Painting a three-bedroom house throughout costs £2,200 to £4,400 in the North West in 2026. Walls and ceilings only, in reasonable condition, sits nearer the bottom. Full redecoration including all woodwork, with wallpaper to strip and colour changes, sits at the top.
Below is the full breakdown by room, so you can build your own estimate before anyone comes out — and see where a quote is either light on preparation or padded.
Room by room
| Room | Walls & ceiling | Adding woodwork | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Box room / third bedroom | £220 – £330 | £300 – £440 | Usually the quickest room in the house |
| Bedroom 2 | £280 – £430 | £380 – £560 | |
| Master bedroom | £320 – £500 | £430 – £650 | Fitted wardrobes reduce wall area but add cutting-in |
| Living room | £340 – £560 | £460 – £720 | Chimney breast and alcoves add time |
| Dining room | £280 – £460 | £380 – £600 | |
| Kitchen | £260 – £420 | £340 – £540 | Cutting around units is slow work |
| Bathroom | £180 – £300 | £250 – £400 | Small area, high proportion of cutting-in |
| Hallway, stairs and landing | £480 – £850 | £650 – £1,100 | Almost always the most expensive space |
| Whole house | £2,200 – £3,600 | £2,900 – £4,400 |
Woodwork means skirting, architrave, doors, window boards and stair spindles where present.
Why the hallway costs more than the living room
It catches people out every time. A hall, stairs and landing usually has less floor area than a lounge but costs more to decorate, for four reasons:
- Wall height. A stairwell wall can be five metres from the bottom step to the ceiling above the landing.
- Access. You need a proper stair ladder or a staircase scaffold. Everything takes longer set up on stepped access.
- Cutting in. Spindles, newel posts, handrails, string, treads, risers. A staircase is largely edges, and edges are hand work.
- Doors. A landing typically has four to six doors and frames off it, all needing preparation and two coats.
If the budget is tight, this is the room to phase rather than the one to skip — it's the space every visitor sees.
What's actually in the price
A quote that doesn't itemise preparation is a quote for painting over problems. It should cover:
Protection — dust sheets on floors, furniture moved to the centre and covered, sockets and switches masked, carpets protected at doorways.
Washing down — sugar soap on all surfaces. Particularly kitchens, above radiators, and around light switches where finger marks build up.
Filling and making good — cracks raked out and filled properly rather than smeared over, nail and screw holes filled, caulk run between woodwork and wall to close the gap.
Sanding — filler sanded flush, existing gloss keyed so new paint has something to grip.
Priming — bare wood, bare plaster, filler patches, and stain-blocking primer on any water or nicotine staining.
Two full coats on every surface. Not "one coat if it covers".
Clean-up and waste removal.
What adds cost, and roughly how much
Stripping wallpaper — £120 to £220 per room, more for woodchip or heavy relief. And you're buying a lottery ticket on what's underneath: poorly finished plaster is common under paper that's been up thirty years.
Dark to light colour change — three coats minimum, sometimes four. Adds 30 to 50% to the wall element. A tinted grey primer under the topcoat is usually cheaper than a fourth coat of finish.
Ceilings with staining — nicotine, water marks or smoke need a stain-blocking primer. Without it, they bleed through any number of emulsion coats. Adds £40 to £90 per ceiling.
Textured or Artex walls and ceilings — either skimmed over or overboarded. Anything pre-1985 needs asbestos testing before it's disturbed.
Damp or mould — must be treated at source before decorating. Painting over black mould with standard emulsion is a job you'll pay for twice.
Panelled doors — a properly prepared and painted panelled door is 45 to 60 minutes each. A three-bed house typically has eight to eleven internal doors.
High ceilings — the older terraced stock in Burnley, Padiham and Nelson, and the Victorian properties around Southport and Birkdale, often has 2.7m to 3m ceilings. That's 15 to 25% more wall area per room than modern 2.4m, plus tower or hop-up access.
Where you can sensibly save
Do the clearing yourself. Furniture out, curtains and poles down, pictures off, carpets lifted where they're being replaced anyway. Saves genuine chargeable time.
Do the whole house at once. Set-up, protection, material runs and travel are largely fixed. Three rooms in one visit costs meaningfully less than three separate visits, and you'll usually get a better rate for the volume.
Keep the same colour family. Staying within a shade or two of what's there means two coats rather than three.
Book off-peak. January to March is quieter than May to September. Lead times shorten and pricing is often softer.
Skip nothing on preparation. This is the one place saving money reliably costs money. Paint applied over dust, grease or an unkeyed gloss surface will fail, and it fails in a way that means starting again rather than touching up.
Supplying your own paint
Perfectly reasonable, and sometimes cheaper. Two things to know.
Trade paint and retail paint differ in more than price — trade emulsion generally has better opacity and flow, which is why it covers in two coats where a budget retail product needs three. The apparent saving frequently disappears in the extra coat.
And buy more than the calculator says. Running out mid-wall on a colour mixed in-store is a genuine problem, because a second batch is rarely a perfect match and the join will show under raking light.
For which product suits which room, our guide on which finish for which room covers it properly.
A realistic timescale
One decorator, three-bed house, full redecoration including woodwork.
- Preparation across the house: 2 to 3 days
- Ceilings: 1 day
- Walls, two coats: 2 to 3 days
- Woodwork, undercoat and two finish coats: 2 to 3 days
- Snagging and clean-up: half a day
Add two to three days for wallpaper stripping. Add a day for each room needing significant filling.
Two decorators roughly halves it, but not quite — some stages can't be usefully doubled up.
Want your house priced room by room?
Measured on site, itemised surface by surface, and held for 30 days. No deposit before work starts.
Getting an itemised figure
We quote room by room and surface by surface, so you can see exactly what's driving the number and phase the work if you'd rather. Measured on site, held for 30 days, no deposit before work starts.
We cover Burnley, Padiham, Nelson, Colne, Accrington and Clitheroe, and Southport, Birkdale, Ainsdale, Churchtown and Formby. See local decorating prices, our painting and decorating services, or get an itemised quote.