Calculator
Plastering 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
- Skim over boardtwo coats of finish plaster£177.12 ÷ 25 m² × 1.20 = £8.50/m²
- Float and setbacking coat then finish - slide one finish to zeroslid to zero - out of the price
Benchmark
£8.50/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.
Skim or float and set - two different jobs at one heading
A skim over sound plasterboard runs about 25 m² a day for one plasterer. Float and set - a backing coat then a finish, onto brick or block - runs nearer 15. Same trade, same person, two thirds of the output, because there are two coats and a drying wait between them.
Pick the one your job actually is on the card and leave the other at zero. Pricing a float-and-set job at skim output is the single commonest way plastering gets underpriced, and it hurts most on the jobs where you least expected it - old walls, garage conversions, anything without board on it already.
Why plasterers price rooms and the rate prices metres
Most plasterers quote a room, not an area, and they are right to. A 12 m² ceiling and 12 m² of flat wall are not the same day’s work: the ceiling is overhead, it needs scaffold boards or a hop-up, and it is the part that aches. A small bathroom with a window reveal, a boxing and three internal corners has more edges than surface.
So use the rate for what it is good at - pricing area at scale, and checking a room price you have already worked out in your head. If those two disagree, the interesting question is which of your assumptions is wrong, and it is usually the output.
Where the time actually goes
- Preparation and suction. Old walls drink water. Getting the suction right - PVA, bonding agent, or damping down - is time before any plaster goes on, and skipping it is how a finish cracks a week later.
- Beads, corners and reveals. Angle beads, stop beads and reveals are linear work in a job priced by area. A room full of openings is slower per square metre than a bare wall, every time.
- Setting out and protection. Sheeting a furnished room, and cleaning up after, is real time that never appears in an output figure.
- Drying between coats. This costs programme rather than labour - you cannot rush it, and on a two-coat job it decides whether the room is one visit or two.
The minimum charge matters more here than almost anywhere
Plastering has more small jobs than most trades - a patch, a ceiling, one wall after a re-wire. At 25 m² a day, a 10 m² ceiling is under half a day of plastering and a full day of a plasterer’s time once travel, setting out, mixing and cleaning up are counted.
That is exactly what the minimum charge is for, and it defaults to a priced day of whoever you have put in the gang. On a card where the output is high and the jobs are small, it will be doing the work more often than the rate does.
Questions people ask
How much can a plasterer skim in a day?
Around 25 m² a day for one plasterer skimming over sound plasterboard, with 20 to 40 the normal range depending on the room. Float and set onto brick or block is slower, nearer 15 m² a day, because it is two coats with a drying wait between them.
What is the difference between skimming and float and set?
Skimming is a thin finish coat over existing sound plasterboard or plaster. Float and set is a backing coat followed by a finish coat, used on brick, block or anything that needs building out to a flat plane. Float and set takes roughly two thirds longer per square metre.
Why do plasterers quote per room rather than per square metre?
Because the edges, not the area, decide the day. A room with a window reveal, a boxing and several internal corners has far more linear detail than a bare wall of the same area, and ceilings are slower than walls regardless of size. A per-square-metre rate works well for large flat areas and less well for small, cut-up rooms.
Does plastering include the plasterboard?
Not in this rate - it is the plastering labour only. Boarding is separate work with its own output, priced on the plasterboarding calculator, and the boards themselves are materials. Materials, scaffold and supervision sit outside every rate on this site.
Why is my plastering quote higher per square metre for a small room?
Because a day is indivisible. A plasterer who turns up for 10 m² still travels, sets out, sheets up, mixes, cleans down and goes home, so a small job carries most of a day's cost across a fraction of the area. That is what the minimum charge on this calculator is for.
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
- 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
- Painting£14.17/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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