Quote Systems for Painters & Decorators
A day rate caps your earnings at your slowest day
Being paid for time when you are selling skill
A full interior decoration on a three-bed is £3,260. Exterior painting, £2,380. A kitchen refresh, £915. Wallpaper hanging, £445. A single room, £410.
Most decorators price by working out how many days a job will take and multiplying by a rate. It is simple, it is honest, and it contains a trap that gets worse the better you get.
If you are quick — because you have twenty years in, because you cut in without tape, because your preparation is efficient rather than rushed — a day rate pays you exactly the same as somebody who takes twice as long. In fact it pays you less overall, because you finish sooner. Every improvement you make to your own speed reduces your income from the job.
Worse, the day rate invites a conversation nobody wins. The customer knows what a day of labour “should” cost, has a figure in mind from a plumber or a neighbour, and starts comparing your rate against that rather than comparing your finish against somebody else’s.
Pricing the job instead of the time solves both. The customer buys a room, a finish and an outcome. How long it takes you becomes your business, which is exactly what it should be.
What job pricing needs behind it
A measurement basis you trust. Wall area, ceiling area, metres of woodwork, number of doors, windows and radiators. Once you have those, a quote is arithmetic — and, importantly, it is repeatable, so your prices stop drifting with your mood.
A condition multiplier. The same room takes twice as long if the plaster is poor, the woodwork has been neglected or somebody has painted emulsion straight onto gloss. A stated condition assessment lets you price honestly without appearing to pluck a number.
Preparation described in the quote. This is the whole justification for costing more than the cheapest number they will get. Filling, sanding, caulking, priming bare plaster, what happens to the existing coating. Invisible when finished, decisive when quoting.
Coats and products named. Two coats of what, over what primer. A quote that says “paint the room” is competing with a quote that says the same thing and is £300 cheaper.
Options where they fit. Woodwork included or not. Ceilings included or not. It lets a customer with £600 buy something rather than nothing.
An exclusions block. Moving furniture, lifting carpets, filling large holes, repairing plaster. These get absorbed constantly and they are days of work across a year.
The ratio
A full interior is £3,260. Our Noticed package is £49 a month — £588 a year. One interior job covers five and a half years.
On pricing method: a decorator who is genuinely a day quicker than average on a five-day job, priced by the job rather than the day, earns that day back on every job rather than giving it away. Across forty jobs a year, that is eight or nine weeks of recovered capacity, which is the largest single number on this page.
What we’d actually build
A measured rate card — per square metre of wall and ceiling, per door, per window, per metre of woodwork — derived from your own past jobs rather than from a book.
A condition assessment that adjusts the price transparently.
A quote template describing preparation, products and coats, so the document argues for the price.
A standard exclusions block for furniture, carpets and plaster repairs.
An options format so smaller budgets buy something rather than walking.
Photograph-based pricing for small jobs, so a £410 room does not require an evening visit.
What good looks like at twelve months
- Jobs priced by measurement rather than by days
- Preparation described in every quote
- Products and coats named, so comparisons are like for like
- Exclusions stated, so furniture and plaster stop being absorbed
- Your speed earning you money rather than costing it
The mistakes we see most
Quoting a day rate. It penalises competence and invites a comparison you cannot win.
Saying nothing about preparation. The entire reason you are more expensive, left off the document.
No exclusions. Moving a houseful of furniture is half a day, every time, unpriced.
Visiting to price a single room. Photographs and a measurement do it, and save an evening.
The first ninety days
Weeks 1–4. The rate card, built by working backwards from jobs you have actually done and what they really took.
Weeks 5–8. The quote template with preparation, products and exclusions, plus the condition assessment.
Weeks 9–12. Options and photograph-based pricing for small work, and win-rate tracking so you can see what your prices are actually doing.
At ninety days the measure is whether any quote left as a day rate. If none did, your income stops being capped by the clock.
Where this lands in Gaffer
Quote templates hold your measured rates, so a priced document with preparation described takes about as long as writing a total on a text message.
Job records keep the rooms, products, colours and finishes, which is what makes the rate card accurate — you are pricing from what jobs actually took rather than from an estimate of what they should take.
And because quotes carry outcomes, you can see whether the jobs you lose are lost on price or on something else entirely, which is usually a surprise.
Getting the quote out before you leave the drive
Decorating is bought quickly compared with most trades on this site, and the quote that arrives first has a real advantage.
A homeowner who has decided to have the hall, stairs and landing done is not on an eight-month journey. They have been putting it off, something has prompted them, and they want it done before Christmas or before the baby arrives or before the in-laws visit. They will get two or three prices within a week and decide within two.
Which makes the evening-and-weekend quoting habit expensive. A visit on Tuesday, priced on Sunday, sent on Monday, is competing against somebody who sent theirs on Tuesday afternoon.
With a measured rate card behind it there is no reason for the delay. Measure in the house, put the figures in on a phone, and the priced document — with preparation, products and exclusions described — goes out before you have driven to the next job.
There is a second benefit that has nothing to do with speed. Pricing in the house means you can talk through the options while the customer is standing in the room: woodwork in or out, ceilings in or out, what the condition of the plaster means for the figure. That conversation converts far better than a document arriving cold four days later with a number they have to interpret alone.
Questions decorators ask
Will customers ask for a day rate anyway? Some will. The answer is that you price the work rather than the time, which most people accept immediately.
What if I underprice a room? The rate card is built from your own completed jobs, so it self-corrects as it is used.
Is measuring not slower than estimating? Ten minutes with a laser, and it removes the guesswork that makes estimating stressful.
What about commercial and void work? Same measured basis, different rates and a much stronger emphasis on turnaround time.
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