National benchmark
£225
A modelled benchmark, published beside the guide spread rather than derived from it.
Our benchmark for a decorative plasterer is £225 a day.
Published UK price guides put decorative plasterers between £150 and £800, checked 30 September 2026.
Sources: MyJobQuote and MyBuilder.
Decorative Plasterer rates across 30 towns
Ranked by modelled decorative plasterer 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 decorative plasterer 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 £225 | Modelled range |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | GuildfordSouth East£199 to £345 | £265 | £40 above | |
| 2 | OxfordSouth East£194 to £335 | £258 | £33 above | |
| 3 | CambridgeEast of England£191 to £330 | £254 | £29 above | |
| 4 | BrightonSouth East£185 to £321 | £247 | £22 above | |
| 5 | BathSouth West£179 to £311 | £239 | £14 above | |
| 6 | ReadingSouth East£178 to £308 | £237 | £12 above | |
| 7 | BristolSouth West£173 to £300 | £231 | £6 above | |
| 8 | Milton KeynesSouth East£173 to £300 | £231 | £6 above | |
| 9 | CheltenhamSouth West£171 to £296 | £228 | £3 above | |
| 10 | EdinburghScotland£170 to £295 | £227 | £2 above | |
| 11 | YorkYorkshire£165 to £286 | £220 | £5 below | |
| 12 | ExeterSouth West£164 to £285 | £219 | £6 below | |
| 13 | PortsmouthSouth East£164 to £283 | £218 | £7 below | |
| 14 | NorthamptonEast Midlands£162 to £281 | £216 | £9 below | |
| 15 | SouthamptonSouth East£161 to £280 | £215 | £10 below | |
| 16 | CardiffWales£159 to £276 | £212 | £13 below | |
| 17 | NorwichEast of England£159 to £276 | £212 | £13 below | |
| 18 | ManchesterNorth West£158 to £274 | £211 | £14 below | |
| 19 | BirminghamWest Midlands£157 to £272 | £209 | £16 below | |
| 20 | LeedsYorkshire£156 to £270 | £208 | £17 below | |
| 21 | LeicesterEast Midlands£153 to £265 | £204 | £21 below | |
| 22 | CoventryWest Midlands£153 to £265 | £204 | £21 below | |
| 23 | GlasgowScotland£152 to £264 | £203 | £22 below | |
| 24 | SheffieldYorkshire£152 to £263 | £202 | £23 below | |
| 25 | DerbyEast Midlands£149 to £257 | £198 | £27 below | |
| 26 | LiverpoolNorth West£148 to £256 | £197 | £28 below | |
| 27 | NewcastleNorth East£146 to £254 | £195 | £30 below | |
| 28 | NottinghamEast Midlands£146 to £254 | £195 | £30 below | |
| 29 | Stoke-on-TrentWest Midlands£142 to £246 | £189 | £36 below | |
| 30 | SunderlandNorth East£135 to £234 | £180 | £45 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 £130 to £350
- Range the modelled range, the rate x 0.75 and x 1.30
Your next step
You have the £225 decorative plasterer benchmark, so the next step is a decorative plasterer 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 decorative plasterer day rate, ready to price a job with.
Highest town
£265
Guildford, the biggest premium over the benchmark in the 30.
Cheapest town
£180
Sunderland, £45 under the benchmark and the floor of the table.
Published guide spread
£150 to £800
What 2 named guides publish for decorative plasterers, checked 30 September 2026.
Hiring a decorative plasterer?
A decorative plasterer quote between £150 and £800 a day is inside what the UK guides publish, and £225 is the benchmark this site models from.
Quoting as a decorative plasterer?
£225 puts decorative plasterers joint 10 of 17 on this site, between £140 for general labourer work and £280 for electrician.
What to charge, trade by tradeWhat decorative plasterers earn
How the 30 towns spread out
Every town on one axis, marked against £225. It shows where the weight of the decorative plasterer table sits, and how far each end has travelled from that benchmark.
£225 benchmark
Guildford £265
Sunderland sits at the other end, on £180.
That is a £85 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 £130 to £350 scale, decorative plasterers 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 £203 and £231. Read that middle £28 band first when a decorative plasterer quote needs a quick sanity check against somewhere of a similar size.
Above the benchmark
10 towns clear £225, 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, £225Stated 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 a national decorative plastering day rate benchmark, checked against dated UK trade price guides, 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 decorative plasterers charged.
The full working behind every decorative plasterer 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, £215 to £265£237
East of England2 towns covered, £212 to £254£233
South West4 towns covered, £219 to £239£230
Scotland2 towns covered, £203 to £227£215
Wales1 town covered, £212 to £212£212
Yorkshire3 towns covered, £202 to £220£208
North West2 towns covered, £197 to £211£204
West Midlands3 towns covered, £189 to £209£204
East Midlands4 towns covered, £195 to £216£201
North East2 towns covered, £180 to £195£188
The spread is the story
A Guildford day and a Sunderland day are the same decorative plasterer work at a £85 difference.
How the £225 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 £225.
What the guides publish
£150 to £800
2 named UK price guides publish a decorative plasterer day rate.Between them they run from £150 to £800, and the £225 benchmark sits inside that.It is the figure the benchmark is published beside; the cards after it are the tests.
MyJobQuote and MyBuilder, checked 30 September 2026
Office for National Statistics
£34,016
The Office for National Statistics puts full time plasterer pay at £34,016 a year (2025 pay survey).
ONS ASHE 2025 provisional, employee earnings, not a charge out rate · ASHE Table 14
Hudson Contract, what firms pay
£919
Hudson Contract, which tracks what firms pay trades, publishes no decorative plastering trade, so its nearest is plastering at £919 a week, about £184 a day.
Hudson Contract, subcontractor payroll, England and Wales, three year average, July 2023 to June 2026
This Hudson figure is a nearest tradeHudson publishes no decorative plasterer trade.Those are its nearest published trades, not a decorative plasterer rate.
How the guides price decorative plasterer work
Decorative plastering shares a benchmark with drainage
Decorative plasterers and drainage engineers both benchmark at £225 on this site, so their thirty town rates match to the pound.Their published spreads part company: decorative plastering runs £150 to £800, the widest on the site, because bespoke cornice work is priced so far above plain coving.
Guides price it as coving and cornice work
MyJobQuote and MyBuilder both file this work as plaster coving and bespoke cornices.Standard coving runs £150 to £300 a day on both, and bespoke cornice work runs £350 to £800.
Some jobs need two fitters
MyJobQuote says some jobs need two fitters, which pushes the labour rate higher.It also prices London coving fitters at £250 to £350 a day.
Other coving figures
HomeHow prices standard coving labour at £100 to £150 a day in July 2025, and Checkatrade puts a coving tradesperson at £300 a day.Both describe plain coving rather than run plaster, so neither sets the decorative plastering spread above.
What other cornice sources publish
BookaBuilderUK puts a specialist cornice installer at £250 to £400 a day, and a specialist plasterer in London at £300 to £500, on a page with no date.HaMuch prints the same £150 to £300 and £350 to £800 as MyJobQuote and MyBuilder, but draws its labour figures from painters and decorators.
Some cornice fitters quote by the hour
MyBuilder prices tradespeople fitting plaster cornice at £20 to £45 an hour and prints no day rate on that page.ONS counts decorative plasterers inside SOC 5321 plasterers, in the sub group for wall and decorative work.
Decorative Plasterer wages and pay rates
What decorative plasterers are paid is a different measurement from the £225 a customer is charged, and both are on this page.
Paid as an employee
£34,016 a year
ONS publishes no decorative plasterer code, so the figure is the plasterers median the trade is counted inside.It is a wage before tax, not a rate anybody quotes a customer.
Paid as a subcontractor
£184 a day
Hudson Contract paid £919 a week on its plastering series, which is £184 over five days.the nearest trade Hudson does publish, named as such and not this one
What tradespeople earn sets decorative plasterers beside the other 16 trades, sourced 5 September 2026.
Pricing a short job rather than a full day, the £225 works out at £32.14 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 decorative plasterers, and names the day it divides by.
Against the decorator benchmark
Decorators benchmark at £200 a day on this site.
Decorative plastering comes in £25 over that figure.
- Decorative Plasterer benchmark
- £225
- Painter and decorator benchmark
- £200
- Gap at the benchmark
- £25 over
Bespoke cornice day, top
£800
MyJobQuote and MyBuilder both publish bespoke plaster cornice work at £350 to £800 a day.The same £350 to £800 appears word for word on MyJobQuote, MyBuilder and HaMuch, so it reads as one figure repeated.
Common questions
The same answers the structured data on this page gives a search engine, word for word.
How much does a decorative plasterer charge per day in the UK?
Our benchmark for a decorative plasterer is £225 a day.
Published UK price guides put decorative plasterers between £150 and £800, checked 30 September 2026.
Sources: MyJobQuote and MyBuilder.
Across the 30 modelled towns the figure runs from £180 in Sunderland to £265 in Guildford.
Does the decorative plasterer day rate include materials or VAT?
No.
The £225 is one full working day of decorative plasterer labour, before materials and VAT.
Why do decorative plasterer rates differ between towns?
The £225 benchmark is spread town by town with ONS regional earnings (ASHE 2025) and local house prices (UK House Price Index, April 2026).
That is what puts £265 on Guildford and £180 on Sunderland.
That is a £85 gap across the 30 towns for the same day of decorative plasterer work.
What is the decorative plasterer pay rate in the UK?
The decorative plasterer pay rate depends on who is paying it.
ONS publishes no decorative plasterer code, so the figure is the plasterers median the trade is counted inside.
Employed on a payroll, decorative plasterers earn an ONS median of £34,016 a year, under SOC 5321.
For decorative plasterers paid as subcontractors instead, the nearest Hudson Contract figure is its plastering series at £919 a week, which works out at about £184 a day over a five day week.
That is a nearby trade, not a decorative plasterer series.
Neither is the £225 a decorative plasterer charges a customer.
Take the data
Every figure on this page is in the file, with the same sources and the same date.
Download · CSVdecorative-plasterer-day-rates.csv30 rows, one per town, with the rate, the modelled range and the published spread.
Cite this pageThe Day Rate Report, Decorative Plasterer day rates, 30 September 2026, https://thedayrate.co.uk/decorative-plasterer-day-rates/
Embed this figure
The decorative plasterer card carries the benchmark and the date, and the link goes to this page.
<a href="https://thedayrate.co.uk/decorative-plasterer-day-rates/"><img src="https://thedayrate.co.uk/og/decorative-plasterer-day-rates.png" alt="Decorative Plasterer day rates in 30 UK towns, from The Day Rate Report" width="1200" height="630"></a>
The decorative plasterer 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 decorative plasterer work yourself?The £225 decorative plasterer benchmark beside every other trade on this site, read from the side of the person sending the invoice.What should I chargeWeighing up a decorative plasterer quote?A £225 decorative plasterer 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 decorative plasterer day rate into a job price.