Current day rate for painter decorator in West Midlands

Hi

What is the current day rate you would expect a painter decorator to charge in the West Midlands?

My father in law is a painter decorator by trade but has only done part time weekend painting jobs for the last 10 years as he has a full time job doing something else during the week. We have recently had some building work done and our builder has asked my father in law to do a few decorating jobs as he saw him doing our decorating and was impressed with his speed and finish.

He is good at what he does but is not sure what day rate he should charge the builder or whether he should price each job as a whole. He's a bit out of touch with current prices but doesn't want to under sell himself or over charge and lose out.

Anyone willing to offer some pricing advice I can pass on to him?

Thanks.

Whatever you do, start high. Never sell yourself short. You can always come down but you can never go up.

He needs to suss out the competition. Look through the local rags, and see if there are any rates in it, then work on the basis, that they're not getting any recommendations (hence they have to advertise) and that his rates should be higher.

Finally, he needs to be open and straighforward with builder, and ask for advice, then when the builder gived him a rate that'll be lower than he's worth, he throws in a joke that he'll accept if for a couple of jobs, and the rates will rise as he gets more customers.

Taking a lower than he's possibly worth rate for the first few jobs, may well be a worthwhile exercise to get him going, but only so long as he can live on that rate - after paying taxes and expenses etc.

Based on a little bit of experience over the last couple of years having work done - I'd say between £120-150 a day in the West Mids.

Thanks for the input guys. I will pass this on to my father in law.

Cheers.

The day rate isn't necessarily just a function of speed though.

I am London based, but hadn't realised how cheap I am until I recently got a tosher to give me a hand on site. He was charging me £150 per day and using/ruining my tools.

He could paint a door 10-15% faster than me but I would then look at it, sigh and apply another coat (at my own cost). I was effectively paying twice his rate for a job to be done to my minimum standards.

Sanding? I think that he assumed that leaving a bit of "scratch" near the woodwork was sufficient. I (as a one man band) have about £4000 of Festool sanding/dust extraction equipment.

At the time I was charging the client an effective day rate (for myself) of £165, most clients I still only charge £150.

He made more money on the job than I did.

I think I need to award myself a pay rise. I have been at £150 for the last 4 or 5 years. Next week I am helping a friend, who is a gardiner, assemble a large log cabin. We have based the price at £200 each per day. That is the rate that he charges new customers now.

Sorry about being a tad tangential. I was trying to suggest that factors such as the ability to sand without dust, and the willingness to sand things that 90% of decorators would ignore (because of a lack of sanders/dust extractors) should be taken into account.

I could find someone in London willing to paint ceiling for £50 per day but I am pretty sure that I would probably have to replace the flooring (at great expense) because their would be paint all over it..

Perhaps you father-in-law should take a small price job from the builder. The builder is probably taking his cut (fair enough). If your F-I-L is happy with the return then both parties should be fine, if not, he can adjust prices accordingly in the future.

Just to update on this thread for anyone that stumbles across it in future. He has settled on charging his day rate to the builder at around £180 per day. Some jobs he prices as a whole and others he calculates on the day rate if the property has a lot being done in bits and pieces. The builder is happy with this and is bound to be adding a bit more on top for the end client so it seems to work all round.