Cost of decorating

[Grey18]

Hi, so me, my partner and our 8 month old baby are currently on the council housing list and are getting close to getting our first home.

It is likely to be a standard 2 bedroom flat and will most likely need to be completely decorated including flooring (most likely carpets if not ground floor).

We have been saving hard and have managed to get a decent sum of money for when we do get housed for furniture and decorating.

I wanted advice on how much roughly it is going to cost us to completely redecorate a flat with the help of family (I know it depends on size but we just want to know what kind of figure we should be aiming to save). We're not worried about the cost of furniture as we have most of what we need and will get the rest as and when we can, just want to know the cost of decorating.

Please no judgements. We've never had our own home so don't know how much all of this costs!

Thank you in advance

It depends so much on the condition of the walls to start with. If they're clean and not damaged, an average room would take 5l of emulsion plus primer and satinwood for the door and skirting. If you're happy with white you can buy huge tubs quite cheap, and that's probably the best bet to start. B&Q currently have 2 X 10l of Leyland white emulsion for £20. Satinwood you get less for your money.

If the walls are bad, you'll need filler and sandpaper too.

Good luck, I hope you don't have to wait too much longer!

For furniture, keep an eye on the Facebook selling groups for your area, you'll save a fortune!

I always find paint more expensive than I thought it was doing to be.
Go to one of the decorators trade centres (crown, solid, Leyland, etc) rather than DIY stores - their paint is better quality and will cover better.
Calculate the area of walls and then get the coverage rate of the paint you like (litres required per m2) this will give you the amount (and cost) of paint.
If you are getting a decorator it will generally be around £5-7/m2 for Labour and materials in my area but that will change geographically.
If you have time and on a budget go for it yourself. Watch some YouTube vids and spend twice as long on preparation as you first estimate - prep will pay off always.
Good luck in your new home!

Assuming you mean painting walls & ceilings, woodwork & new curtains/ blinds, we did my sisters 2 up, 2 down for about £1,000. £120 of emulsion, £120 of satin, and £75 of brushes, sandpaper, sugar soap, white spirit etc. We shampood the existing carpets rather than replace them - £ 40 machine hire & detergent. Someone else made blinds & refinished some secondhand curtains. Then cushions, a throw, a couple of rugs, and new light fittings. A mirror for the bathroom & lots of cleaning stuff.
It took six of us three weekends to get it decent.

But that was just clean and basic. Some people spends £10,000s

Some councils/housing associations may still offer a grant in the form of vouchers to help with paint costs in some circumstances. It might be worth asking.

Ordinary Crown or Dulux Matt Emulsion is decent stuff to use. Use colours off the main brochure as custom mixed paint is more expensive. 5 litre tins are cheaper than 2. 5 litre tins so if you paint a lot of the house the same colour it will be cheaper than painting each room a different colour.

If you are doing all the painting yourself then maybe £200 for paint, brushes, roller, step ladders etc roughly.

Flooring if you go on Carpetright website and put in size of rooms it will give you the price of different carpets, laminate and engineered wood. Not recommending using them but just to give a cost estimate. Flooring does add up. We are getting new hall, stairs and landing carpet and underlay and that's £1k though its over 3 floors and 2 staircases. 2 rooms we have engineered wood from Homebase at £33sq metre plus underlay and fitting ourselves, bathroom laminate is £20sq metre plus underlay. There are cheaper options on there, think carpets start at £8 a square metre plus underlay at £5 sq metre then there's door bars and grippers etc.

So if you went for cheapest carpets and underlay and flat is 55 square metres would be a bit over £1000 to carpet with extras and fitting from somewhere like Carpetright.

Sorry. Just been going through the reply's. Really helpful thank you. Will have a look on carpet rights website to get an idea for flooring. Hopefully we get somewhere soon, I'm so ready now!

In terms of carpet, if you’re not too fussy and just want something clean and practical you can get good bargains on offcuts but you usually have to visit the stores. A few retailers sell them online. Make sure you know your measurements.

I don't know if this will apply but when we lived in a council property, one of our local carpet shops (independent) had the measurements for each type of flat to hand- so they quoted us as soon as we knew he address.

Also, we received a sum from the council for decorating- in the form of vouchers. They assessed what they deemed necessary and gave a certain amount per room.

@SilentBob that's such a good idea. Would save a lot of people (like me) who don't really know what they are doing measuring.

I will have to look that up, I'm not sure if my council do the vouchers. I suppose it depends on what state the property is in.

I'm quite fussy, I think because it's our first home I want it done up nicely. I can't wait to get my hands on a paintbrush haha.

Thank you

Carpetright will come and measure everything for free, not sure if other places do this too. Rooms are fairly straightforward its just longest length x longest width (though they like you to add 10 percent for wastage), stairs are quite complicated especially if they bend.

Thank you for all the advice. Think we should have enough when we get somewhere