How Much Does It Cost to Paint a Room? (2026 UK Price Guide)
Quick answer
For a professionally painted room in London or Kent in 2026, expect to pay:
| Room | Typical price range |
|---|---|
| Box room / small bedroom | £250–£400 |
| Double bedroom / home office | £350–£550 |
| Living room (average size) | £500–£750 |
| Large or open-plan living space, high ceilings | £700–£1,100+ |
Those ranges cover walls, ceiling, and woodwork — two coats, standard trade paint, labour included. A single decorator working alone will usually get a small or medium room done in 1–2 days. Nothing here is a fixed price: the range exists because two rooms that look the same size on paper can take very different amounts of work underneath.
What actually moves the price
Condition of the existing surfaces. A wall that’s already flat and sound is quick. A wall with hairline cracks, old filler that’s failed, or a patch of damp staining needs filling, sanding, and sometimes a stain-blocking primer before a single coat of colour goes on. Prep is where the time goes — and where a rushed job shows up first, usually within a year.
How many coats it actually needs. Two coats is the standard we quote for. Going from a dark or saturated colour to white, or the reverse, can mean a mist coat or an extra coat to get full, even coverage without patchiness. If you’re supplying a specific paint brand, ask how many coats it needs — some premium paints cover in two, some genuinely need three.
Woodwork. Skirting boards, door frames, doors themselves, and any picture rails or coving all add time, because they’re cut in by hand and usually need their own prep (sanding back old gloss, filling nicks). A room with a lot of woodwork detail costs more than a plain box room even if the floor area is identical.
Ceiling height and access. A Victorian terrace with 2.7–3m ceilings needs towers or extended access rather than a stepladder — that’s more time and, on some jobs, extra kit.
Furniture and floor protection. Empty rooms are fastest. If furniture has to be moved, covered, and moved back, or a carpet needs careful masking rather than a dust sheet, that’s built into the quote.
What a fair quote should include
- A site visit before pricing, not a guess over the phone
- Dust sheets down and surfaces protected before anything starts
- Filling, sanding, and priming as standard — not billed separately unless the wall needs major repair (blown plaster, damp)
- Two coats minimum on walls and woodwork
- Paint brand and finish specified in writing, so there’s no ambiguity about what’s included
- A cleanup at the end — you shouldn’t be finding paint dust in the room for a week afterwards
If a quote is significantly cheaper than the ranges above, ask what’s been left out. The two most common corners cut are proper surface prep and the number of coats — both invisible on the day, both the first things to fail.
Painting a whole house rather than one room?
The per-room maths above doesn’t scale in a straight line — see our guide to what it costs to paint a 3-bedroom house in the UK for the full-property numbers, or our price list and day rates if you’d rather work from an hourly or daily figure.