Print & Livery for Electricians
The print that works hardest sits inside a consumer unit for ten years
Where your name actually stays
A full rewire is £3,990. An EV charger installation, £1,015. A consumer unit changeover, £710. A new lighting circuit, £581. An EICR, £266.
Think about the exposure each job produces. Your van sits on the driveway for three hours and leaves. The customer forgets your name within a month. Nothing about that job continues to advertise you.
Except one thing. Every consumer unit you fit carries labelling. Every circuit gets identified. Every test gets a sticker. Those go into the house and stay there for a decade or more, and they are read at exactly the moment somebody needs an electrician — when a breaker trips, when a survey is done, when the house is sold, when a letting agent takes it on, when a new owner opens the board and wonders who to ring.
That is a printed surface with a ten-year life, read by future customers, and in most electricians’ work it is a strip of laminator tape with biro on it.
Fixing that is the cheapest genuine advantage available in this trade, and almost nobody does it because it does not feel like marketing.
The full print list, in order of return
Consumer unit labelling and test stickers. Printed properly, with your name, number and registration on the board label rather than only on the certificate. Five hundred labels is roughly £40 to £70. It is the highest-return item on this page by a distance.
Socket and accessory labels for commercial work. Agents and facilities managers see these constantly, and a consistently labelled installation reads as a contractor who is organised.
Certificate covers and folders. You issue certificates that get filed for five years by landlords. A printed folder for a batch of EICRs costs a few pounds and it sits in a compliance file with your name on the spine.
Vehicle livery. Cut vinyl at £350 to £700, or a full wrap at £1,800 to £3,000. For a domestic electrician the van is parked in view for a few hours a job, so this is worth doing well and is not where the first money goes.
Workwear. Embroidered polos at £12 to £18 and a softshell at £30 to £45, with setup around £25 to £40. It matters most on commercial sites, where an unbranded contractor is invisible among fifteen other trades.
Cards and EV information sheets. A printed one-page explanation of charger options, grant position and running costs, left with a quote, converts better than an emailed link because it stays on the kitchen table.
The ratio
A rewire is £3,990. Our Noticed package is £49 a month — £588 a year. One rewire covers more than six years.
On the labelling specifically: five hundred printed labels is around £55, and they will be in houses for a decade. If two of those boards produce one call each over that period — a trip that needs investigating, an EICR before a sale — the item has paid for itself many times over from print that was going into the house anyway.
What we’d actually produce
A board label and test sticker set, designed to be legible in a dim cupboard by torchlight, carrying your name, number and registration.
A certificate folder and cover for batch work, aimed at agents rather than homeowners.
Van livery specified for a driveway, where it is seen static and close rather than at speed — which changes what works.
A workwear set appropriate to the split between your domestic and commercial work.
An EV and renewables leave-behind, printed, because that decision gets discussed by two people after you have gone.
What good looks like at twelve months
- Every board you touch carrying a printed label with your details on it
- Certificates arriving in a folder that survives a filing cabinet
- Van livery matching the labels and the paperwork
- Branded workwear on commercial sites, where it is doing the most work
- Calls arriving from people reading your name off a consumer unit
The mistakes we see most
Handwritten labelling. It is the most persistent brand contact you have and it is normally done in biro.
Putting the whole budget into a wrap. A £2,400 van and a laminator-tape board label is the wrong way round for this trade.
Nothing left behind after a quote. An emailed quote is read once. A printed sheet stays on the worktop through the whole decision.
Unbranded workwear on commercial sites. On a site with fifteen trades, being identifiable is most of how you get asked to price the next thing.
The first ninety days
Weeks 1–4. Labelling first, because it is the highest return and the fastest to produce.
Weeks 5–8. Certificate folders and the EV leave-behind, plus workwear if the commercial side justifies it.
Weeks 9–12. Van livery, specified to match everything already in circulation.
At ninety days the measure is whether every board you have worked on this quarter carries your name printed rather than written.
Where this lands in Gaffer
Certificates issue against the property and the client, so the printed folder that goes to an agent is assembled from the real records rather than collated by hand.
Job history shows which properties you have labelled, which matters when a call comes in from somebody reading a board label you fitted six years ago.
And because quotes record what was left with the customer, the EV sheet is part of the process rather than something that happens when you remember to take one.
Livery and the vehicle you do not own outright
One practical thing derails van livery more often than any design decision, and it is worth settling before anything is ordered.
Most electricians change vehicle every three to five years, and a growing number are on lease or contract hire rather than owning outright. Both facts have consequences that only surface at the wrong moment.
On a lease, the agreement usually requires the vehicle to be returned in original condition, which means paying to have vinyl removed at the end of the term. Removal on a whole van is not trivial — it is a day’s labour and sometimes leaves ghosting on older paint, which can then be charged for. Full wraps are generally more forgiving than cut vinyl here, because the underlying paint is protected rather than bonded to lettering.
On an owned van sold on privately, livery has to come off anyway, and a buyer will knock money off if it has been done badly.
None of that argues against liveried vehicles. It argues for deciding in advance: how long you expect to keep it, what the agreement says about modifications, and whether the design should be a full wrap, cut vinyl or removable magnetics on a vehicle you are handing back in eighteen months.
Get that settled first and the artwork follows from it. Order the artwork first and you find out at handback.
Questions electricians ask
Is a printed label really marketing? It is the only thing you leave in a house that is still working for you in ten years. Yes.
Do I need a wrap? For most domestic electricians, cut vinyl does the job. Spend the difference on labels, folders and workwear.
What about scheme rules on labelling? Board labels have required information; your details go alongside it, not instead of it.
Does workwear matter on domestic work? Less than on site, but it still tells a homeowner that the person at the door is who they were expecting.
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