What you charging a day?Ive been in the game for over ten years, I live in the midlands ,near birmingham and charge £100 a day.Should i be charging more?I feel as though everything in the world is gettin more expensive apart from my day rate.I want more money but I dont want to start losing work.

£80 here but I only work 8.45 till 2.45 as I’m on school run duty for my kids. Used to charge £120 for a full day.

If you’re any good you should be charging £120-150 a day depending on various factors….but that is in the SE.

Blackpool, i used to charge 120pd 8am-5pm with an hour for lunch, BUT with the influx of eastern europeans they seem happy to graft for 40quid a day so i now charge 90pd its a joke.

Paint brushes and rollers arent that costly,

But seriously charge what your customers can afford try increasing prices and see how it goes, if you like the customer, plenty of tea and biscuits, then offer a discount of say 5 %.

If they want the job doing profesioanlly then they will pay, or sometimes like the jobs i price for they know a brother, uncle, bloke down the pub who will do it for a few quid and a pint.

Paint brushes and rollers aint costly!!!!! U bought some hammy profs recently or purdy roller heads, paints at an all time high.

120 a day isn’t unreasonable now

Depends on how much good quality work you can produce in a day i suppose.
I charge 120+ a day and have for last 7 year but dont stop for breaks much.
Some decorators might think what i do a day is more than a days work? who knows…

Do you not work to price or is P&D always done by day rate?

I know that sometimes, a job that starts off looking like a piece of pizz ends up with a shedload of prepwork to get it right – maybe this is why you guys do day-rate?

I always work out the meterage and as well as think how long something will take. then give a price, sometimes you win some you lose

My last bit of decorating I had done (no time to do it myself and needed to buy ladders and bits to do high stairwell so happy to get someone in for a change) cost me £85 cash per day. I was very happy at the amount done and standard I got. It was price for the job, but i did some of the prep work myself as I can’t not fiddle! That’s in the southwest.

sometimes you win some you lose

Yep, same here. You win on some jobs, you lose on others. I’m not a P&D though, and we have one in at the moment and for sure, it’s better for him that he works on day rate, as he’s had to do a lot more prep than he thought. Proper old school chap. Still gets more done in a day than I’d manage in a week.

trouble is with day rate ive known blokes charge 50 quid then take forever, costing more in the long run.
Always price my work as fairly as possible.
You can usually tell if somethings going to cause you trouble for example woodcip stripping and some otehr papers, I always give a ballpark figure of how long i think then if it take me longer its an extra. People undertand that there is no way of knowing how long it takes to strip something

I quote by the job not by day rate. A good dec will know how many days a job will take and mulitply it by his/her day rate. P and D’s who charge by the day will take a long lunch and loads of fag/tea breaks. I work non stop all day 5-6 hours £80, bargain!

It does my head in,no thanks to shows like f##King 60 min make over and that lawrance lewellen Bowen Pr##k everyone and his dog wants to jump on the band wagon and start decorating for themselves and dont get me started on that one Big phil.

any of you guys in the south east , near M25 jct 3 ?

front room need decorating .

I put for a quote in recently for an upstairs two bed flat(staircase from front door)thats bedrooms painted, white ceiling\mag walls, livingroom strip and repaint,kitchen white ceiling\mag walls,Bathroom, Eggshell and silk, 5 doors uc/gloss and skirts throughout with a bin hatch and facia outside uc/gloss I put in £800 thats materials and labour, and it got kicked to someone else i couldn’t believe it! How ya gonna make it pay?

As said above unfortunately there are folk out there that will work for next to nothing because its still three times what they can earn in their own country our neighbours got some polish lads in to do there exterior and they only paid them 8 quid an hour really boils my p@@s

Just have to stick with it and carry on turning out a good job, eventually you will only end up working for people worth working for who want decent work and dont mind paying a fair wage to get it.
15 quid an hour isnt a lot of money for someone trying to run a buisness imo
Trouble is with our game people ‘think’ they can decorate so dont value what we do, yet they cant be arsed to do it neither.

edit: I dont advertise btw, nothing but trouble that with time wasters.

You’re not wrong, I think I can decorate as well and it takes me freaking forever to do a reasonable job. Then a decent decorator comes round, slaps a bit of paint and paper around and it looks bloody amazing in quarter of the time. Thing is, people know they can’t build a wall, but how hard does painting look?

Iv bin taught by my dad who was taught by his dad so iv bin lucky to have bin learning from time served and qualified tradesmen my old man is 75 and still wipes the floor with me prepping and cutting in, most decs now dont even know what knotting is ffs, but i feel confident that the hours in me dads shed at 7years old sNding filling and painting the same piece of wood has taught me well, for instance i have bin on some jobs where the lads fill sand and get a wallop of 1 thick coat as they want done and out, a day rate works if you know what your doing as in coverage of the paint you use and drying times, some walls 2 coats some ceilings iv done white have needed 4-5 for the client to be happy, it just depends but average for a dec is 100-150 pd.

llamaknob – Member

What you charging a day?Ive been in the game for over ten years, I live in the midlands ,near birmingham and charge £100 a day.Should i be charging more?I feel as though everything in the world is gettin more expensive apart from my day rate.I want more money but I dont want to start losing work.

Mate of mine is based in Worcester and charges £125, he does not advertise, but works on personal recommendations.

He has quite a waiting list of work too

On a slight tangent, I have 14 doors and frames to repaint , which I did a year ago with that dodgy Dulux gloss. I want to paint it with acrylic but how to I stop the old paint bleeding through to the new stuff. I did get compensation from Dulux and replacement paint vouchers, but I dont want to use the gloss they have offered. Any help is appreciated.

been at it 26 years now ( still waiting for something better to come along) and i recognise everything that’s been said above.i live in the north west and charge £130 a day.last few years have been the worst i’ve known by a long way but the last 12 months have started to really pick up and i’ve now got the luxury of a couple of months work in front of me which is a massive load off my mind.
i only live in a small town so used to know most of the decs.the thing that really grips my p**s is when i go in the merchants and there’s a ratty estate car with paint all over the bumper and a couple of herberts are at the counter ”wots the best paint for wood” – **** OFF and GET OUT!!
i went to look at a job today doing someone’s kitchen and she gave me the grand tour as she’d just had her stairs and landing done.what a mess,she thought it was fantastic – i didn’t have the heart to show her all the rips in the paper and point out all the pencil marks.
i never advertise as has been said,waste of time.
i’ve even took my number off the side of my van as i only got 1 phone call from it “i want a price for my lounge,it’s average size with a window and a door.i’ve papered the chimney breast so think of a price and knock 25% off” NOBHEAD!!!
all my work used to be for local builders,no private work at all.unfortunately it’s now the complete oposite,almost all private work “oooh,while you’ve got that brush out can you paint these few doors” NO I FOOKIN CAN’T,I’M ON A PRICE YOU STOOPID MUNTER

Hear hear above poster!!!!!! And as for the gloss thing, totally strip back and prep with a good oil based undercoat, dnt use “jelly” uc get the good stuff, i swear by leyland/johnstone used all others and allways go back to my fave, good price/coverage and ease of use, plus my merch loves me as i used to let him in free when i worked the doors in blackpool : ) so allways get some cheeky scratch n 2″ers thrown in me bag : ) sell the vouchers to some plumb and buy some eggy (eggshell) as acrylic gloss is pants and dosent give the “gloss” finish however iv used acrylic eggy and ob undercoat in my own home as tge wyf aint keen on gloss.

A builder that lives opposite me one told me ‘if you can piss you can paint’…..its taken me almost 2 days solid just to strip the paper in my relatively small bedroom-never again! Will definitely be employing somebody next time. 100 quid sound more than fair to me…my dad is charging 120 a day as a plasterer….in the builders merchants a few weeks ago he was told of a group of three blokes fresh from prison that were charging 50 quid per day 😯

If he can piss then y aint he a painter!!!!! Every ones misconception is the same, its funny really theres giving your front room a lick and theres getting it decorated, ie your cutting in the finish of the cuts in paper, parrern match, no flashing, runs misses brush/roller marks and the list goes on, if its so easy then why dont everyone do their own, it boils ma piss that, you learn tricks stripping, for instance i hate steamers, i use my own method and many times my lunch has bin bought for me by disgruntled sore loosers challenging me to bets on who can strip their room first (woodchip included sometimes) n my seceret dies with me, lol : D

….I thought much the same as to why he isn’t a painter-he’s only worked once in the past two or three years, and they didn’t end up paying him!

Alarm bells my friend lol, i take pride in my work, at the end of the day its what keeps my family trade going and my name, reccomendations are the lifeblood, iv now done 6 houses on the same street, sat on me brushmate aving me brew and oh heard you did such and such could you ….. And so on : )

As a joiner you get to value a good painter 😉

Out of curiosity, what makes the best quality Gloss? Just about to redo my front door, so wondering what make to buy. Used Crown before and got about 6 years out of it before it looked tired.

Good gloss is one that flows out and levels well to provide a smooth surface with few imperfections. A really well designed one will help remove any errors by the user. It is hard to do this and get it not to sag. It would be nice to get good durability but that is relative and I don’t believe any of the household ones are amazing but they are adequate.

Good prep helps massively as does good brush work and equipment. Make your last stroke light so you don’t leave brish marks.

I’ve never been that impressed with waterbased stuff.

FWIW I know more about the technology than the application – I mostly use 2k polyurethanes applied with airless spray – so not really front stuff.

We spent a week decorating and realised we got through very little as it took time to get a good finish. We didn’t hang any paper. After this we got a professional in. We paid around £400 and he was in for the weekend and monday night. As a customer I would want to pay for the job not the time. He worked long days, around 12 hours but I supplied the paint as I could get it cheaper. Would have taken us another week to do the same to the finish he got. I was amazed at the speed he could do the detail and cutting in.

If you can remove your front door and lay flat on some tressels that makes life easier, remove handles, letterbox,knocker etc or mask around them just ensure to remove masking while paint is still wet. Carefully, if allowed to dry could tear the gloss, try some leyland exterior or johnstones (same thing now) use a very good oilbased undercoat and allow the undercoat to dry fully before application of gloss, i like to give the undercoat a light sand with 120grade scratch before i apply my gloss, just gives that bit better finish imo, very light sand mind lol dont take the uc off.

I’ve stripped the door, sanded, filled, knotted, primed and two coats of undercoated it. Just got the gloss to go…..

EDIT What I really wanted to know was is there any difference between Leyland, Crown and Dulux Gloss paint….

Just take your time and itl be a masterpiece!!!! I love exterior doors, did one a pale mint color with gold leaf detail tswas nice!!!

well if you lived down this way Phil, i’d give you plenty of work for £120 a day.

Between the brands I wouldn’t know. My gues would be that they will all be pretty similar as they will try and match each other for performance at the price point. I don’t know if they do budget/premium ranges within the brand. I’d just pick one and buy a good brush which will probably make as much difference.

There are more than those brands available though.

I wouldn’t touch Dulux with a barge pole – unfortunately we used their gloss on our doors and within a few months they were nicotine yellow! We got vouchers – I was not impressed. I was told that B&Qs gloss is made by Crown. We were really impressed with the coverage of wickes paint but it stank for 3 days not sure if that is where all the other paint firms are going wrong focusing on no odour etc. We were quoted approx 250 for a hallway – paint supplied (2 days) so 125 GBP per day south of London.

Dulux and crown trade and the bnq gear terrible imo, watery, low opacity and coverage, iv allways used leyland/johnstones and my father also used the same for his painting life, try and get trade gloss as this is designed for trade work and is a joy to use, iv never had a bad batch or any yellowing on my work, bnq paints are all waterd down pish even their “trade” ranges aint the same as others just dont!!!! Lol

Dulux is weird. Repainted woodwork in hall twice, first time with ordinary Dulux ‘pure brilliant white’*, then again with Dulux Trade, which is already looking a bit creamy a year or so on.

Will try Johnstones next!

*For the first five minutes, yellow thereafter.