Question 1

How long does plaster take to dry?

Accepted Answer

A skim coat is usually touch-dry in a day and fully dry in three to seven days. Dulux advises allowing up to four weeks before painting. Judge by colour, not the calendar: plaster is dry when it has turned a uniform pale pink with no darker patches anywhere.

Question 2

How much does it cost to plaster a room?

Accepted Answer

Budget £450 to £650 for a single bedroom, £600 to £850 for a double, and £850 to £1,150 for a living room. Those figures cover walls, labour and materials. Adding the ceiling typically takes a standard room to around £1,000 in total.

Question 3

What is a mist coat?

Accepted Answer

A mist coat is watered-down emulsion painted onto new plaster as a primer. Fresh plaster is porous and would otherwise drink undiluted paint, leaving a patchy finish that peels. Dulux recommends roughly ten parts paint to one part water, or their ready-made plaster sealer instead.

Question 4

How much does a plasterer charge per day?

Accepted Answer

Expect £250 to £350 a day in London and the South East, against £180 to £250 in the north of England. Published London averages vary widely, from around £218 to over £350, so treat any single figure as a bracket to test quotes against rather than a price.

Question 5

How much do plasterers charge per hour?

Accepted Answer

Roughly £25 to £40 an hour across the UK, with London nearer £33. Very few plastering jobs are actually billed hourly, because plaster has to be worked continuously from mixing to final trowel, so hourly pricing mainly applies to small repairs and callouts.

Question 6

How much does a plasterer charge per m2?

Accepted Answer

A skim over sound plasterboard runs about £15 to £25 per square metre. A full two-coat replaster is £30 to £40, rising to £35 to £55 over old or uneven walls. Specialist finishes such as lime or polished plaster start around £60 and climb steeply.

Question 7

How much does it cost to skim a wall?

Accepted Answer

A single wall typically costs £250 to £400. That reflects a minimum charge rather than the area: at skim rates a normal wall is only around eight square metres of work, but the plasterer still loses most of a day to travel, setup and cleaning down.

Question 8

How much does it cost to plaster a ceiling?

Accepted Answer

Around £390 for an average room ceiling. Ceilings cost more per square metre than walls because the work is overhead, slower and more physically demanding. Plastering a room and its ceiling together typically comes to about £1,000.

Question 9

How much does it cost to plaster a 3 bed house?

Accepted Answer

Expect roughly £6,000 to £10,000 for a full three-bedroom house including ceilings, built up from per-room rates. No published source gives a reliable whole-house figure, so treat this as arithmetic from room prices rather than a measured average.

Question 10

How long does it take to plaster a room?

Accepted Answer

A small room takes about a day, a medium room one to two days, and a large room two to three. A patch repair is two to four hours. Those are working days on site and do not include the days or weeks the plaster then needs to dry.

Question 11

How long before you can paint new plaster?

Accepted Answer

Dulux advise allowing up to four weeks before painting new plaster. The reliable test is colour rather than time: the wall must be a uniform pale pink with no darker patches. Paint it while it is still patchy and the emulsion will blister, peel or stain.

Question 12

Why is my new plaster cracking?

Accepted Answer

Fine hairline cracks usually mean the plaster dried too fast, often from heating applied too soon. Cracks in the same place as before suggest movement in the structure behind rather than a plastering fault. Cracks along board joints point to missing scrim tape.

Question 13

What is the difference between skimming and plastering?

Accepted Answer

Skimming is a thin finish coat, about 2 to 3mm, applied over a surface that is already flat. Plastering usually means the full two-coat job: a backing coat to build out and level the wall, then a skim on top. Skimming is roughly half the cost per square metre.

Question 14

What should you ask a plasterer before hiring?

Accepted Answer

Ask whether they are quoting a skim or a full replaster, whether they have tapped the walls, what happens if the plaster turns out to be blown, who removes the waste, and whether the price includes VAT. Those five questions explain most price differences between quotes.

Question 15

Do plasterers ask for money up front?

Accepted Answer

On a single room, usually not. Most plasterers on small jobs buy materials themselves and invoice on completion. On larger jobs a materials deposit is normal, but paying the full amount before work starts is not, and paying in cash for a discount removes your protection.

Hiring a plasterer in South London: your questions answered

What it costs

Choosing a plasterer

Paying and protection

Practical questions

Comparing directories

Ready to get quotes?