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Tiler 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
Tilers 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 tiler charge a day?
An employed tiler costs £16.40 an hour in wages at the construction craft rate, charging out at roughly £212 for an eight-hour day with on-costs and margin on top. Most tiling, though, is sold by the square metre, and the day rate is what you use to check the metre rate rather than what you put on a quote.
The exception is small work. A cloakroom, a splashback or making good after somebody else is nearly all setting out and cutting with barely any area to spread it over, and a per-metre price on that work loses money every time. Those are day jobs.
Why the tile format changes the day more than the room size
Because a day’s tiling is a count of cuts and a count of tiles, not an area. Large-format tiles cover ground quickly but are heavy, need a flatter background and are unforgiving to cut; mosaics and small formats cover almost nothing per hour. The same wall in two different tiles is two different jobs at the same square metreage.
Floors and walls differ the same way, which is why they are separate rates everywhere they are quoted properly. Floors carry levelling and setting out from a centre line; walls carry cutting around sockets, pipes and window reveals, and every one of those is a cut that has to be right.
What is not in the rate
- Background preparation. Tanking a wet area, levelling a floor, priming, or boarding out. Frequently a day in itself and almost always quoted as though it were not.
- Setting out. Deciding where the full tiles land so the cuts fall in the least visible place is the difference between a good job and a bad one, and it happens before a tile goes on.
- Grouting and sealing. Usually a return visit, because the adhesive has to go off first.
- Materials. Tiles, adhesive, grout, trims and matting are not in any figure here.
Questions people ask
What is a tiler's day rate in the UK?
An employed tiler charges out at around £212 a day, built from £16.40 an hour in wages plus employment on-costs of about 35% and a margin of about 20%. Self-employed tilers working from what they need to earn plus their own holiday and cover usually land higher, and most tiling is quoted per square metre rather than per day in any case.
Should tiling be priced by the day or per square metre?
Per square metre on anything with real area, and by the day on small work, awkward work and making good, where setting out and cutting swamp the area covered. The day rate is what tells you whether your per-metre rate is high enough on a given job.
Why is floor tiling priced differently from wall tiling?
Because the work per day is different. Floors carry levelling and setting out from a centre line and usually larger, heavier tiles; walls carry cutting around sockets, pipes and reveals. Daily output is lower on floors in most cases, so the rate per square metre is higher even though the wage per hour is identical.
Pricing a job like these?
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