National benchmark
£240
A modelled benchmark, published beside the guide spread rather than derived from it.
Our benchmark for a carpenter or joiner is £240 a day.
Published UK price guides put carpenters and joiners between £130 and £360, checked 30 September 2026.
Sources: Checkatrade, HaMuch, CostEstimator, MyJobQuote and PriceYourJob (2025 guide).
Carpenter and joiner rates across 30 towns
Ranked by modelled carpenter or joiner day rate, built the way the method band below sets out. The modelled range beside each town is drawn to one shared scale, so two carpenter or joiner towns can be read straight off against each other.
Showing all 30 towns.
No town on this page matches that. All 30 are in the table, and the town index explains which towns are not modelled and why.
| # | Town | Rate | vs £240 | Modelled range |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | GuildfordSouth East£212 to £367 | £282 | £42 above | |
| 2 | OxfordSouth East£206 to £358 | £275 | £35 above | |
| 3 | CambridgeEast of England£203 to £352 | £271 | £31 above | |
| 4 | BrightonSouth East£197 to £342 | £263 | £23 above | |
| 5 | BathSouth West£191 to £330 | £254 | £14 above | |
| 6 | ReadingSouth East£190 to £329 | £253 | £13 above | |
| 7 | BristolSouth West£185 to £321 | £247 | £7 above | |
| 8 | Milton KeynesSouth East£185 to £321 | £247 | £7 above | |
| 9 | CheltenhamSouth West£182 to £316 | £243 | £3 above | |
| 10 | EdinburghScotland£182 to £315 | £242 | £2 above | |
| 11 | YorkYorkshire£176 to £304 | £234 | £6 below | |
| 12 | ExeterSouth West£175 to £303 | £233 | £7 below | |
| 13 | PortsmouthSouth East£174 to £302 | £232 | £8 below | |
| 14 | NorthamptonEast Midlands£173 to £299 | £230 | £10 below | |
| 15 | SouthamptonSouth East£172 to £298 | £229 | £11 below | |
| 16 | CardiffWales£170 to £295 | £227 | £13 below | |
| 17 | NorwichEast of England£170 to £295 | £227 | £13 below | |
| 18 | ManchesterNorth West£170 to £294 | £226 | £14 below | |
| 19 | BirminghamWest Midlands£167 to £290 | £223 | £17 below | |
| 20 | LeedsYorkshire£167 to £289 | £222 | £18 below | |
| 21 | LeicesterEast Midlands£164 to £283 | £218 | £22 below | |
| 22 | CoventryWest Midlands£164 to £283 | £218 | £22 below | |
| 23 | GlasgowScotland£163 to £282 | £217 | £23 below | |
| 24 | SheffieldYorkshire£162 to £281 | £216 | £24 below | |
| 25 | DerbyEast Midlands£158 to £274 | £211 | £29 below | |
| 26 | LiverpoolNorth West£158 to £273 | £210 | £30 below | |
| 27 | NewcastleNorth East£156 to £270 | £208 | £32 below | |
| 28 | NottinghamEast Midlands£156 to £270 | £208 | £32 below | |
| 29 | Stoke-on-TrentWest Midlands£151 to £261 | £201 | £39 below | |
| 30 | SunderlandNorth East£144 to £250 | £192 | £48 below |
Read the rangeEvery range spans the same fraction of its own town rate, 0.75 to 1.30, so a higher priced town shows a wider one.That extra width is arithmetic and not evidence, because the range is a fixed rule rather than a measurement.
- Scale every bar drawn on £140 to £370
- Range the modelled range, the rate x 0.75 and x 1.30
Your next step
You have the £240 carpenter or joiner benchmark, so the next step is a carpenter or joiner rate that covers your own costs.
Put in the take home you want, your van and your insurance, and the Rate Sorted calculator turns them into your own carpenter or joiner day rate, ready to price a job with.
Highest town
£282
Guildford, the biggest premium over the benchmark in the 30.
Cheapest town
£192
Sunderland, £48 under the benchmark and the floor of the table.
Published guide spread
£130 to £360
What 5 named guides publish for carpenters and joiners, checked 30 September 2026.
Hiring a carpenter or joiner?
A carpenter or joiner quote between £130 and £360 a day is inside what the UK guides publish, and £240 is the benchmark this site models from.
Quoting as a carpenter or joiner?
£240 puts carpenters and joiners 6 of 17 on this site, between £140 for general labourer work and £280 for electrician.
What to charge, trade by tradeWhat carpenters and joiners earn
How the 30 towns spread out
Every town on one axis, marked against £240. It shows where the weight of the carpenter or joiner table sits, and how far each end has travelled from that benchmark.
£240 benchmark
Guildford £282
Sunderland sits at the other end, on £192.
That is a £90 span across the 30 towns for one day of the same work, and because every trade page on this site draws its rail on the identical £140 to £370 scale, carpenters and joiners can be laid over any other trade here and read tick for tick.
Half the table sits here
17 of the 30 towns fall between £217 and £247. Read that middle £30 band first when a carpenter or joiner quote needs a quick sanity check against somewhere of a similar size.
Above the benchmark
10 towns clear £240, and 9 of those are in the South East, South West or East of England.
How each town figure is built
Three inputs, in this order, and nothing else goes in.
- 01The trade benchmark, £240Stated and sourced at the top of this page. Nothing on this page works it out again.
- 02A geography multiplier, trade neutralOne multiplier per town, built from earnings data from the ONS and local house prices, applied to every trade the same way.
- 03A modelled range of 0.75 and 1.30Low and high are the town's own modelled rate multiplied by 0.75 and by 1.30, never the benchmark.
Rate estimates blend the national carpenter and joiner day rate benchmark, published against the spread named UK trade price guides print, with official ONS regional earnings and local house price data.
Figures are modelled estimates for guidance, not quotes.
Sources: ONS ASHE 2025, UK House Price Index April 2026.
Nothing on this page is a survey of what carpenters and joiners charged.
It is not an observed ceiling for a town.
No town level observed ceiling exists for this trade, so the modelled values publish as computed.
The full working behind every carpenter or joiner figure, with each source dated, is on the methodology page.
Which regions pay the most
The median of the towns we cover in each region, which means a region with one town in it is that one town. London has no modelled town yet, so it does not appear.
South East7 towns covered, £229 to £282£253
East of England2 towns covered, £227 to £271£249
South West4 towns covered, £233 to £254£245
Scotland2 towns covered, £217 to £242£230
Wales1 town covered, £227 to £227£227
Yorkshire3 towns covered, £216 to £234£222
North West2 towns covered, £210 to £226£218
West Midlands3 towns covered, £201 to £223£218
East Midlands4 towns covered, £208 to £230£215
North East2 towns covered, £192 to £208£200
The spread is the story
A Guildford day and a Sunderland day are the same carpenter or joiner work at a £90 difference.
How the £240 is set, and what checks it
The first card is the spread published according to the named UK price guides. The rest are independent checks that never fed the £240.
What the guides publish
£130 to £360
5 named UK price guides publish a carpenter or joiner day rate.Between them they run from £130 to £360, and the £240 benchmark sits inside that.It is the figure the benchmark is published beside; the cards after it are the tests.
Checkatrade, HaMuch, CostEstimator, MyJobQuote and PriceYourJob (2025 guide), checked 30 September 2026
Office for National Statistics, a year
£33,400
The Office for National Statistics puts carpenter and joiner pay at £33,400 a year (2025 pay survey).
ONS ASHE 2025 provisional, employee earnings, not a charge out rate · ASHE Table 14
Hudson Contract joinery, a day
£221
Hudson Contract, which tracks what firms pay trades, has joinery at £1,104 a week, about £221 a day.
Hudson Contract, subcontractor payroll, England and Wales, three year average, July 2023 to June 2026
Bespoke joinery ceiling, a day
£550
Specialist work runs £350 to £550 a day.Everyday carpentry stays inside the town band above.
DigitalTradies and Best Builders
Carpenter and joiner wages and pay rates
What carpenters and joiners are paid is a different measurement from the £240 a customer is charged, and both are on this page.
Paid as an employee
£33,400 a year
That is the ONS median for carpenters and joiners employed on a payroll, under SOC 5316.It is a wage before tax, not a rate anybody quotes a customer.
Paid as a subcontractor
£221 a day
Hudson Contract paid £1,104 a week on its joinery series, which is £221 over five days.this trade, published by Hudson under its own name
Employed, starter to experienced
£24,000 to £40,000 a year
The National Careers Service carpenter profile prints both salaries, read 3 October 2026.They are employee salaries before tax, not the £240 a customer pays for a day.
What tradespeople earn sets carpenters and joiners beside the other 16 trades, sourced 5 September 2026.
Pricing a short job rather than a full day, the £240 works out at £34.29 an hour on the working day this site assumes, which is ours rather than a published figure.
What the trades charge an hour sets that against the hourly range the price guides publish for carpenters and joiners, and names the day it divides by.
Two trades, £40 apart
Carpenters and decorators share the same ONS going rate as employees.
Their self employed charge out benchmarks sit £40 apart.
- Carpenter and joiner benchmark
- £240
- Painter and decorator benchmark
- £200
- Gap at the benchmark
- £40 over
- ONS going rate, both trades
- £33,400 a year
Common questions
The same answers the structured data on this page gives a search engine, word for word.
How much does a carpenter charge per day in the UK?
Our benchmark for a carpenter is £240 a day.
Published UK price guides put carpenters between £130 and £360, checked 30 September 2026.
Sources: Checkatrade, HaMuch, CostEstimator, MyJobQuote and PriceYourJob (2025 guide).
Across the 30 modelled towns the figure runs from £192 in Sunderland to £282 in Guildford.
Bespoke and commercial joinery runs higher, £350 to £550 a day.
Is a joiner's day rate the same as a carpenter's?
On this site they are one trade, because the Office for National Statistics counts carpenters and joiners as a single occupation in the pay survey the cross check above reads.
So the £240 benchmark and all 30 town figures cover joiners as well as carpenters.
Bespoke and commercial joinery is the work that sits above both, at £350 to £550 a day.
Does the day rate include materials or VAT?
No.
A day rate here is one full working day of labour, before materials and VAT.
Why do carpenter rates differ between towns?
The national benchmark is spread town by town with ONS regional earnings (ASHE 2025) and local house prices (UK House Price Index, April 2026).
Expensive areas pay more for the same work.
What is the carpenter pay rate in the UK?
The carpenter pay rate depends on who is paying it.
Employed on a payroll, carpenters earn an ONS median of £33,400 a year, under SOC 5316.
For carpenters paid as subcontractors instead, the Hudson Contract figure is its joinery series at £1,104 a week, which works out at about £221 a day over a five day week.
That is a true carpenter series.
Neither is the £240 a carpenter charges a customer.
Take the data
Every figure on this page is in the file, with the same sources and the same date.
Download · CSVcarpenter-day-rates.csv30 rows, one per town, with the rate, the modelled range and the published spread.
Cite this pageThe Day Rate Report, carpenter and joiner day rates by town, 30 September 2026, https://thedayrate.co.uk/carpenter-day-rates/
Embed this figure
The carpenter or joiner card carries the benchmark and the date, and the link goes to this page.
<a href="https://thedayrate.co.uk/carpenter-day-rates/"><img src="https://thedayrate.co.uk/og/carpenter-day-rates.png" alt="Carpenter and joiner day rates in 30 UK towns, from The Day Rate Report" width="1200" height="630"></a>
The carpenter or joiner figures are free to use in an article, a fact check or a quote, and a credit with a link back is all we ask, under CC BY 4.0.
Quoting carpentry or joinery work yourself?The £240 carpenter and joiner benchmark beside every other trade on this site, read from the side of the person sending the invoice.What should I chargeWeighing up a carpenter or joiner quote?A £240 carpentry day multiplied by the day count is the sum behind a whole job price.Day rate or price per job
The full guide index carries all 12, including the ones that turn the carpenter or joiner day rate into a job price.
None of the 30 towns modelled above is London, where this site publishes no carpenter or joiner rate of its own and prints what the named guides publish instead.