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The Day Rate Report

Town index · 30 towns · 17 trades · 5 July 2026

Day rates by town

30 towns

each with all 17 trades priced on it, from £160 a decorator day in Sunderland to £235 in Guildford.

Open the town you work in and every trade on it is priced on one page.

Or open a trade and read all 30 towns on one scale. The two views carry the same figures, because they read the same registry.

Find your town

30 towns, grouped by region and ranked inside it by the decorator day rate, which is the anchor every other trade is spread from.

South East7 towns

East of England2 towns

South West4 towns

Scotland2 towns

Yorkshire3 towns

East Midlands4 towns

Wales1 town

North West2 towns

West Midlands3 towns

North East2 towns

Every trade

One page per trade, each carrying a national benchmark, the spread the UK price guides publish, and the full 30 town table behind it.

The decorator benchmark is £200 a day and every town figure on this site is spread from a trade benchmark the same way.

What the people doing the work are paid, as against what the job is charged at, is on what tradespeople earn, from official pay data and real construction payroll.

One trade is worked all the way from a benchmark to the labour in a room on what plastering costs, and the same working for a tiled wall is on what tiling costs.

What is not here

The gaps in the coverage, stated rather than papered over.

London

London is not one of the 30 and has no modelled figure on this site.

Adding it would mean deriving a rate with no rate model behind it, which is the one thing this report does not do.

London pay runs well above the UK median, so every figure here reads low for London work.

What the named price guides publish for London is collected on the London page, with their dates and the gaps between them.

Your town, if it is not listed

The 30 were chosen to spread across every region and price band, not to be a complete list of UK towns.

Open the nearest listed town in the same region: it shares the regional pay input.

The trade pages carry the national benchmark, which applies anywhere.

Heads up

Rate estimates blend the national decorator 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.

Take this directory

Every rate on this page is free to reproduce with attribution. Each town's own page carries its CSV.

Cite this pageThe Day Rate Report, UK day rates by town, 30 September 2026, https://thedayrate.co.uk/day-rates/
Download · CSVall-day-rates.csvEvery trade in every one of the 30 towns, one row each.

The 30 town figures are free to use in a local story or a fact check, and a credit with a link back is all we ask, under CC BY 4.0.

Your next step

Once you have found your town, the next step is pricing a job there on your own costs.

The Rate Sorted calculator carries all 30 towns, so you pick yours, add your costs and get a rate for that place.

Weighing up two of these towns?Any two of the 30, every trade side by side, with the gap in pounds a day.Compare two towns →Checking a figure before you use it?The model, the inputs and the dated source register.Read the methodology →Writing about trade costs?Three pre packaged story angles and one free CSV per trade.Story angles and downloads →Quoting for work in one of these towns?The same figures read from the other side of the invoice.What should I charge →Paying by the hour rather than the day?Every trade here worked back to an hour, with the range the price guides publish.Trade hourly rates →Budgeting a job, not just a rate?How many days the work runs to, from sourced constants and real drying times.How long decorating takes →