to expect a painter to quote somehere near the Which? guidelines?

[r2d2ismyidealman]

They quote £200 - £600 a medium sized room depending on whether there's wall paper. Have your quotes for painting been within this guideline? There's a job my OH has been meaning to do but is so tired after working all week that it seems harsh. I'm extremely bad at painting. I lack patience and attention to detail. So I've had two people in today from checkatrade and am awaiting their quotes. What would be reasonable to expect do you think?

In my area it would cost quite a bit more than that (south east).

where abouts are you as that may make a difference and how big is the room

I pay my decorator £80 per day.

I suppose it would depend on the level of prep required, and the size of the room.

How big is the room, how much prep and are the decorators a fully insured, professional outfit?

We are having a 5m x 4.7m room done (walls, ceiling and some woodwork, some prep. All paint, no paper or stripping). 2 days, including materials, just under £450. Firm are fully insured and excellent

My Mum has work from a man who charges £100 a day. He is a very experienced painter and decorator and is also fast. But as someone else said, if the room needs a lot of prep then you might find that it's more. What part of the country are you in?

NW it's between 50 and 70 a day and you provide the paint or wallpaper and they sort the rest

Go off personal recommendations and checkatrade and pay the price you are happy to pay. An excellent and experienced decorator will charge more than someone who can just slap wallpaper on and hold a brush.. you really do get what you pay for.

I pay mine £12 an hour, but they are very efficient, and work hard all the time they are here.
My ndn's had some building work done last year, and there are 3 blokes supposed to be painting the back of their house at the moment, and I hope they aren't on an hourly/daily/weekly rate as it's very rare to see them actually doing any work - they mostly stand round drinking tea / smoking / having lunch / having a chat - so you have to know and trust your workforce for that to work.

It's diff to say how much for a room though, as it depends how much you want them to do - the detail is all in the preparation, not the actual painting.

I paid mind £1000 that was for stripping , lining and painting every room bar bathroom

Here it's a standard 300 a room . That's average sized . Two coats . Wood and walls .Everything you see with the door shut .

I paid a painter a daily rate and he took the piss, I ended up having to sack him. Much better to get a fixed price.

This is all very useful.

So, I'm in the south east unfortunately. We've just moved and basically the whole house needs to be painted. OH insists he/we can do it with him doing the finer detail and me doing the big roller part. But when I look at our weekends I think realistically we will only have one or two weekends a month so this can easily take a year at least for us to do together.

There are 4 rooms that are about 10 x 10 feet, a smaller room and the hallway/landing.

This doesn't include the bathrooms and kitchen, which I think we can do, and it doesn't include the ceilings and wood work as they are good. One guy said it would take 2 guys one week, another said it would take 2 guys 2 weeks so I'm expecting there to be quite a difference between the two quotes. One room definitely needs to have the wall paper stripped (because it's in poor condition) so that's extra prep. The hallways might need to have the wall paper stripped (because they might be vinyl and therefore can't be painted over), but everywhere else the wall paper is in really good condition and good to be painted over.

I take the advice not to go for an hourly or daily price unless I trust them. I don't know anyone so I can't go down that route anyway.

OP - if it helps, we recently got our house painted - 4 rooms (medium/large), kitchen, 2 bathrooms & hallway & stairs. We paid 2000 just for labour. We supplied paints ourselves as we wanted to use organic paints from a specific shop. The price didn't include any rubbing down of walls, painting of ceilings/skirting/doors/windows. Just simple - fill any holes & apply paint using roller/brush. Took about 6 days for 1 person.

Had a considerably lower quote from another painter (1200 over 5 days) but he backed off on learning about the organic paint!

I'd get a whole job quote. There's no point paying by the hour/day if I takes them three times as long.

*it

Ooh, artistic, that's the price range I'm hoping for. Are you in the south east?

Yes am in SE London borders. And we did this at very short notice...2-3 days between hiring the painter & starting the job, so we assumed we had been charged a bit of a premium.

I'm in SE London and we pay out decorator around £400 a room including the woodwork, stripping and materials. I have to say, there is no comparison between the standard of finish he, as a professional, achieves vs the standard of finish I can manage.

I'm in the Lakes and have been quoted £500 per room. That's to strip off existing textured paper, make good (either either liner paper or by skimming walls), paint walls and woodwork. One of the quotes included paint. The other didn't b

Thanks everyone. The quotes have come in and we're really happy with them and seem to match up with the Which? guidance - checkatrade is such a helpful tool as well, really takes the worry out of the situation.

Now I will admit my sneakiness - I got the estimates without first checking with OH. I just could see this being one of those projects that goes on for a year or more and I honestly thought I would rather go so far as to pay for it out of my own pocket of he really did not want to spend money that way. I then started asking this morning - "so how long do you think it will take us to do one room?", "Ok, and how frequently do you think we can set aside time to do this, two weekends a month? One?", "Hm, ok, and how would you feel about considering getting someone in to do it, like say next week, for £1500 plus paint instead of us spending the next year doing it?" Clearly smart OH recognises this will result in a much nicer 12 month stretch for us and is fully on board - yay!

I'm so, so excited I could cry!

check for quality. Will they take up carpets to do skirtings or just slap down masking tape and hope? Will they spend longer doing the prep than the painting? Will they take down all items on the walls and fill holes? Will they use the right paint for the job? (if they say 'one coat', run away!)

He gets the highest of ratings on checkatrade, has a long history with them and his quote is detailed - I trust it enough to go ahead, but thanks for your warning special!