Ask five people what it costs to paint a room, and you'll get five different answers, and most of them will be wrong for London specifically. National averages get quoted constantly, but London runs its own numbers, and the gap between the two is bigger than most people expect.
National Averages Don't Tell You Much
Checkatrade's UK-wide data puts the average painter and decorator day rate at £325, with an average room costing around £450. That's a reasonable starting point if you live somewhere in the Midlands, but London and the South East typically sit 20-30% above the national figure, according to industry pricing data from Trade2Base. A decorator charging £220 a day outside London might reasonably charge £270-£300 in outer London, and go beyond £350 in areas like Chelsea or Kensington.
One South London-based decorating firm, All Well, publishes pricing based on over 100 actual projects rather than a national survey, and their numbers land higher again: day rates of £280-£420, and a single room costing anywhere from £300 to £1,200 depending on size and condition. That range is wide on purpose, because "a room" covers everything from a small box bedroom needing a straightforward two-coat refresh to a large reception room with cornicing, multiple doors, and walls that need filling before any paint goes on.
What a Single Room Actually Costs
Pulling the figures together from several UK pricing guides, the pattern for a standard bedroom or reception room, walls, ceiling and woodwork, using standard trade paint, looks roughly like this:
A small room in reasonable condition typically runs £300-£450. A medium room, or one needing more prep, sits closer to £450-£750. A large room, or one with significant filling, sanding, or wallpaper removal beforehand, can run £750 upward, with London figures pushing past £1,000 for bigger or more complex spaces.
Worth noting here: if you only want a single room done rather than a whole house, expect to pay more per room than you would as part of a larger job. Setup time, travel, and materials all spread more efficiently across a bigger project, so a standalone single-room job typically costs 15-25% more than the same room would cost as one part of a full house repaint.
Day Rates vs Per-Room Pricing vs Per-Square-Metre
Decorators price work in a few different ways, and it's worth knowing which one you're actually being quoted.
- Day rate: Across the UK, this generally falls between £150 and £355 depending on region and experience, with London consistently at the higher end. Some London decorators charge £35-£45 an hour where hourly billing is used, though most professional outfits prefer a fixed price over an hourly rate, since hourly billing rewards working slowly rather than efficiently.
- Per square metre: For interior wall painting, labour-only pricing in 2026 tends to fall between £10 and £20 per square metre. The lower end covers a smooth, well-prepped wall in a larger room using two coats of standard trade emulsion. The higher end applies to smaller rooms, awkward access, or walls needing significant filling and sanding first.
- Fixed project quote: The most common approach for domestic work above a single day, and it's usually the better option from a customer's perspective, since the total is agreed before work starts rather than shifting if a wall turns out to need more prep than expected.
Why Day Rate Isn't the Full Picture
A lower day rate doesn't automatically mean a cheaper job. A less experienced decorator working for £180 a day might take three days to do what an experienced decorator finishes properly in two, at £300 a day. The total cost can end up similar, or the cheaper day rate can actually cost more once the extra days are counted, without necessarily delivering the same standard of finish.
What Pushes a Quote Higher
A few factors consistently move the price up, regardless of which pricing method is used:
Premium paint brands add real cost. Standard trade emulsion for an average room costs £20-£50 in materials. Switching to a premium brand like Farrow & Ball or Little Greene can add £100-£300 to the total, on top of labour, since these paints cost considerably more per litre at retail.
Woodwork and doors are usually priced separately from wall and ceiling work. Skirting boards, architraves, and window frames typically add £50-£100 per room on top of the base rate, and each additional door painted adds further time.
Prep work is the single biggest variable. A room where the walls are already in good condition and just need two coats is a genuinely different job to one requiring old wallpaper stripped, cracks filled, and a full mist coat on new plaster before any finish paint goes on. Two rooms of identical size can end up with very different quotes purely based on the state of the walls underneath.
Whole-House Repaints
If there is a full interior repaint of a standard three-bedroom Victorian or Edwardian property in London, covering walls, ceilings and woodwork throughout with standard trade paint, current London-specific pricing sits around £2,900-£4,800. Checkatrade's broader UK figure for a larger, five-bedroom house comes in around £6,000, which gives a sense of how the cost scales with the size of the property once multiple bedrooms, a hallway, stairs, and reception rooms are all included.
Inclusion in a Trade Paint Quote and What Isn't
Most of these figures assume standard trade paint, not a premium retail brand, and labour that covers filling, sanding, priming where needed, and two coats on walls and ceilings. Paint and materials are typically itemised separately from labour. However, a decorator buying at trade prices can often pass on a saving compared to what the same paint would cost bought retail.
What these figures generally don't include: scaffolding or access equipment for anything beyond a standard interior room; specialist finishes such as limewash or spray application; and significant structural repair work, such as replastering a damaged wall rather than simply filling cracks.
Getting an Accurate Quote for Your Own Room
None of the ranges above replace an actual quote for your specific room. The condition of the walls, the paint finish you want, and whether doors and woodwork are included all shift the final number in either direction, sometimes significantly. The only reliable way to know the real cost of painting a room UK-wide, and specifically in London, is a written quote based on an actual site visit rather than a phone estimate.
Royal Painters London provides a free site visit and a written quote before any work is scheduled, based on the actual condition of your walls rather than a generic room-size average. Proudly serving London and surrounding areas with reliable residential and commercial painting services.
Royal Painters London
76 Uxbridge Rd, London W12 8LP, United Kingdom
+44 7561 204 205 | info@royalpainterslondon.co.uk | royalpainterslondon.co.uk