National benchmark
£175
A modelled benchmark, published beside the guide spread rather than derived from it.
Our benchmark for a suspended ceiling installer is £175 a day.
Published UK price guides put suspended ceiling installers between £150 and £200, checked 30 September 2026.
Sources: MyJobQuote and HomeHow.
Suspended Ceiling Installer rates across 30 towns
Ranked by modelled suspended ceiling installer 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 suspended ceiling installer 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 £175 | Modelled range |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | GuildfordSouth East£155 to £268 | £206 | £31 above | |
| 2 | OxfordSouth East£150 to £260 | £200 | £25 above | |
| 3 | CambridgeEast of England£148 to £256 | £197 | £22 above | |
| 4 | BrightonSouth East£144 to £250 | £192 | £17 above | |
| 5 | BathSouth West£140 to £242 | £186 | £11 above | |
| 6 | ReadingSouth East£138 to £239 | £184 | £9 above | |
| 7 | BristolSouth West£135 to £234 | £180 | £5 above | |
| 8 | Milton KeynesSouth East£135 to £234 | £180 | £5 above | |
| 9 | CheltenhamSouth West£133 to £230 | £177 | £2 above | |
| 10 | EdinburghScotland£132 to £229 | £176 | £1 above | |
| 11 | YorkYorkshire£128 to £222 | £171 | £4 below | |
| 12 | ExeterSouth West£128 to £221 | £170 | £5 below | |
| 13 | PortsmouthSouth East£127 to £220 | £169 | £6 below | |
| 14 | NorthamptonEast Midlands£126 to £218 | £168 | £7 below | |
| 15 | SouthamptonSouth East£125 to £217 | £167 | £8 below | |
| 16 | CardiffWales£124 to £215 | £165 | £10 below | |
| 17 | NorwichEast of England£124 to £215 | £165 | £10 below | |
| 18 | ManchesterNorth West£123 to £213 | £164 | £11 below | |
| 19 | BirminghamWest Midlands£122 to £211 | £162 | £13 below | |
| 20 | LeedsYorkshire£122 to £211 | £162 | £13 below | |
| 21 | LeicesterEast Midlands£119 to £207 | £159 | £16 below | |
| 22 | CoventryWest Midlands£119 to £207 | £159 | £16 below | |
| 23 | GlasgowScotland£119 to £205 | £158 | £17 below | |
| 24 | SheffieldYorkshire£118 to £204 | £157 | £18 below | |
| 25 | DerbyEast Midlands£116 to £200 | £154 | £21 below | |
| 26 | LiverpoolNorth West£115 to £199 | £153 | £22 below | |
| 27 | NewcastleNorth East£114 to £198 | £152 | £23 below | |
| 28 | NottinghamEast Midlands£114 to £198 | £152 | £23 below | |
| 29 | Stoke-on-TrentWest Midlands£110 to £191 | £147 | £28 below | |
| 30 | SunderlandNorth East£105 to £182 | £140 | £35 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 £100 to £270
- Range the modelled range, the rate x 0.75 and x 1.30
Your next step
You have the £175 suspended ceiling installer benchmark, so the next step is a suspended ceiling installer 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 suspended ceiling installer day rate, ready to price a job with.
Highest town
£206
Guildford, the biggest premium over the benchmark in the 30.
Cheapest town
£140
Sunderland, £35 under the benchmark and the floor of the table.
Published guide spread
£150 to £200
What 2 named guides publish for suspended ceiling installers, checked 30 September 2026.
Hiring a suspended ceiling installer?
A suspended ceiling installer quote between £150 and £200 a day is inside what the UK guides publish, and £175 is the benchmark this site models from.
Quoting as a suspended ceiling installer?
£175 puts suspended ceiling installers joint 15 of 17 on this site, between £140 for general labourer work and £280 for electrician.
What to charge, trade by tradeWhat suspended ceiling installers earn
How the 30 towns spread out
Every town on one axis, marked against £175. It shows where the weight of the suspended ceiling installer table sits, and how far each end has travelled from that benchmark.
£175 benchmark
Guildford £206
Sunderland sits at the other end, on £140.
That is a £66 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 £100 to £270 scale, suspended ceiling installers 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 £158 and £180. Read that middle £22 band first when a suspended ceiling installer quote needs a quick sanity check against somewhere of a similar size.
Above the benchmark
10 towns clear £175, 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, £175Stated 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 suspended ceiling installer 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 suspended ceiling installers charged.
The full working behind every suspended ceiling installer 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, £167 to £206£184
East of England2 towns covered, £165 to £197£181
South West4 towns covered, £170 to £186£179
Scotland2 towns covered, £158 to £176£167
Wales1 town covered, £165 to £165£165
Yorkshire3 towns covered, £157 to £171£162
North West2 towns covered, £153 to £164£159
West Midlands3 towns covered, £147 to £162£159
East Midlands4 towns covered, £152 to £168£157
North East2 towns covered, £140 to £152£146
The spread is the story
A Guildford day and a Sunderland day are the same suspended ceiling installer work at a £66 difference.
How the £175 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 £175.
What the guides publish
£150 to £200
2 named UK price guides publish a suspended ceiling installer day rate.Between them they run from £150 to £200, and the £175 benchmark sits inside that.It is the figure the benchmark is published beside; the cards after it are the tests.
MyJobQuote and HomeHow, checked 30 September 2026
Office for National Statistics
£625
The Office for National Statistics files ceiling fitters with construction operatives, at £625 a week (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 ceiling 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 suspended ceiling installer trade.Those are its nearest published trades, not a suspended ceiling installer rate.
How the guides price suspended ceiling installer work
Ceiling work shares its benchmark with cladding
Suspended ceiling work carries the same £175 benchmark as cladding here, so the thirty town rates below are identical to the cladding page.Where the two part company is the evidence, because two guides print exactly £150 to £200 for a ceiling installer and no named guide prints anything wider.
Ceilings are usually quoted by the square metre
MyJobQuote and Checkatrade both price a suspended ceiling at £22 to £35 a square metre, and Checkatrade says the job takes one to three days.HomeHow puts the labour alone at £15 to £25 a square metre.
A labourer often works beside the ceiling fixer
MyJobQuote prices a general labourer on a ceiling job at £80 to £100 a day, on top of the specialist.Plasterboard and drywall fitting is priced as a separate trade, at £180 to £250 a day on MyJobQuote.
What other ceiling sources publish
BookaBuilderUK puts a skilled suspended ceiling installer at £200 to £300 a day and a labourer or mate at £120 to £180, on a page with no date.A Stockport ceiling contractor says most experienced ceiling fixers charge £180 to £280 a day.Neither is named in the spread above, because one is undated and the other is a firm pricing its own ceilings.
Taking an old ceiling down is its own line
MyBuilder prices removing a suspended ceiling at £8 to £15 a square metre.The tradespeople doing the removal run £20 to £30 an hour on the same MyBuilder page.
Where ONS counts ceiling fixers
ONS files ceiling fitters under SOC 8159, construction operatives not elsewhere classified, in a sub group of their own.That is the pay figure the suspended ceiling checks on this page quote.
How long a suspended ceiling takes to fit
Checkatrade says a suspended ceiling takes one to three days.At the £175 benchmark that is £175 to £525 of one ceiling installer, which is our arithmetic and not a published price.
Commercial ceiling and drywall work is another market
Checkatrade puts a drywalling contractor on commercial office work at £480 a day, far above anything a guide publishes for a domestic suspended ceiling.MyBuilder prices a timber stud partition at £150 to £250 a day, which is partition work rather than ceiling work.
A ceiling crew of two, on one guide
Put MyJobQuote's ceiling specialist at £150 to £200 beside its labourer at £80 to £100 and a two person ceiling crew comes to £230 to £300 a day.That total is our addition of its two published figures, not a price MyJobQuote prints.
Suspended Ceiling Installer wages and pay rates
What suspended ceiling installers are paid is a different measurement from the £175 a customer is charged, and both are on this page.
Paid as an employee
£625 a week
ONS publishes no suspended ceiling installer code, so the figure is the construction operatives group where ceiling fixers sit.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 suspended ceiling installers beside the other 16 trades, sourced 5 September 2026.
Pricing a short job rather than a full day, the £175 works out at £25.00 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 suspended ceiling installers, and names the day it divides by.
Against the decorator benchmark
Decorators benchmark at £200 a day on this site.
Suspended ceiling work comes in £25 under that figure.
- Suspended Ceiling Installer benchmark
- £175
- Painter and decorator benchmark
- £200
- Gap at the benchmark
- £25 under
Checkatrade per square metre
£28.50
Checkatrade prices a suspended ceiling at £22 to £35 a square metre and publishes no day rate.That is why it is not one of the two guides behind the spread above.
Common questions
The same answers the structured data on this page gives a search engine, word for word.
How much does a suspended ceiling installer charge per day in the UK?
Our benchmark for a suspended ceiling installer is £175 a day.
Published UK price guides put suspended ceiling installers between £150 and £200, checked 30 September 2026.
Sources: MyJobQuote and HomeHow.
Across the 30 modelled towns the figure runs from £140 in Sunderland to £206 in Guildford.
Does the suspended ceiling installer day rate include materials or VAT?
No.
The £175 is one full working day of suspended ceiling installer labour, before materials and VAT.
Why do suspended ceiling installer rates differ between towns?
The £175 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 £206 on Guildford and £140 on Sunderland.
That is a £66 gap across the 30 towns for the same day of suspended ceiling installer work.
What is the suspended ceiling installer pay rate in the UK?
The suspended ceiling installer pay rate depends on who is paying it.
ONS publishes no suspended ceiling installer code, so the figure is the construction operatives group where ceiling fixers sit.
Employed on a payroll, suspended ceiling installers earn an ONS median of £625 a week, under SOC 8159.
For suspended ceiling installers 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 suspended ceiling installer series.
Neither is the £175 a suspended ceiling installer charges a customer.
Is a suspended ceiling day rate the same as a suspended ceiling installer day rate?
Yes, this page covers one trade and publishes one benchmark of £175 a day.
The guides behind this benchmark price the trade as suspended ceiling work and a suspended ceiling specialist, so the page is titled for the work and names the installer everywhere else.
Take the data
Every figure on this page is in the file, with the same sources and the same date.
Download · CSVsuspended-ceiling-installer-day-rates.csv30 rows, one per town, with the rate, the modelled range and the published spread.
Cite this pageThe Day Rate Report, Suspended Ceiling Installer day rates, 30 September 2026, https://thedayrate.co.uk/suspended-ceiling-installer-day-rates/
Embed this figure
The suspended ceiling installer card carries the benchmark and the date, and the link goes to this page.
<a href="https://thedayrate.co.uk/suspended-ceiling-installer-day-rates/"><img src="https://thedayrate.co.uk/og/suspended-ceiling-installer-day-rates.png" alt="Suspended Ceiling Installer day rates in 30 UK towns, from The Day Rate Report" width="1200" height="630"></a>
The suspended ceiling installer 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 suspended ceiling installer work yourself?The £175 suspended ceiling installer benchmark beside every other trade on this site, read from the side of the person sending the invoice.What should I chargeWeighing up a suspended ceiling installer quote?A £175 suspended ceiling installer 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 suspended ceiling installer day rate into a job price.