Plastering is one of the few trades where the room-size shorthand is genuinely useful, because the work scales almost linearly with wall area and there are few hidden surprises once the old surface is exposed.
Ranges by room
MyJobQuote's July 2026 guide gives single bedroom £450 to £650, double bedroom £600 to £850, living room £850 to £1,150, kitchen £600 to £950, bathroom £300 to £500 and en-suite £250 to £450. Smaller jobs price differently again: a patch repair runs £100 to £300 and a single wall £250 to £400.
Kitchens and bathrooms come in below bedrooms of the same footprint for an obvious reason. Units, tiling and splashbacks cover a large share of the wall, so there is simply less surface to plaster.
What actually moves the number
Three things, in order of impact.
The state of the existing surface. A skim over sound plasterboard is the cheap case. Plaster that is blown, hollow-sounding or coming away needs hacking off and a two-coat system, which roughly doubles the rate per square metre. You will not know which you have until someone taps the wall, so get that done before accepting any quote.
Ceiling height. South London's Victorian and Edwardian terraces often run to 2.7m or higher, against about 2.4m in a modern flat. That is over ten per cent more wall for the same floor plan, and it usually means working off a hop-up or trestle rather than standing on the floor, which is slower.
Access and protection. A first-floor room reached through a finished hallway takes longer to sheet up, carry materials into and clean down than a ground-floor room in an empty house. Plasterers price that time, and they are right to.
What the quote usually excludes
Assume none of the following are included unless the quote says so in writing: removing old plaster, treating damp or salt contamination, repairing structural cracks, boarding out bare brick, moving radiators or sockets, and making good the floor.
Damp is the one to watch in this part of London. Plastering over a damp wall is money burned, because the moisture and the salts it carries will come back through the new surface within months. A competent plasterer will refuse the job and tell you to fix the cause first. Treat that refusal as a good sign, not an obstacle.
Getting a quote you can compare
Ask for the price broken into labour, materials and preparation, and ask whether it is a skim or a two-coat replaster. Two quotes that look £300 apart are often quoting different jobs entirely, and the cheaper one is frequently the one that has not allowed for hacking off.
Ask how many days they expect to be on site as well. A quote that implies one day for a full double bedroom and ceiling is optimistic, and optimism in a quote usually reappears as either a rushed finish or a conversation about extras.
A note on VAT
Many plasterers working alone are below the VAT threshold and do not charge it. Larger firms will. That is a real 20 per cent difference between two otherwise identical quotes, so establish it early rather than discovering it on the invoice.