Calculator
Rendering 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
- 1 × labourer at £13.18
- £13.18
- Gang wage, per hour
- £29.58
- + 35% on top of wages
- £39.93
- × 8 hours on the tools
- £319.46 a day
- Two-coat sand and cementscratch coat and top coat£319.46 ÷ 10 m² × 1.20 = £38.34/m²
Benchmark
£38.34/m² labour
CIJC rates · tradesperson £16.40/hr + labourer £13.18/hr · gang of 1+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 - £383.36 - 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.
Why rendering is slower per square metre than plastering
Rendering runs around 10 m² a day against 25 for a skim because it is two coats outdoors instead of one coat indoors. A scratch coat goes on, is keyed and left to cure; the top coat follows, often on a different day. Two passes over the same wall, with weather in between.
The gang is a tradesperson and a labourer for the same reason masonry is: somebody has to keep the mixer going and the material moving, and a renderer who is mixing is not rendering.
The background decides the job, and you have already seen it
What is behind the render sets the output more than anything else. Clean new blockwork takes render predictably. Old brick with failed patches, mixed backgrounds where an extension meets the original house, or anything that has been rendered before and partly come off, are all slower, and how much slower is a judgement only somebody who has stood in front of the wall can make.
That is what the output slider is for. You have surveyed it; the calculator has not. Set the day rate you know is achievable on that wall and the price follows honestly from it.
What slows a rendering day
- Beads and edges. Bellcast at the base, stop beads at openings, angle beads on every external corner - all linear work fixed and levelled before rendering starts.
- Openings. Reveals and heads around windows and doors are hand work, and a wall full of them prices far worse per square metre than a blank gable.
- Weather. No rendering in frost, none in driving rain, and hot sun is its own problem - render that dries too fast cracks, so hot days mean damping down and working shaded elevations.
- Access. Almost all rendering above ground floor needs scaffold, and scaffold is a lump sum priced by lift and elevation, never by wall area.
Modern render systems are a different calculation
This card prices traditional two-coat sand and cement. Monocouche is a one-coat through-coloured system applied by machine or hand; silicone and acrylic thin-coat systems go over a base coat and mesh. Both have different outputs, different materials and different specialist requirements.
If you are pricing one of those, the honest move is to set the output to what that system actually achieves on your job rather than accepting a sand-and-cement benchmark. The chain underneath is the same; only the number changes.
Questions people ask
How much rendering can be done in a day?
Around 10 m² a day for a tradesperson and a labourer applying traditional two-coat sand and cement render. It is slower than internal plastering because it is two coats with curing between them, applied outdoors where weather, beads and openings all take time.
Why is rendering more expensive per square metre than plastering?
Because it is two coats instead of one, applied outdoors, usually from scaffold. A plasterer skimming inside covers around 25 m² a day; a rendering gang covers around 10. Scaffold, beads and weather delays sit on top of that.
Can you render in cold or wet weather?
No. Render should not be applied in frost or driving rain, and it needs protecting while it cures. Hot sun is also a problem because render that dries too quickly cracks, so on hot days the wall is damped down and shaded elevations are worked first.
Does a rendering price include scaffold?
Not in this rate. Scaffold is priced by lift, elevation and hire period rather than by wall area, so it goes in the job section as a lump sum. Almost any rendering above ground-floor level will need it.
Is monocouche render priced the same as sand and cement?
No. Monocouche is a one-coat through-coloured system and thin-coat silicone or acrylic renders go over a base coat and mesh - different materials, different application and different daily output. Use the output slider to set what your system actually achieves; the rest of the build-up is the same.
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
- 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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