I have been quoted £11,000 to decorate a 4 bed 1960s terrace in NWLondon

[Zaggybuns]

I nearly fell off my chair ! The house has been freshly plastered 2 years back and only needs repainting in the same colours, to cover cracks and freshen up - both ceiling and walls. The property is furniture free with no one living there.
I think it is super high, and before going for other quotes, thought I would ask here for those with experience of London painters rates.
Thanks in advance

After just two years does it need painting anyway? But, I agree that quote is bonkers. Either they think you are made of money or they don't really want the job.

Nope. I work with very high end set builders in London for work, and they only charge £300 per man per day. And they could absolutely blitz your house in a week for about £6000. £11k is mental.

That's very high. I'm in the south east, and it's 150 a day for the going rate.

So say there is two of them, that's 300 a day for ten days, which is 3grand. I think they are taking rhe piss and you need other quotes.

Some of them do, they think if you're not getting other quotes, or you can afford it, or even if you're clue less, they bump it up. We had quotes for some painting here and they ranged from 2.5 k to 9.5k. It was ridiculous.

My sil had her 4 bed house repainted last year, all walls celings any cracks filled and rub down glossing the woodwork, also the garage floor was painted as well it came to just over £6000 it was one man on his own and I think took about 6 weeks to complete. Most people tend to keep on top of decorating the odd room but sil and bil never did anything internally for at least 25 years so there was a lot to do, must admit I nearly choked when they told me the price.

Hi @Zaggybuns . I really recommend posting your job on my builder.com. You can see tradespeople's reviews and you'll get a load of quotes from people who are available to do the work. I use it in London and it's great. I haven't used a decorator though so I can't recommend one.

Thank you all, I have requested for quotes via checkatrader, hoping for the best

Lemond1fficult, are you able to pass on details of your builders at all ?

My Builder is better than Checkatrade! Checkatrade is just advertising.

Maybe he thought you were offering to buy his company and quoted for that!

Blindly, I’ll do it for half that!

It really isn't that hard to DIY - no special skills involved, just use appropriate masking tape and spend time covering everything you don't want paint on, then slap it on (I do two layers unless it looks too thin).

I did walls for three rooms in three days, it cost me less than £100 per room (most of which went towards a large pot of F&B paint for each room - enough for two layers - which could easily have been much cheaper with cheaper paint).

I honestly don't know why anyone at all would pay these vastly inflated prices when it's really not rocket science. And painters and decorators who try to make out it is so they can charge more should be ashamed of themselves!

For the record, I'm an extremely unfit 48 year old, so not hugely taxing physically either.

Get some good proper tools and you can do it yourself with professional results. I do think the quote is step but there is always someone willing to take advantage. I needed to paint my kitchen and the quotes ranged from £700 from someone who clearl knew what he was doing to £3000 (some shoddy painter my neighbour who hired him was not happy with. At the end, I did it my sel for about £200

We had a retired painter do our whole house for £1k. That's whole house white walls, plus gloss all doors and skirtings. That's Surrey. Not high class, as in London, spray painted, but good enough.