Calculator
Painting cost per m², built up properly
The record
- Checked by
- Carl Winson
- Built from
- CIJC Working Rule Agreement
- Wage date
- 20 July 2026
- Grades
- craft rate and general operative
The working
- 1 × tradesperson at £16.40
- £16.40
- Gang wage, per hour
- £16.40
- + 35% on top of wages
- £22.14
- × 8 hours on the tools
- £177.12 a day
- Two-coat emulsion, wallsincluding preparation£177.12 ÷ 15 m² × 1.20 = £14.17/m²
Benchmark
£14.17/m² labour
CIJC rates · tradesperson £16.40/hr · gang of 1 · 35% on top · overheads and profit 20%
Materials, scaffold and supervision are not included in this rate.
What’s in this?
- Employer's National Insurance - 15% above £5,000 a year
- Holiday pay - 12.07%
- Pension, auto-enrolment minimum - 3%
- CITB levy - 0.35% of payroll
- Sick pay, training and employer's liability insurance - the remainder
- At 0% this is a CIS subcontractor's labour price - National Insurance, holiday and pension are then theirs to carry, not the job's.
The location range is authored, not measured - our tender data says what was bought where, not what labour costs there.
Price a whole job with this ratePut in the job size and your lump sums - scaffold, plant, skip, and get the job total.
The minimum starts at a day of the gang, priced - £212.54 - because travel, unloading and setting up make a day the honest floor. Type your own, or 0 for none.
Put a job size in and the total appears here.
Preparation is the job. Painting is what you do afterwards
The 15 m² a day on this card is two coats of emulsion including preparation, and on most jobs the preparation is the larger half. Filling, sanding, caulking, washing down, masking, taking off and replacing socket faces, sheeting the floor: none of it is painting and all of it is the day.
This is why painting quotes vary more wildly than any other trade on this site. Two painters looking at the same room can be pricing genuinely different amounts of work, because one has looked at the walls and the other has looked at the square metres.
New plaster and old walls are different jobs at the same area
Fresh plaster needs a mist coat - thinned emulsion, to let the wall take the paint rather than repel it, and then two full coats. That is three passes, but the surface is flat and clean, so it goes quickly and predictably.
An occupied room being redecorated is the opposite: nail holes, cracks, patches from a removed radiator, a wall that has been wallpapered twice, a ceiling with a water stain that will grin through anything but a stain block. The painting is two coats either way. The preparation is anywhere from an hour to two days.
If your job is old walls, drag the output down. Ten or twelve is realistic on a room that needs proper making good, and that is not pessimism - it is the difference between a price that holds and one you regret on the second morning.
Cutting in is linear work inside an area price
- Edges. Every ceiling line, skirting, architrave, corner and reveal is brush work at walking pace. A room chopped into small walls has far more edge per square metre than an open space.
- Colour changes. A different colour on each wall multiplies the cutting in, and dark over light means an extra coat.
- Height and access. A stairwell is scaffold or a tower, and it is slow before anything is painted.
- Occupied rooms. Working around furniture and people, and clearing up each evening to leave a habitable room, is a real and often unpriced cost.
What this rate does not cover
It is two-coat emulsion on walls. Ceilings are slower - overhead work always is. Woodwork and metalwork are a different job again, priced per item or per metre rather than per square metre, because a door is a door whatever its area.
Paint is a material and sits outside the rate. Standard emulsion covers around 12 to 14 m² a litre per coat on a smooth surface, which is a useful sanity check on a materials figure but tells you nothing about the labour.
Questions people ask
How much can a painter and decorator do in a day?
Around 15 m² a day for two coats of emulsion on walls including preparation, on a room in reasonable condition. On new plaster it can be considerably more; on old walls needing filling, sanding and making good it can be half that, because the preparation rather than the painting sets the pace.
Why do painting quotes vary so much for the same room?
Because they are usually pricing different amounts of preparation rather than different rates. Painting two coats is the same work either way; filling, sanding, caulking, washing down and making good is anywhere from an hour to two days depending on what the walls are actually like.
How much paint do you need per square metre?
Standard emulsion covers roughly 12 to 14 m² per litre per coat on a smooth, primed surface, so a 40 m² room in two coats needs around 6 to 7 litres. Premium emulsions reach nearer 14 m² per litre. Paint is a material and sits outside the labour rate on this calculator.
Does new plaster need a different approach?
Yes - new plaster needs a mist coat of thinned emulsion first so the wall absorbs the paint properly, then two full coats. That is three passes rather than two, but the surface is flat and clean so the work is quick and predictable compared with redecorating old walls.
Is woodwork priced per square metre?
Not usually. Doors, frames, skirting and architrave are priced per item or per linear metre, because a door is a door regardless of its area and the work is in the number of edges and coats rather than the surface. This calculator prices two-coat emulsion to walls.
Where these figures come from
The wages are the national minimums agreed between employers and unions, republished each July. The costs on top of them are the statutory ones every employer actually pays. The outputs - how much a gang gets through in a day - are blended from published estimating guidance, and they are the part worth arguing with, which is why every one is a control you can move.
Other trades
- Bricklaying£35.68/m²
- Blockwork£23.84/m²
- Plastering£8.50/m²
- Rendering£38.34/m²
- Floor screed£2.83/m²
- Concreting£7.92/m²
- Tiling£17.71/m²
- Roofing£32.80/m²
- Block paving£25.56/m²
- Tarmac driveways£15.34/m²
- Resin driveways£16.61/m²
- Stud walls£17.71/m²
- Patios£31.95/m²
- Repointing£26.57/m²
- Plasterboarding£12.39/m²
- Decking£31.88/m²
- Fencing£25.56/m²
- Turfing£3.42/m²
- Coving£7.08/m²
- Loft insulation£4.27/m²
- External wall insulation£38.34/m²
- Soft strip£8.54/m²
- Hand excavation£85.41/m²
- Shuttering£8.50/m²
- Mesh and rebar£2.56/m²
Pricing a job like these?
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