£1,000–£1,500 to paint a medium lounge?! Is this normal?

We have always cleared the rooms so the decorators can get in and get their job done. Why would you leave room filled for them to move stuff?
I know min wage and materials have gone up a lot but my Herts decorators don’t charge that amount.

Paint it yourself, it's not difficult!

Do it yourself.

The suggested costs are ridiculous and it is not that difficult to paint a wall...

I paint every room myself as o can’t stomach paying for decorating. I can do a normal size sitting room in a day. No way am I paying £1500.

I have forgot to ask about ceilings and now radiators ! Going to ask for it all to be done now, someone will probably quote be 5grand in 5 years 🤣

You have to fill in any holes, sand the walls, scrub the walls with sugar soap, use masking tape along the coving and skirting boards, cover any carpets on the floor. We tend to remove things like curtain rails and put them back on afterwards. Some people tape those though. We tape over the light switches. The prep is more time consuming than the painting itself and it’s important to do it properly to get a good finish. I’m not a professional, but I can’t imagine how you could speed that bit up. I would recommend doing it yourself a wall at a time in the evenings. It will take a couple of weeks, but then it’s done and you don’t have to find somewhere to store everything in your living room, as you just need to clear a wall at a time. There’s a lot of waiting around for stuff to dry. Once you’ve done it yourself, you’ll know whether you personally feel it’s worth paying so much for next time.

OP i live in Herts and am horrified at how expensive these things are but I think the above breakdown is pretty accurate to be fair. If you've asked for different people to quote
and they are all saying roughly the same then that's the market rate, plain and simple.

by all means ask for a breakdown and a more detailed quote but be prepared to never see them again as they can pick and choose their jobs round here.

im laughing out loud at people who are saying they have had it done for less than £500!

I do my woodwork myself, get a local handyman to paint my walls and a professional decorator does any wallpapering and ceilings I need doing, saves a fortune

You are paying for someone else's time, and the two sets of shelves, depending on what they are, might take a lot of time to get right. It's about what I'd expect in London (I paid £900 a year ago to have our master bedroom including fitted wardrobes painted). Yeh you could do it yourself but do you want to spend several days of your life doing this? What's worth more, your time or money? Only you can decide that. Unless you can take a week off to do it, you probably won't get it all done in a single weekend without another person working with you, and presumably as it's your lounge you want the space to be usable with minimum downtime.

I actually had no idea how much it should all cost. He literally done all the ceilings, skirtings, hand rails, doors, radiators as well. Feeling incredibly lucky, and he’s retiring next year so may never get my house decorated again by those prices 😂

Same here,
we’re getting a 3 bed house, utility and downstairs loo, kitchen, living room, dining room, landing hallways and stairs done for 1500 max, if he finishes earlier it’ll be cheaper, feel to pay the whole 1500 after this thread 😅 this is a friends uncle ive never met aswell

@AhMh67
When was that and how long did it take?

We got a whole 4 bed house painted for 5.5k last year - walls, ceilings and all interior woodwork, including the cost of the paint (in the SW though) so that does sound a bit pricey. We had to do all the room clearing.

Our painter said that it was much harder to quote accurately when the customer supplied the paint themselves, as if the paint was crap it would need more coats and the job would take longer. Whereas he knew how many coats the brand he ordered (which colour-matched other brands) needed.

Similar to us, we are paying circa £1500 for our house to be done, can’t believe some of the prices people have paid/ paying 😮

we actually haven’t asked for ceilings. Forgot about that 🤣

I pay £160 plus £10 for travel per day for the two decorators I use in the North East.

Absolutely nuts. We got a 2 bedroom flat decorated for £1000.00. That was all rooms painted and wall paper put up.

Our family friends done every room in our 5 bedroom house, 4 bathroom, 2 reception rooms 1 kitchen house for £2000 as mates rates. Only from this thread do I realise how much these really were mates rates, feel like I’m going to go buy him a bottle of something…

The best quote I've had for painting one medium sized room including the ceiling but not skirting boards, doors or any shelving, is £1,400. That includes materials. The room was more or less empty so no discussion about moving furniture or anything. He said it would take three days.

Yes. Prep means sanding and filling woodwork and any imperfections, caulking where needed and cleaning. Priming as needed. Then the topcoat paint can be applied.

That's a lot just for the walls. I imagine he'll be done in 2 days.

Seems a lot to me. We paid about £1200 to have our hall, stairs and landing painted, plus two newly built bedrooms and a small bathroom, all including ceilings. We supplied the paint. DP did a lot of the prep work because he’s very fussy and doesn’t think anyone can do it as well as him🤣 But the original quote included all that.

You missed the bit where I said, "and do the prep".

But some people are willing to pay those prices? Why shouldn’t people with plenty of money but insufficient time to do the job themselves be able to hire professionals?

These threads are pretty pointless tbh. So many variables but the main one being the level of prep that’s required or not.

I’ve done plenty of jobs where the skirting, doors and architraves are a blobby, drippy bashed up mess all round and took many many hours of sanding, filling and more sanding to bring back to perfect. Walls full of dings and scrapes. The “painting is easy” crew on here I bet wouldn’t even notice that kind of detail and slap it ontop thinking they could actually paint. Ditto hairline cracks in walls, not a simple case of chucking some ready mixed pollyfilla in, which will look ok for all of a couple of months before the crack re appears. And spotting a good pro’s cutting in vs a diy-er can usually be done from a mile off.

I can pretty much guarantee those professing that painting is dead simple and unskilled, just diy it… I could walk into a room they’ve done and come out with a list of flaws and defects as long as my arm.

Go into a 5 star hotel and look at the paintwork. That’s the finish a high quality painter should be getting you.

Could you not just do it yourself? If you’re buying the paint and removing all the furniture and it’s a fairly straightforward job, just make a weekend of it and do it.

I would say that sounds fairly spot on. I’d expect that is 2-3 days of work depending on how many coats and touch ups and doing the awkward bits around the shelf. That’s about £500 a day, with costs like insurance and supplies (not including the paint), travel, possibly more than one decorator on the job, it’s not a huge day rate.