £200 a day so your room would be £400

• Moving to Bristol and the West Country you'd be looking at between £120 and £150 to completely decorate the room would be about £240 to £300

• Finally looking at South Wales the rates here are between £100 and £150 a day making the average room cost between £200 and £300

To be clear none of the prices quoted in my examples include materials, parking travelling etc. 

They are purely Labour Only prices based on an average room size in reasonable good condition 

These are only ball park figures to help give you an idea of the prices you could expect to pay a decent painter and decorator

To make this clear there are so many different variables to consider when Decorating a room that the only way to get a true understanding of the costs involved, is to ask a decorator to view the work and supply a detailed quote of the work he or she intends to carry out

Now I know this is a lot of information to get your head around and can be quite confusing

If you have any questions you'd like me to answer please leave them in the comments below or geti touch with me trevor@tjdecor.co.uk