UK cost guide · Published 8 September 2026 · Last updated 8 September 2026
How much would a painter charge to paint a front door? (UK 2026)
A UK painter typically charges between £150 and £300 to paint one front door in 2026. HaMuch lists the job from £132, with ten named firms quoting £132–£156; MyJobQuote, updated 2 January 2026, puts the average at £200 and £250–£300 for a glazed uPVC door that needs preparation. Almost every guide stops there. This one explains the part they leave out: why a job that takes two hours costs about the same as half a day of a painter's time, and when that is fair.
How much would a painter charge to paint a front door in the UK?
Here is what the named UK sources actually publish. These are different populations measured in different ways, so they are listed separately rather than averaged into one misleading figure.
| Source | Figure for one door | What it is based on |
|---|---|---|
| HaMuch (UK page) | From £132, ten firms quoting £132–£156 | "From" prices published by named traders |
| MyJobQuote (updated 2 Jan 2026) | £200 average; £150–£180 plain composite; £200–£250 with sanding; £200–£220 glazed uPVC; £250–£300 glazed uPVC with prep | Quotes given by tradespeople on their platform. Note their cheapest row is a composite door — see the warning below |
| PriceYourJob | £150–£300 | The only guide that shows its arithmetic: £120 labour + £30 materials |
| WeSprayUPVC (specialist sprayer) | £250 + VAT (£300 inc VAT) door only, £300 + VAT (£360 inc VAT) with frame — their 2026 guide says £275 + VAT door only | Commercial spraying, 10-year guarantee. The only ex-VAT row in this table |
| Checkatrade | ~£60 per interior door (a different, easier job); ~£325/day | Unverified — their page blocked our check, figures seen only in a search summary |
The honest summary: £150–£300 covers most real front door jobs, with glazed and uPVC doors at the top of that band and beyond. If someone quotes you £450 for a plain, sound timber door, ask what they are seeing that these sources are not.
Want a figure for your whole house rather than one door? Use the free painting cost calculator — no email, no postcode, no signup, and it never passes your details to a tradesperson.
Why does painting one door cost more per hour than painting a whole room?
This is the question the price guides raise and never answer. MyJobQuote says a plain door takes two hours. The same page gives a painter's day rate of £150–£250. Yet it prices the two-hour job at £200. That works out at about £100 an hour, roughly four times the hourly rate implied by their own day rate. Nobody reconciles the two numbers.
Here is the arithmetic, shown openly:
- The UK average painter day rate recorded by HaMuch is about £173 a day. An eight-hour day at £173 is about £22 an hour, so two hours of it is roughly £43.
- A 750ml tin of exterior gloss is about £30.
- Naive total: about £73 — well below even HaMuch's "from £132" floor, and barely a third of the £200 average.
The difference is not profiteering, it is the shape of the job. You are not buying two hours of work, you are buying a slot in someone's diary. The painter has to travel to you, unload, mask, and set up, and then — the decisive part — wait for the coat to dry before the next one goes on. That waiting time cannot be sold to another customer, because they would have to travel away and come back. A one-door job therefore consumes something close to half a day of capacity even though only two hours of it is painting.
Two practical consequences follow. First, the second small job in the same visit is far cheaper than the first — see the frame question below. Second, if you only need one door done, expect to pay a price that looks high per hour and is nonetheless reasonable.
How long does it take, and why does it need more than one visit?
MyJobQuote's timings are the most specific published: two hours for a plain door in sound condition, two to three hours with sanding and knotting, two to four hours for a glazed uPVC door, and three to four hours for a glazed door needing preparation.
Those are hours of work, not elapsed time. The elapsed time is set by the recoat clock, and this is where exterior door work differs from interior walls. Dulux Trade's datasheet for Weathershield Flexible Undercoat gives a recoat time of 6–8 hours in brilliant white or dark grey, but 16–24 hours in all other colours. A full timber system — preservative primer, two undercoats, one gloss — therefore cannot be done in a single visit in any normal colour.
Ronseal's 10 Year Weatherproof Wood Paint is the faster route: the manufacturer states no primer needed, touch dry in one hour, recoat in four, and rainproof in one hour, with two coats on previously painted wood and three on bare. That is a genuine one-day system in summer — and it is why a painter may quote differently depending on which product they intend to use.
There is also a practical problem no price guide mentions: the door has to stay usable and the house has to stay secure while the paint cures. That constrains when the work can happen, and it is another reason the job is quoted as a slot rather than by the hour.
Can you paint a uPVC or composite front door?
These are two very different answers, and most guides treat them as one.
| Door type | Can it be painted? | What it needs |
|---|---|---|
| Timber | Yes — the standard case | Preservative primer on bare wood, undercoat, topcoat. Check for lead if pre-1980s (below). |
| uPVC | Yes, with the right primer | Zinsser advise one full coat of Bulls Eye 1-2-3 primer, which bonds without sanding, then two coats of an exterior topcoat. Brushing shows marks over time; spraying is the trade norm. |
| Composite | Manufacturer says no | Solidor's own FAQ states that painting the door "is not recommended, as it may affect the door's warranty and performance". If it is in warranty, painting it is your call to make knowingly. |
| Metal | Yes | Dulux Trade specify one coat of metal primer on any bare metal before the system goes on. |
| Glazed (any material) | Yes, costs more | Masking the glass is the extra work — MyJobQuote's rows put glazing at roughly £40–£50 above an equivalent plain door, though their comparison changes the material and the glazing at the same time. |
The composite finding is worth pausing on, because it is the one that can cost you real money. It comes from a door manufacturer advising against a service that would otherwise be sold on their product — a source with no incentive to say it.
What about lead paint — is the 1992 date people quote actually right?
No. A great many painting articles repeat that lead paint was "banned in 1992" and imply anything newer is safe. 1992 is when lead paint was banned from general retail sale in the UK. It is not when lead left paint, and using it as your safety cut-off is a mistake.
The authoritative sources are more cautious and they agree with each other:
- HSE information sheet CIS79 warns about removing paint in properties built before the 1980s, and states that lead pigments were widely used until the 1960s and were not removed from commonly used paints until the early 1980s.
- The British Coatings Federation (guidance HS034, April 2016) says lead pigments came out of most paints in the 1960s and were completely gone from decorative paints by the early 1980s.
- Dulux Trade's own datasheet advises special precautions when preparing pre-1960s paint surfaces.
The practical rule: if the door is pre-1980s, assume lead is present. The BCF makes a point that runs against instinct — lead paint is only a risk if the film is unsound or disturbed, and removing sound lead paint can produce more exposure than leaving it in place. Sanding an old door back to bare wood "to do it properly" can be the worse choice. Where stripping genuinely is necessary, the BCF suggests a specialist company that can strip the door off site in stripping baths.
If preparation does disturb old paint, HSE's controls are specific: an FFP3 mask, wet abrasive paper or on-tool extraction rather than dry sanding, hot air guns or infrared kept below 500°C, and never a gas torch or blow lamp. For a tradesperson the work sits under the Control of Lead at Work Regulations 2002; those duties bind employers and the self-employed rather than a homeowner doing their own door, but the controls are the sensible ones to copy either way. This is a health point rather than a cost point, but it is a fair thing to ask a painter about on an older property.
How much paint do you need, and what does it cost to do it yourself?
About £30–£60 in materials. The arithmetic, from manufacturer coverage figures rather than guesswork:
- A standard UK external door is 1981 × 838mm, or about 1.66m² per face. Both faces plus the edges come to roughly 3.5m².
- Dulux Weathershield Exterior Gloss covers up to 18m² per litre. Two coats over 3.5m² needs about 0.4 litres.
- Ronseal 10 Year Weatherproof covers up to 12m² per litre; the manufacturer states a 750ml tin covers 8m² with two coats.
On any of these, a single 750ml tin does both faces with two coats and leaves paint over — about £30 at B&Q as of 8 September 2026. Add an undercoat or a preservative primer for bare timber and you are still under £60. One exception: on stripped bare timber Ronseal specify three coats, which will take a second tin. So the DIY saving on one door is genuinely most of the quoted price, which is unusual: on a whole-house repaint, materials are a much larger share and the saving is proportionally smaller.
The catch is not the money, it is the weather window and the drying discipline. A door painted in a rush, in the cold, in the wrong month, will need doing again sooner than one done properly. If you want to sanity-check a decorator's quote for a larger job the same way, our guide on whether a painting quote is fair works the quote backwards into painter-days.
Should you paint the frame at the same time?
Almost always yes. This follows directly from the slot argument. Once the travel, the setup and the drying wait are paid for, the frame costs only the extra labour of painting it. The clearest published evidence is WeSprayUPVC's own pricing: £250 + VAT for the door alone, £300 + VAT with the frame — the frame adds about a fifth to the bill, not another whole job. Their separate 2026 price guide quotes £275 + VAT for the door alone, which would make the frame nearer a tenth; we show both rather than quietly pick the one that suits the argument.
The same logic applies to a back door, a garage side door, or the architrave. If you are having a painter out for one door, ask what a second item in the same visit would add — the answer is usually much less than you expect, and much less than getting them back out another day.
When is the best time of year to paint a front door in the UK?
Late spring to early autumn. Dulux advise applying only in dry conditions, above 10°C, with no bad weather forecast, and Dulux Trade advise stopping if relative humidity goes above 80%. (Dulux's All Seasons Masonry Paint is rated down to 5°C, but that is one specific product rather than a general rule; 10°C is the figure we would work to.)
The number that matters most is what cold does to the waiting: Dulux Trade state that a drop from 20°C to 10°C delays overcoating from 16 hours to 72 hours. That single fact turns an October repaint from a two-visit job into something spread across a week, which is why painters either decline exterior door work late in the year or price it higher. Dulux Trade also warn that surface temperature can run several degrees below air temperature early in the day — their warning is aimed at metal, plaster and masonry, but the same physics makes a north-facing door on a bright cold morning colder than the forecast suggests.
When is it not worth repainting the door at all?
Three cases where the money is better spent elsewhere:
- An in-warranty composite door. Solidor's guidance above is explicit. Repainting may cost you the warranty on a door worth many times the painting.
- Timber that has gone soft. Paint is not a structural repair. If the bottom rail is spongy or the joints have opened, painting hides the problem for a season and no longer.
- A uPVC door you want brushed on the cheap. Without a proper adhesion primer the finish fails, and a peeling uPVC door looks worse than the faded one you started with. Either do it properly or have it sprayed.
If the door is sound and the paint is simply tired, repainting is one of the best-value jobs in the house — it is the most-seen square metre of your property.
Pricing more than a door? Our free calculator estimates full rooms, exteriors and whole houses in seconds — free, no signup, no email. You can also read our guides on exterior painting costs, what a painter charges for a ceiling, and choosing between matt, eggshell and silk.
Related questions
How much would a painter charge to paint a front door in the UK?
Most UK painters charge roughly £150–£300 in 2026. HaMuch lists the job from £132 (ten firms, £132–£156); MyJobQuote gives a £200 average, rising to £250–£300 for a glazed uPVC door with preparation.
Why does painting one door cost about £200 when it only takes two hours?
Because you are buying a slot, not two hours. Two hours of the £173 UK average day rate is about £43, plus £30 of paint. The rest is travel, setup and the recoat wait, which cannot be sold to anyone else.
Can you paint a composite front door?
Manufacturers advise against it. Solidor's own FAQ says painting "is not recommended, as it may affect the door's warranty and performance". uPVC is different and can be painted with an adhesion primer.
Is the 1992 lead paint date correct?
No. 1992 is the ban on general retail sale. HSE CIS79 treats pre-1980s properties as the risk group and says lead was widely used until the 1960s. Assume lead on a pre-1980s door.
Do I need to strip the old paint off first?
Usually not. If the paint is sound, clean, abrade lightly and recoat. The British Coatings Federation warns that removing sound lead paint can cause more exposure than leaving it undisturbed.
Should I paint the door frame at the same time?
Yes — it is the cheapest addition available, because the setup and drying time are already paid for. One specialist sprayer charges £250 + VAT for the door and £300 + VAT with the frame (a tenth to a fifth, depending which of their two published prices you take).
What is the best time of year to paint a front door in the UK?
Late spring to early autumn. Dulux advise above 10°C in dry conditions; a drop from 20°C to 10°C pushes the overcoating wait from 16 hours to 72.
How much would it cost to paint my own front door?
About £30–£60. Both faces of a standard door are roughly 3.5m², and one 750ml tin of exterior gloss (about £30 at B&Q, September 2026) covers that twice over.
Sources: HaMuch front door cost page; MyJobQuote exterior door cost guide (updated 2 January 2026); PriceYourJob; WeSprayUPVC published pricing; Dulux and Dulux Trade product data and datasheets; Ronseal product data; Zinsser UK application guidance; Solidor FAQ; HSE information sheet CIS79 "Old lead paint"; British Coatings Federation guidance HS034 (April 2016); B&Q retail prices checked 8 September 2026. Checkatrade figures are marked unverified because their page was not reachable for checking. Prices are typical UK figures for 2026 and are not a quotation.