What do painters and decorators charge per day in London in 2026?

Typical London market day rates for a competent decorator run around £180–£300, with the top of the band for high-finish work, spray application and period joinery. But day rate is the wrong number to buy on: a slower decorator at a lower rate costs more per finished room. Priced work — a fixed, itemised quote for the rooms and surfaces agreed — protects you from that, which is why we quote the job, not the day.

How much does it cost to paint a room in London?

A typical London room — walls, ceiling, woodwork, two coats over sound surfaces — usually lands around £400–£900 in labour and materials, with the spread set by size, ceiling height and above all the condition of the surfaces. A room that needs filling, sanding, stain-blocking or paper stripped sits above that; a large period room with cornicing, panelled doors and sash windows can be double the plain-box price, because the woodwork is where the hours live.

What does full interior redecoration of a London house cost?

As a working range, a whole two-to-three-bedroom London home redecorated throughout — walls, ceilings and woodwork — typically runs around £4,500–£9,500, rising with property size, surface condition and specification. Occupied houses cost slightly more than empty ones because rooms are sequenced and furniture protected and moved. On an itemised quote you will see the preparation separated from the decoration, room by room, so you can trim scope knowingly rather than blindly.

How often does exterior masonry paint last in London, and what does an exterior repaint cost?

A properly prepared exterior repaint in a breathable masonry system should hold eight to twelve years; paint applied over cracked render or damp walls can fail in two. For a typical London semi, expect roughly £3,500–£7,500 including access, with render repairs priced as their own lines after inspection. The preparation — cutting out blown render, repairing cracks, stabilising chalky surfaces — is the majority of the job and the whole reason one repaint lasts a decade while another peels.

Costs·9 min read·26 August 2026·Written by PrimeCraft Surface Solutions

Painter and decorator prices in London (2026): rooms, whole homes and exteriors

What decorators charge in London: day rates, room-by-room prices, whole-house redecoration and exterior repaints — and why preparation is the real cost.

A London interior mid-redecoration by PrimeCraft Surface Solutions — walls prepared and first-coated, woodwork masked.

Decorating quotes in London are hard to compare because two decorators quoting "the same" job are rarely pricing the same work. One has priced two coats over whatever is there; the other has priced making the surfaces right and then painting them. The finished photographs look identical for about a year. This guide gives you the typical 2026 numbers — day rates, rooms, whole homes, exteriors — and then shows you where the real money is, so you can read a quote and know which of the two you are buying.

Day rates, and why they mislead

London decorators typically charge around £180–£300 a day at 2026 market rates. The band is real but buying on it is a mistake: speed and standard vary more than rate does, so the cheapest day is often the most expensive room. The number that matters is the priced job — a written, itemised quote naming every room, every surface and the preparation included. That is how we quote: fixed scope, line by line, handed over the same day as the survey.

Room-by-room prices

For a typical London room in sound condition — walls, ceiling and woodwork, two coats — expect around £400–£900. What moves a room up the band:

Condition. Filling, sanding, stain-blocking, stripping paper: preparation can be half the labour in an older room, and it is the half that shows in year three.
Woodwork. Panelled doors, deep skirtings, picture rails, staircases and sash windows are slow, coat-hungry surfaces. A period room's woodwork can take longer than its walls.
Height and access. Stairwells and tall Victorian ceilings need towers or scaffolds and careful cutting-in.
Colour and finish. Deep colour changes need extra coats; fine finishes need finer preparation.

Whole-house interior redecoration

Redecorating a two-to-three-bedroom London home throughout typically runs around £4,500–£9,500, moving with size, condition and spec. Larger period houses, heavy preparation or high-spec finishes push beyond it. Two things worth knowing at this scale. First, sequencing: in an occupied house the job runs room by room with furniture protected and moved, and a written programme tells you which rooms are out of action when. Second, redecoration is the natural last trade — if electrics, plastering or joinery are on the horizon, do them first, or the fresh paint pays the price. Where decoration is the finishing coat of a larger project, it folds into our renovation programmes; where it is the whole job, our painting and decorating team runs it standalone.

Exteriors: the repaint that lasts a decade

Exterior decoration in London is preparation with a paint finish. Render and pebbledash fronts — the standard fabric across the interwar suburbs — fail from underneath: cracks let water track behind, the surface blows, and paint applied over the top peels on schedule. Done properly, blown render is cut out and repaired in a compatible mix, cracks are raked and filled, chalky surfaces stabilised, and only then does a breathable masonry system go on, chosen for the substrate and the exposure. For a typical semi, expect roughly £3,500–£7,500 including access equipment, with render repairs itemised after inspection rather than discovered mid-job. Done to that standard it holds eight to twelve years — the arithmetic that makes the properly prepared repaint the cheap one. Period frontages — painted stucco, brick with dressed details, original sashes — are their own discipline of repair-then-decorate; our surface restoration trades handle the repair half, and the restoration cost guide covers when refinishing beats replacing.

Paint, spray and systems

Materials are a small share of the bill but a large share of the result. Trade-quality paints cover better and last longer than retail ranges; breathable systems matter on solid-walled and period buildings, where sealing the wall causes the damp it was meant to prevent; and kitchens, bathrooms and hallways earn scrubbable finishes. Spraying suits joinery, radiators and big open areas — a finer finish, faster — but the masking discipline around it is the skill. A good decorator specifies the system in the quote by name, not as "paint".

How PrimeCraft quotes decorating

Every decorating quote follows a survey: surfaces checked, preparation named honestly, rooms and elevations listed line by line, and the written quote in your hands the same day. Decoration runs standalone through our painting team, and as the finishing trade inside renovations, kitchens and bathrooms. For a first figure before a visit, the online estimate takes a couple of minutes.