How Long Does Decorating Take? A Room-by-Room Guide

Planning a decorating project requires knowing how long it will take — not just so you can arrange things at home, but also so you can evaluate whether the quote you've received is realistic. A decorator who promises to do a room in a day when a realistic estimate is two days is either cutting corners or setting themselves up to do a poor job.

In this guide I'll give honest, experience-based timescales for the different types of decorating work I do across London and Surrey. These are working days (8 hours), and the ranges reflect the variation between a straightforward job and one with more preparation, complexity, or awkward access.

What Affects Timescales?

Before the numbers, it's worth understanding the factors that push jobs towards the longer end of any range. This explains why two apparently similar rooms can take different amounts of time.

Preparation required

A room where the existing paint is in good condition and there are no major cracks or surface defects requires minimal preparation — possibly just a light sand and wipe down before painting begins. A room with wallpaper to strip, significant cracking to fill, or poor-condition existing paint layers can add a full day of preparation before any colour goes on.

Surface area

Higher ceilings mean more wall area. A room with 3m ceilings has roughly 25% more wall area than the same floor plan with 2.4m ceilings — and the higher working height also slows down certain operations like cutting in. Victorian properties in Clapham and Wandsworth with original ceiling heights of 3m+ take correspondingly longer than modern equivalents.

Amount of woodwork

Woodwork — skirting boards, architraves, window frames, doors, radiator covers — takes time because it's all hand-brushed, requires careful cutting in, and drying times between coats must be respected. A Victorian room with original skirting boards, detailed architraves, a sash window, and a panelled door has considerably more woodwork than a modern room.

Number of coats

Standard work typically involves a mist coat or primer followed by two finish coats. Going from a dark colour to a light one, or covering a stained or marked surface, may need an additional coat — adding roughly 30-40% to the wall painting time for that area.

Drying times

Paint drying time isn't optional. Modern water-based paints typically need 2-4 hours between coats under normal conditions, and longer in cold or humid conditions. Oil-based products need considerably longer. In cold months or poorly-heated properties, drying time can limit how much work is achievable in a day.

Timescales by Room Type

Bedroom (standard size, walls and ceiling only)

1 to 1.5 days for a modern property with good surface condition. 1.5 to 2.5 days for a period property with more surface variation and higher ceilings.

If the bedroom also includes woodwork (skirting boards, architraves, window and door frames), add half to a full day depending on the amount of woodwork and its condition.

Reception Room (living room, dining room)

1.5 to 2 days for walls and ceiling in a modern property. 2 to 3.5 days for a period property — the higher ceilings, more detailed cornicing, and typically more woodwork all add time.

Kitchen

1 to 2 days depending on how much wall area is exposed (kitchens often have less paintable wall area because of units and tiles, but the remaining areas need more thorough preparation because of grease and moisture). If kitchen cabinets are being painted, this is a separate specialist job that takes considerably longer — cabinet painting is typically 3-5 days for a standard kitchen.

Bathroom

0.5 to 1 day typically — less paintable surface area than other rooms, but more preparation required because moisture, mould, and silicone near painted surfaces all need dealing with correctly.

Hallway, Stairs, and Landing

This is consistently the most time-consuming area of a house relative to its floor area. The combination of tight access, height (particularly on stairwells), and the amount of woodwork on banisters, handrails, skirting boards, and multiple door architraves all add time.

2 to 4 days is a realistic range for a standard Victorian terrace hallway, staircase, and landing. In larger properties or those with more elaborate period details, 5+ days is not unusual.

Whole House Interior Repaint (3 bedrooms)

A 3-bedroom house with all rooms, hallway, staircase, landing, and associated woodwork: 7 to 12 working days for a professional team of two working full days.

This is one of the most common jobs we do across Epsom, Banstead, and the Surrey commuter belt — homeowners having the whole house done between moves, or before selling. Getting this done in under a week requires compromising on preparation or drying time between coats. We'd rather do it right in 10 days than rush it in 6 and leave a result that won't last.

Exterior Semi-Detached House

4 to 8 working days for a team of two. The range depends primarily on the condition of the exterior — a house that just needs a clean and a fresh coat of masonry paint is very different from one where the render needs patching, the woodwork needs stripping and re-priming, and the fascias and soffits are in poor condition.

Weather is also a factor for exterior work in a way it isn't for interior work. We don't paint exterior surfaces in rain, frost, or extreme heat — all of which affect adhesion and drying. We monitor forecasts and plan exterior work for suitable windows, which sometimes means adjusting the schedule.

Why "Quick" Isn't Always Good

The shortcuts that compress timescales are predictable: fewer coats than quoted, less preparation than required, skipping drying time between coats, and not properly cutting in edges. The result of all of these shortcuts is a finish that looks fine for a few weeks and then starts to show the effects.

When we quote a job, the timescale is part of the specification. If the quote says a room will take two days, it means two proper working days with the preparation and drying time correctly planned in. We don't try to do it in one day to squeeze in another job.

What You Can Do to Help the Timescale

A few things homeowners can do to help a decorating project run to schedule:

• Clear rooms as much as possible before we arrive — we'll move and protect what's left, but an empty room is faster to work in
• Make decisions about colour before the job starts — changes mid-job, particularly to colours that were already specified, add time
• Allow proper access — if we're doing the hallway and staircase, we need access from early morning without disruption
• Plan for drying time in your schedule — furniture can't go back in a freshly painted room until the paint has cured properly (usually 24-48 hours minimum)

Scheduling Our Work

We typically have a waiting time of 1-2 weeks from quote acceptance to starting work, though this varies with demand. For larger projects or specific timing requirements — for example, needing the job done before a sale completion or a specific date — contact us as early as possible so we can plan accordingly.

When you accept our quote, we agree a start date and give you a day-by-day schedule of what will happen when. Our interior painting and exterior painting projects are planned to minimise disruption to your home and to deliver the completed result on the date we said it would be done.