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Plasterer day rate: what you pay, and what you have to charge
The record
- Benchmark wage
- £16.40 an hour
- Charged out at
- £26.57 an hour, £212.56 a day
- Agreement
- CIJC Working Rule Agreement, 20 July 2026
What the 35% is made of
What the wage does not show, and none of it is optional.
- Employer's National Insurance15% above £5,000 a year
- Holiday pay12.07%
- Pension, auto-enrolment minimum3%
- CITB levy0.35% of payroll
- Sick pay, training and employer's liability insurancethe remainder
At 0% you are pricing a CIS subcontractor's labour - National Insurance, holiday and pension are then theirs to carry, not the job's.
Working for yourself is a different sum and the tool knows it: 25% rather than 35%. Lower than an employer's 35% because there is no employer's National Insurance on your own labour - that 15% is the whole of the difference.
Where the wage comes from
Plasterers are graded under the CIJC Working Rule Agreement at the craft rate rate of £16.40 an hour, effective 20 July 2026. The same promulgation the cost-per-m2 cards price from - en-GB-rates.json holds it too, and the two must move together each July.
That is an agreement rate - the negotiated floor for a graded operative, not what the market pays. The market pays more, and how much more is the thing nobody publishes. It is what the figures contributed through this page are measuring.
What does a plasterer charge a day?
An employed plasterer costs £16.40 an hour in wages at the construction craft rate, which works out at roughly £212 a day charged out once employment on-costs and a normal margin are on it. Self-employed plasterers commonly quote above that, and the reason is not greed - it is that a self-employed plasterer is carrying their own holiday, their own quiet weeks and their own mixer.
Plastering is also one of the most heavily price-worked trades in the country. Skimming is usually sold per square metre, so the day rate is mainly used for patching, making good and small jobs - exactly the work that is hardest to price and easiest to lose money on.
Why a plasterer’s day cannot simply be worked harder
Because the material decides when you can move on. Skim goes on, and then it is trowelled up at the times the plaster dictates rather than the times that suit the programme. You cannot pull a second coat forward by working faster, and a plasterer standing waiting for a wall to pick up is not idle, they are working to the material.
That is why float and set is roughly two-thirds the daily output of a straight skim, and why anybody pricing plastering by “how many square metres could I physically cover” comes out wrong. The bound on the day is the plaster, not the plasterer.
What is not in the rate on a real plastering job
- Preparation. Scrimming, beading, PVA on suction backgrounds and taping joints all happen before any finish coat, and on an old house that can be most of the first day.
- Protection and cleaning up. Sheeting out a lived-in room and taking the waste away is real time, and it is the single most common thing left out of a domestic quote.
- The return visit. Two-coat work often means coming back, and coming back means travelling to the job twice for one payment.
- Materials. Not in any figure on this page. Plaster, beads, scrim and PVA are yours to add.
If you are quoting per square metre, all of the above has to be inside the rate you quote. Working out what a day costs you is how you find out whether it is.
Questions people ask
How much does a plasterer earn a day?
An employed plasterer on the construction craft rate earns £16.40 an hour, around £131 for an eight-hour day before tax. What a plastering firm charges for that day is a different figure - nearer £212 - because it also has to cover employer's National Insurance, holiday, pension, the levy, overheads and profit.
Why do plasterers charge more for float and set than skimming?
Because it is two operations rather than one and the daily output is roughly a third lower. Skimming an already-flat background covers substantially more wall in a day than floating a background out and then setting it, and the price follows the output rather than the effort.
Should I price plastering by the day or by the metre?
By the metre for anything of a reasonable size, and by the day for patching and making good, where the setting out and preparation swamp the area covered. Either way the day rate is what tells you whether your metre rate is high enough, so work it out even if you never quote it.
Pricing a job like these?
HubTrack is where small construction firms keep their compliance documents, their jobs and their evidence trail in one place - method statements and risk assessments prepared for you to check and sign off, and a record of who signed what and when. The same engine that reads the contract documents behind this page reads yours inside HubTrack.