How to price a painting job: per room, per m² or per day?

Painting is the trade where underquoting hides longest. No materials bill shocks you into repricing, the van still runs, and the difference between a profitable room and a break-even room is two hours of prep you forgot to charge for. The fix is a pricing structure you apply every time: per room for standard work, per m² for exteriors and big open spaces, per day for prep-heavy unknowns. Here is how to run all three without guessing.

The figures below are sensible 2026 starting points for the UK. Your area, your finish standard and the state of the walls move all of them.

Per room: your bread and butter

For standard interiors, a room price is fast to give and easy for the customer to understand. A typical bedroom, walls and ceiling, two coats, sits somewhere around £350 to £550; a living room £450 to £700; a hall, stairs and landing £600 to £900 because of the access and the edges. Build each room price from your day rate and honest timings, not from what the last customer seemed happy with. If the day rate itself is the shaky part, fix that first: how to set your day rate.

Woodwork is the classic per-room leak. Glossing a room’s skirting, door and frame adds hours, so price it as its own line. “Walls and ceiling £420, woodwork £180” wins twice: the total is transparent, and the customer who declines the woodwork has made a visible choice, not been given a hidden discount funded by you.

Per m²: exteriors and open plans

Room pricing breaks on exteriors and big open spaces, so switch to area. Exterior masonry typically runs £8 to £15 per m² depending on condition and access, with scaffold or towers priced separately, never absorbed. For interiors, a m² rate also keeps you honest on the double-height hallway that is “one room” in the customer’s head and two days of ladder work in yours. Estimate coverage and litres with the free paint calculator while you measure up.

Per day: when prep is the job

Some work cannot be fixed-priced honestly: flaking Victorian sash windows, water-damaged ceilings, wallpaper stripping where nobody knows what is underneath. Quote those at a day rate with a written estimate of days and a note that the estimate firms up once the surface is opened. Customers accept “day rate £260, expected three to four days” from a professional far more readily than they accept a fixed price that doubles mid-job.

Prep is a line, not a favour

Whatever the method, prep goes on the quote as its own line: filling, sanding, caulking, stain block, mist coats on new plaster. Two reasons. It is the difference between your finish and the £150-a-room finish, and naming it is how the customer learns that. And when the walls turn out worse than they looked, the variation conversation is about a line that already exists.

A worked example

Three rooms plus hall, stairs and landing:

• Prep and filling throughout: £240
• Living room, walls and ceiling: £520
• Two bedrooms, walls and ceilings: £780
• Hall, stairs and landing: £710
• Woodwork and trim, all areas: £340

£2,590 in five lines. The customer can see what declining the woodwork saves, and what the prep buys. One number on the back of a card cannot do either.

Photos are your unfair advantage

Painting is bought on trust in the finish, and the finish photographs. Two or three shots of your best recent work attached to the quote outsell any adjective. Cut lines, panelled walls, a glassy front door: that is the argument, made in two seconds, next to your price.

Offer the next room as an option

The feature wall, the ceilings while the furniture is out, the fourth room at a bundled price: put them on the quote as tickable options. Customers add rooms themselves at a rate that would embarrass any upsell conversation, because while the dust sheets are already down the incremental price genuinely is smaller, and they can see it.

Same-evening quotes win the week

Most decorating quotes still arrive days later, if at all. Arriving the same evening, branded, itemised, with photos and a deposit button, wins jobs at full price against cheaper, slower competitors. Snapquo built for painters and decorators keeps your room prices, prep and woodwork as saved items, builds the quote at the viewing, and takes the deposit the moment they accept. The first few documents are free; price the next house with it.