Rate Sorted
A decorator cutting in along a ceiling line with a brush, in an ordinary British hallway with dust sheets down and a stepladder up.

For self employed decorators

How much should a decorator charge in 2026, after tax?

On ordinary costs, charge £256 a day to take home £35,500 after 2026/27 tax.

Worked from your own costs, not from what the bloke down the road charges.

Modelled from ONS earnings data, UK house prices and five rate directories.

£200a day, the published middle
£256a day, what the sum asks for
£56short, every day you work

Two questions hide inside this one, and they have different answers.

What is everyone else charging?
£200 a day

The published middle for a decorator. A market question. It has an answer.

What do I need to charge?
£256 a day

Arithmetic on your costs, tax and paid days. Usually the bigger answer.

Most decorators only ever ask the first.

Quotable
The published middle day rate for a self employed UK painter and decorator in 2026 is £200, the median of five UK rate directories, but Rate Sorted's model puts the rate actually needed at £256 a day after 2026/27 tax, a gap of £56.
Work out your own numberFree, no login, and nothing is stored unless you ask for the PDF.

How much do decorators charge per day in the UK?

The published middle is £200 a day, the median of five UK directories.

A median, so one keen directory cannot drag it up.

It is a band, not a number, and where you work moves it most.

Every modelled town rate, on one scale
Each dot is one of the 31 towns Rate Sorted models. Dots stack where towns land on the same rate.
£150£270
One dot is one of the 31 modelled towns, stacked where towns land on the same rate

The £256 mark sits above the typical rate of all 31 towns.

It is still inside the local range those towns quote in. The rest of this page is why.

Of these 31 towns, 31 have a page of their own.

According to the Office for National Statistics, regional earnings differ across the UK.

Rate Sorted's model uses that as one of two inputs that move each town rate.

Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings

Quotable
Rate Sorted models decorator day rates across 31 UK towns for 2026, ranging from £160 in Sunderland to £249 in London, blending five directory medians with Office for National Statistics earnings and UK house price data.
Work out your own numberA band is where other people sit. This gives you one number.
The £39 Decorator Rate Book prices every job, writes the quote and the invoice, and puts the tax by.See what is in it

Where does your day rate usually come from?

The three habits decorators price by, and why each one fails.

Usually from an old wage, plus a bit. That will not do.

That wage was take home money, after the company paid for everything.

The van, the fuel, the insurance, the sick days, the holidays, the accountant and the tax.

Your rate has to cover all of that and still leave you with something.

Every one of those bills is priced out, line by line.

The sum is on what a self employed decorator has to charge an hour.

A clipboard with a blank pad, a phone and a roll of masking tape on the paint spattered passenger seat of a work van.
The quoting, the chasing and the paperwork all happen here, and nobody pays for any of it.
Where a year at £200 a day actually goes
A full year at the going rate, on the calculator's default decorator.
200 paid days, average costs, and 2026/27 tax and National Insurance for a sole trader.

Invoiced over the year£40,000

£7,684goes on van, insurance, tools and admin

£5,134goes on tax and National Insurance

£27,182is what you keep

You keep£27,182
You wanted£35,500
Short by£8,318

That is the going rate working exactly as advertised.

Quotable
A UK decorator invoicing £40,000 a year at the £200 published middle keeps £27,182 after £7,684 of costs and £5,134 of 2026/27 Income Tax and Class 4 National Insurance, on Rate Sorted's model.
Put your own figures inSee where your own year goes, on your costs.

How many days a year do you actually bill?

Unbilled days. The ones you work and nobody pays for.

Six weeks a year go on holiday, illness or an empty diary.

That leaves 46 weeks, or 230 days.

And nobody pays for quoting, chasing, or the paperwork on a Sunday night.

A working year, counted properly
230 working days. Count the hollow ones.
200 days anyone actually pays you30 days you work and nobody pays for

200 paid, not 230. Every pound you need comes out of those 200 days.

Divide by the wrong number and every day you quote is underpriced.

According to Simply Business, unpaid extra jobs on top of the booking cost a tradesperson at least £2,600 a year.

The unpaid tasks costing UK tradespeople

Quotable
Rate Sorted models a UK decorator's working year as 200 billable days rather than 230, after six weeks of holiday and illness and 30 days spent quoting, chasing and doing paperwork that nobody pays for.

How is the day rate you need worked out?

Work backwards from what you need to keep.

Costing sheetSole trader · decorator · 2026/27
Step 1 of 4
What do you want to actually keep?
Take home, after tax£35,500

Money in your pocket, not turnover. Pick a real number, and pick it first.

Step 2 of 4
What does it cost to be a decorator for a year?
Van and fuel£6,000
Insurance and cover£220
Tools and gear£864
Accountant, phone, software£600
Before you open a tin of paint£7,684

The van is 78% of iteverything else, 22%

Not the paint. The cost of existing as a business, working or not.

Step 3 of 4
How many days do you actually get paid for?
Weeks in a year52
Less holiday, illness and empty weeks6
46 weeks at 5 days230
Less quoting, chasing and paperwork30
Days anyone actually pays you200

The hollow dots, counted. Get this divisor wrong and you undercharge all year.

Step 4 of 4
Put it together
Profit needed to take home £35,500£43,556
Plus your yearly costs£7,684
Money you have to bring in£51,240
Divided by the 200 days you are paid for200

Tax at 2026/27 sole trader rates, Income Tax and Class 4 together.

What you need to chargeTo take home £35,500 on average costs. That is exactly £42.67 an hour at six paid hours.£256
Put your own figures inYour van, your days, your target. About a minute.

How big is the gap between the two?

What the going rate pays against what the sum actually asks for.
What the market pays, against what the sum needs
Same scale on all three. The hatched part is what is missing from every single day you work.
What the sum needsTo take home £35,500
£256 a day
What the published middle paysUK median for a decorator
£56 short
£200 a day
What a Leicester decorator typically chargesModelled town rate
£74 short
£182 a day

£56 a day is 28 percent on top of the going rate. In Leicester it is over 40 percent.

There is a fuller local picture in decorator day rates in Leicester.

Quotable
The gap between the £200 published middle and the £256 a UK decorator needs to charge is £56 a day, or 28 percent on top of the going rate, according to Rate Sorted's 2026 model.
See your own gap

Yours will not be £56. It will be your van and your days.

What if nobody round here will pay £256?

The objection, answered with the town spread rather than an opinion.
A homeowner standing in the doorway of a red brick terraced house, talking to a decorator in white overalls who is carrying a rolled dust sheet.
The rate is settled on the doorstep, before a brush is opened.

Somebody is. The modelled local range in an average town runs £150 to £260 a day.

The top of that range goes to the decorator who asks for it.

If the number cannot work where you are, one of the inputs is the problem. The levers below show which.

Three levers, and what each one is worth in a year
Worked on the same decorator: 200 paid days at £256.
Put the rate up by £20 a day£4,000

The obvious lever. The one everybody reaches for first.

Win back 10 of the 30 unpaid days£2,560

Worth 64 percent of the rate rise, and it is the one lever a customer never sees.

Take £1,000 a year off the van£1,000

Straight to profit, but the smallest of the three.

Losing 60 days a year to unpaid admin rather than 30?

Fixing that beats any rate rise you were nervous about asking for.

Quotable
Rate Sorted's model values winning back 10 of a UK decorator's 30 unpaid admin days at £2,560 a year, against £4,000 for a £20 a day rate rise and £1,000 for cutting £1,000 off the van.

The sum does not just hand you a rate. It shows which lever is broken.

What should you do about it this week?

  1. Do the sum with your own numbersYour van, your insurance, your real count of unpaid days.
  2. Look at your billable days before your rateLosing 60 days to quoting costs more than being £20 a day cheap.
  3. Put the rate up on the next new customerNew quotes are where a rate moves. No awkward conversation.
  4. Stop quoting a day rate to homeowners£256 a day sounds expensive. £1,280 for the job sounds like a price.

What else should a decorator work out?

The tax page, the hourly page and the town pages.

This page is the day rate. These cover the tax, the hour and the quote.

The quote writerTurn the rate this page works out into a priced quote for one job, free.The job profit margin calculatorTake a price apart and see what the job leaves after your own days and a share of your running costs.Self employed painter and decorator hourly rateWhat your employer used to pay, which statutory line you cross, and how much of each day belongs to HMRC.Free painting and decorating quote templateA whole job priced from that day rate, line by line, with the sums shown and nothing asked for.Painter and decorator hourly rateWhy nobody publishes one, and all 31 modelled town rates divided into hourly figures.Tradesman insurance checklistWhich covers may apply to a sole trader, each one linked to an official source.

Work out your own number

Put your figures in and it does the arithmetic, tax and real billable days included.

Then it shows your town's rate next to the one you need.

Take home you want£35,500
Your yearly costs£7,684
Days you are actually paid for200
You need to charge£256 a day
Work out what you should charge

Free. Real 2026/27 tax built in. Nothing to install.

What else do decorators ask about day rates?

£42.67
An hour, if six of your hours are paid.
200
Paid days out of the 230 you actually work.
£182 to £249
The same decorator, Leicester against London.
£8,318
Short every year on the published £200 a day.
Is £150 a day too cheap for a decorator?

Almost certainly. It is below the published middle of £200.

And a long way below the £256 the sum asks for on ordinary costs.

Run the same sum at £150 a day and it leaves about £19,782 a year.

That is before a single quiet week.

Should I charge by the day or by the job?

Work it out by the day. Quote by the job.

The day rate tells you the price is sound.

The job price is what the customer hears, and what he can judge.

How much should a decorator charge per hour?

A £256 day at six paid hours is £42.67 an hour.

The hours you divide by matter more than the rate, and that is a page of its own.

The full answer is on what an hourly rate has to cover.

Does the rate change depending on where I am?

Yes, by more than most expect.

Local wages and local property prices both move it.

The same decorator models at £182 a day in Leicester and £249 in London.

Tax bands barely touch it by comparison, even across the Scottish border.

What if I am just starting out?

Charge the sum, not less.

Starting out is a reason to be picky, not to fund somebody's cheap paint job.

Opening low is hard to climb back from.

Rates: the median of five UK directories, Checkatrade, HaMuch, MyBuilder, CostEstimator and MyJobQuote.Blended with ONS Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings 2025 regional pay.And with the UK House Price Index, April 2026.Tax: 2026/27 Income Tax and Class 4 National Insurance for a sole trader.gov.uk Income Tax rates and allowancesgov.uk National Insurance rates for the self employedgov.scot Scottish Budget, January 2026England, Wales and Northern Ireland.Costs and days: the calculator's default decorator. Yours will differ, which is the whole point of the tool.Rates reviewed October 2026 · Tax figures reviewed July 2026How we model these ratesWho is behind these numbers

Take this worked example away

The figures on this page as a one page PDF, built in your browser.

Work out my numberFree, no login, and nothing is stored unless you ask for the PDF.
See what is in itThe £39 Decorator Rate Book helps you price jobs, plan tax and track unpaid invoices.

Reviewed on .

These figures use the same sums as the free calculator. The two always agree.