National benchmark
£200
A modelled benchmark, published beside the guide spread rather than derived from it.
Our benchmark for a decorator is £200 a day.
Published UK price guides put decorators between £120 and £400, checked 30 September 2026.
Sources: Checkatrade, HaMuch, MyBuilder, CostEstimator, MyJobQuote and PriceYourJob (2025 guide).
Painter and decorator rates across 30 towns
Ranked by modelled decorator 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 decorator 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 £200 | Avg house price | Modelled range |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | GuildfordSouth East£176 to £306 · avg house price £525k | £235 | £35 above | £525k | |
| 2 | OxfordSouth East£172 to £298 · avg house price £475k | £229 | £29 above | £475k | |
| 3 | CambridgeEast of England£170 to £294 · avg house price £462k | £226 | £26 above | £462k | |
| 4 | BrightonSouth East£164 to £285 · avg house price £406k | £219 | £19 above | £406k | |
| 5 | BathSouth West£159 to £276 · avg house price £400k | £212 | £12 above | £400k | |
| 6 | ReadingSouth East£158 to £273 · avg house price £345k | £210 | £10 above | £345k | |
| 7 | BristolSouth West£155 to £268 · avg house price £354k | £206 | £6 above | £354k | |
| 8 | Milton KeynesSouth East£155 to £268 · avg house price £318k | £206 | £6 above | £318k | |
| 9 | CheltenhamSouth West£152 to £263 · avg house price £333k | £202 | £2 above | £333k | |
| 10 | EdinburghScotland£152 to £263 · avg house price £295k | £202 | £2 above | £295k | |
| 11 | YorkYorkshire£146 to £254 · avg house price £309k | £195 | £5 below | £309k | |
| 12 | ExeterSouth West£146 to £252 · avg house price £287k | £194 | £6 below | £287k | |
| 13 | PortsmouthSouth East£146 to £252 · avg house price £250k | £194 | £6 below | £250k | |
| 14 | NorthamptonEast Midlands£144 to £250 · avg house price £293k | £192 | £8 below | £293k | |
| 15 | SouthamptonSouth East£143 to £248 · avg house price £234k | £191 | £9 below | £234k | |
| 16 | CardiffWales£142 to £246 · avg house price £271k | £189 | £11 below | £271k | |
| 17 | NorwichEast of England£142 to £246 · avg house price £230k | £189 | £11 below | £230k | |
| 18 | ManchesterNorth West£141 to £244 · avg house price £247k | £188 | £12 below | £247k | |
| 19 | BirminghamWest Midlands£140 to £242 · avg house price £236k | £186 | £14 below | £236k | |
| 20 | LeedsYorkshire£139 to £241 · avg house price £247k | £185 | £15 below | £247k | |
| 21 | LeicesterEast Midlands£137 to £237 · avg house price £235k | £182 | £18 below | £235k | |
| 22 | CoventryWest Midlands£137 to £237 · avg house price £218k | £182 | £18 below | £218k | |
| 23 | GlasgowScotland£136 to £235 · avg house price £187k | £181 | £19 below | £187k | |
| 24 | SheffieldYorkshire£135 to £234 · avg house price £222k | £180 | £20 below | £222k | |
| 25 | DerbyEast Midlands£132 to £229 · avg house price £205k | £176 | £24 below | £205k | |
| 26 | LiverpoolNorth West£131 to £228 · avg house price £184k | £175 | £25 below | £184k | |
| 27 | NewcastleNorth East£130 to £225 · avg house price £209k | £173 | £27 below | £209k | |
| 28 | NottinghamEast Midlands£130 to £225 · avg house price £193k | £173 | £27 below | £193k | |
| 29 | Stoke-on-TrentWest Midlands£126 to £218 · avg house price £152k | £168 | £32 below | £152k | |
| 30 | SunderlandNorth East£120 to £208 · avg house price £145k | £160 | £40 below | £145k |
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 £120 to £310
- Range the modelled range, the rate x 0.75 and x 1.30
Your next step
You have the £200 decorator benchmark, so the next step is a decorator 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 decorator day rate, ready to price a job with.
Highest town
£235
Guildford, the biggest premium over the benchmark in the 30.
Cheapest town
£160
Sunderland, £40 under the benchmark and the floor of the table.
Published guide spread
£120 to £400
What 6 named guides publish for decorators, checked 30 September 2026.
Hiring a decorator?
A decorator quote between £120 and £400 a day is inside what the UK guides publish, and £200 is the benchmark this site models from.
Quoting as a decorator?
£200 puts decorators 13 of 17 on this site, between £140 for general labourer work and £280 for electrician.
How the 30 towns spread out
Every town on one axis, marked against £200. It shows where the weight of the decorator table sits, and how far each end has travelled from that benchmark.
£200 benchmark
Guildford £235
Sunderland sits at the other end, on £160.
That is a £75 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 £120 to £310 scale, decorators 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 £181 and £206. Read that middle £25 band first when a decorator quote needs a quick sanity check against somewhere of a similar size.
Above the benchmark
10 towns clear £200, 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, £200Stated 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 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.
Nothing on this page is a survey of what decorators charged.
It is not an observed ceiling.
Modelled values publish exactly as computed, with no per town caps.
The full working behind every decorator 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, £191 to £235£210
East of England2 towns covered, £189 to £226£208
South West4 towns covered, £194 to £212£204
Scotland2 towns covered, £181 to £202£192
Wales1 town covered, £189 to £189£189
Yorkshire3 towns covered, £180 to £195£185
North West2 towns covered, £175 to £188£182
West Midlands3 towns covered, £168 to £186£182
East Midlands4 towns covered, £173 to £192£179
North East2 towns covered, £160 to £173£167
The spread is the story
A Guildford day and a Sunderland day are the same decorator work at a £75 difference.
How the £200 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 £200.
What the guides publish
£120 to £400
6 named UK price guides publish a decorator day rate.Between them they run from £120 to £400, and the £200 benchmark sits inside that.It is the figure the benchmark is published beside; the cards after it are the tests.
Checkatrade, HaMuch, MyBuilder, CostEstimator, MyJobQuote and PriceYourJob (2025 guide), checked 30 September 2026
Office for National Statistics, a year
£33,400
The 2025 ONS pay survey puts decorator employee pay at £33,400 a year.
ONS ASHE 2025 provisional, employee earnings, not a charge out rate · ASHE Table 14
Hudson Contract all trades, a day
£204
Hudson tracks no decorating trade; its £1,021 a week across all trades is about £204 a day.
Hudson Contract, subcontractor payroll, England and Wales, three year average, July 2023 to June 2026
Not a decorator figureHudson publishes no decorator line; read the number as a whole industry benchmark.
Painter and decorator wages and pay rates
What decorators are paid is a different measurement from the £200 a customer is charged, and both are on this page.
Paid as an employee
£33,400 a year
That is the ONS median for decorators employed on a payroll, under SOC 5323.It is a wage before tax, not a rate anybody quotes a customer.
Paid as a subcontractor
£204 a day
Hudson Contract paid £1,021 a week on its all trades series, which is £204 over five days.ALL trades averaged together, because Hudson publishes no series for this one
Employed, starter to experienced
£21,000 to £32,000 a year
The National Careers Service painter and decorator profile prints both salaries, read 3 October 2026.They are employee salaries before tax, not the £200 a customer pays for a day.
What tradespeople earn sets decorators beside the other 16 trades, sourced 5 September 2026.
Pricing a short job rather than a full day, the £200 works out at £28.57 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 decorators, and names the day it divides by.
Common questions
The same answers the structured data on this page gives a search engine, word for word.
How much does a painter and decorator charge per day in the UK?
Our benchmark for a decorator is £200 a day.
Published UK price guides put decorators between £120 and £400, checked 30 September 2026.
Sources: Checkatrade, HaMuch, MyBuilder, CostEstimator, MyJobQuote and PriceYourJob (2025 guide).
Across the 30 modelled towns the figure runs from £160 in Sunderland to £235 in Guildford.
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 decorator rates differ between towns?
The national benchmark is spread town by town with ONS regional earnings, the Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings (ASHE 2025), and local house prices (UK House Price Index, April 2026).
Expensive areas pay more for the same work.
What is the decorator pay rate in the UK?
The decorator pay rate depends on who is paying it.
Employed on a payroll, decorators earn an ONS median of £33,400 a year, under SOC 5323.
For decorators paid as subcontractors instead, the nearest Hudson Contract figure is its all trades series at £1,021 a week, which works out at about £204 a day over a five day week.
That is an all trades average, as Hudson has no decorator series.
Neither is the £200 a decorator charges a customer.
Take the data
Every figure on this page is in the file, with the same sources and the same date.
Download · CSVdecorator-day-rates.csv30 rows, one per town, with the rate, the modelled range and the local house price.
Cite this pageThe Day Rate Report, decorator day rates by town, 30 September 2026, https://thedayrate.co.uk/decorator-day-rates/
Embed this figure
The decorator card carries the benchmark and the date, and the link goes to this page.
<a href="https://thedayrate.co.uk/decorator-day-rates/"><img src="https://thedayrate.co.uk/og/decorator-day-rates.png" alt="Painter and decorator day rates in 30 UK towns, from The Day Rate Report" width="1200" height="630"></a>
The decorator 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.
How long does the work take?About 35 square metres of wall in a working day, derived from the published rates.How long decorating takesHow do carpenters compare?Carpenters benchmark £40 higher, at £240 a day.Carpenter rates by town
The full guide index carries all 12, including the ones that turn the decorator day rate into a job price.
None of the 30 towns modelled above is London, where this site publishes no decorator rate of its own and prints what the named guides publish instead.