How much does it cost to paint the exterior of a 3 bedroom house UK?

Published UK figures for a 3-bed semi range from £1,100 to £5,700 in 2026 — a five-fold spread. HaMuch says £1,200-£1,500, Checkatrade's painter prices page says £1,100-£1,500, Checkatrade's own exterior guide says £1,800-£3,600, and MyJobQuote says £2,600-£5,700 with an average of £3,650. The gap is mostly whether access equipment is included. Walls-only with ladders sits at the bottom; a full scaffold and a textured surface takes you to the top.

How much does scaffolding cost to paint a house?

For a two-storey semi-detached house, Checkatrade puts scaffolding at £650-£1,100 per week (average £875), MyBuilder at £800-£1,500 per week, and MyJobQuote at £750-£1,150 per week with a minimum hire of six to eight weeks. Scaffold towers are far cheaper at around £250 per week. The clearest evidence of the impact: MyJobQuote prices fascias and soffits on a semi at £600-£850 without scaffolding and £1,300-£1,600 with it — the same job, roughly doubled.

Do you need scaffolding to paint a house?

Not always. A single-storey or bungalow exterior is usually ladder and trestle work. For anything above ground-floor level, Checkatrade's guidance is that working at height for more than 30 minutes at a time requires a tower or scaffold. A scaffold tower at roughly £250 per week is often the middle ground for a two-storey house, and scaffolding must be inspected before first use and every seven days thereafter.

How much does it cost to paint a pebbledash house?

Budget 60% to 100% more labour than a smooth wall. MyJobQuote's own duration table shows a semi-detached taking 3-4 days smooth versus 6-7 days textured, and Checkatrade states plainly that pebbledash takes twice as long and uses more paint. Note that Checkatrade's dedicated pebbledash page quotes a semi at £1,000-£1,800, which is lower than its own smooth-render figure of £1,800-£3,600 — the two pages contradict each other.

How many litres of masonry paint do I need for a 3 bed semi?

MyJobQuote puts it at 30-50 litres for one to two coats on a 3-bed semi. Coverage claims vary enormously: Dulux Trade Weathershield states around 15 m² per litre on smooth surfaces, while Checkatrade works on about 5 m² per litre for two coats — roughly a third of the manufacturer figure. Manufacturer numbers assume a smooth, sealed, low-porosity wall. Bare masonry, absorbent render and pebbledash will destroy that coverage.

What temperature is too cold to paint outside in the UK?

It depends on the product, even within one brand. Dulux Weathershield All Seasons Masonry can be used down to 5°C, Dulux Trade Weathershield Smooth Masonry says do not use below 7°C or above 80% relative humidity, and standard Weathershield masonry wants above 10°C. Critically, Dulux Trade also notes that the temperature of masonry and render can be several degrees lower than the air, especially early in the day — so an 8°C air reading can mean a 4-5°C wall.

How often should you paint the outside of your house?

Sources genuinely disagree. Checkatrade's exterior guide says every 5-10 years; its pebbledash page says paintwork lasts 10-15 years. Dulux Weathershield and Sandtex Ultra Smooth both claim up to 15 years. A company selling permanent wall coatings claims most homes need repainting every 2-3 years — read that one with its commercial interest in mind. The real interval is set by preparation quality and exposure, and every manufacturer guarantee is conditional on correct preparation.

Can you paint a K-rend or silicone rendered house?

You can, but it is usually the wrong move. Silicone and monocouche systems such as K-rend are through-coloured — the colour runs through the material — specifically so they never need painting. Painting one starts a repaint cycle the system exists to avoid. Normal maintenance is a pressure wash or a proprietary render cleaner. If the colour has genuinely failed, re-rendering is the alternative, and it is a far bigger job than painting.

Do you need planning permission to paint the outside of your house?

Generally no for an ordinary house. But listed buildings and properties in conservation areas are different: you may need consent, and the permitted materials and colours can be specified. Check with your local authority before repainting a period exterior or changing its colour — it is much cheaper than being told to redo it.

How much does it cost to paint a house exterior UK? (2026)

Published 11 August 2026 · Last updated 11 August 2026 · ~8 min read

Short answer: between £1,100 and £5,700 for a typical 3-bedroom semi in 2026 — and which end you land on depends almost entirely on access and surface texture, not on the paint. That five-fold spread is not us hedging. It is what the major UK cost sources actually publish, and they disagree with each other by more than two times. Below we show all of them side by side, then price the two things that really move the number: scaffolding and pebbledash.

What this site is: paintingquotation.com is a 100% free UK painting cost calculator — no signup, no email, no postcode, instant estimate. Unlike lead-gen sites (MyJobQuote, Checkatrade, Bark), it never passes your details to tradespeople.

What the sources actually say

Most cost guides pick one number and present it as the answer. Here is every major UK source for the same job — the exterior walls of a 3-bed semi — so you can see the disagreement rather than inherit someone's rounding.

Source	3-bed semi, exterior walls	Per m²
HaMuch	£1,200-£1,500	—
Checkatrade (painter prices page)	£1,100-£1,500 (avg £1,300)	£15-£25
Checkatrade (exterior guide)	£1,800-£3,600 (avg £2,700, 5 days)	£20-£40
MyJobQuote	£2,600-£5,700 (avg £3,650)	£20-£40

Checkatrade publishes both of the first two Checkatrade rows, on different pages, roughly two times apart. Their exterior guide also carries a property table last updated in March 2025 inside a page badged 2026, and a line reading "expect to pay on average £1,300 per m²" — clearly meant to be per job. We mention this not to be smug but because it is the reason your own research felt contradictory. It was.

By property type, the widest-covering figures (Checkatrade exterior guide, then MyJobQuote):

Property	Checkatrade	MyJobQuote	Typical days
Terraced (2-3 bed)	£800-£1,600	£1,500-£3,100	2-3
Semi-detached (3 bed)	£1,800-£3,600	£2,600-£5,700	3-5
Detached (3-4 bed)	£2,400-£4,800	£3,400-£7,700	5-7
Bungalow / small home	—	—	2-3

HaMuch puts a small home or bungalow at £600-£800 and a large house at £2,000+. MyBuilder's often-quoted "£1,000-£3,000" covers interiors and exteriors together, so it is not comparable here.

Scaffolding: the line item that doubles the bill

Scaffolding is usually the single largest hidden cost in an exterior painting job, and it is the thing UK cost guides handle worst. Checkatrade's exterior painting page lists "scaffolding hire (per project) — £330". Checkatrade's own scaffolding page prices a two-storey semi at £875 per month. Those are the same company, 2.6 times apart.

Source	2-storey semi	Notes
Checkatrade	£650-£1,100/week (avg £875)	Hired in 4-week periods; +~10% per extra week
MyJobQuote	£750-£1,150/week	Minimum hire 6-8 weeks
MyBuilder	£800-£1,500/week	Full 4-sided wrap £1,500-£2,600
Scaffold tower only	~£250/week	Often the sensible middle ground
Trestles	~£50/week	Ground-floor and bungalow work

The cleanest proof of what access does to a price comes from MyJobQuote, which happens to quote the same job both ways:

Fascias & soffits	Without scaffolding	With scaffolding
Terraced	£500-£750	£1,200-£1,500
Semi-detached	£600-£850	£1,300-£1,600
Detached	£750-£950	£1,500-£1,900

Scaffolding adds roughly £700-£750 and close to doubles the job. Two practical consequences. First, the minimum hire period matters more than the weekly rate — a five-day paint job on a six-week minimum hire means you pay for six weeks. Second, if you are having any other work done at height (roof, gutters, chimney, render repair), do it in the same scaffold period. That single decision saves more than any paint choice will.

Worth knowing: Checkatrade's guidance is that working at height for more than 30 minutes at a time needs a tower or scaffold, scaffolding requires a permit before installation, and it must be inspected before first use and every seven days after. HaMuch's claim that scaffolding "shouldn't add a lot of money" is contradicted by every other source we found — do not budget on that basis.

Pebbledash, render and brick: what the surface does to the price

MyJobQuote publishes the best substrate evidence available, in days rather than pounds. Converting it at a UK day rate is something no competing guide bothers to do:

Property	Smooth	Textured / pebbledash	Extra labour
Terraced	2-3 days	4-5 days	+60-100%
Semi-detached	3-4 days	6-7 days	+75-100%
Detached	4-5 days	7-8 days	+60-75%

At a UK painter day rate of around £173 (HaMuch, range £127-£271), those extra three days on a semi are roughly £520 of additional labour, before the extra paint pebbledash soaks up. Checkatrade agrees qualitatively — "pebbledash takes twice as long to paint as ordinary surfaces, and uses more paint" — but their dedicated pebbledash page then prices a semi at £1,000-£1,800, less than their own smooth-render figure of £1,800-£3,600. Both cannot be right.

Other surfaces

K-rend, silicone and monocouche render — through-coloured systems designed never to be painted. Painting one starts a repaint cycle the system exists to eliminate. Normal maintenance is a wash, not a coat.
Bare or first-time-painted masonry — Checkatrade notes a wall painted for the first time needs a third coat. A stabilising or sealing coat on a chalky wall is priced at £260 materials-only, or about £1,000 with labour.
Brick needing repointing — MyJobQuote puts repointing a 30m² wall at £600-£1,500. That happens before any paint.
Harling and Scottish roughcast — a category of its own, with its own weather window; see our harling and render cost guide for Scotland.

Woodwork and the smaller jobs

Item	Typical UK cost	Source
Fascias & soffits (no scaffold)	£500-£950	MyJobQuote
Fascias & soffits (with scaffold)	£1,200-£1,900	MyJobQuote
Window frames, whole house	+£300-£600	HaMuch
uPVC window spraying, per window	£150-£200 (bay £300-£350)	MyJobQuote / Checkatrade
Front door	£200-£411	MyJobQuote / HaMuch
Garage door (uPVC spray)	£200-£350 (avg £300)	MyJobQuote / Checkatrade
Exterior woodwork generally	£10-£20/m² (avg £15)	Checkatrade

If a fence is on the list too, that has its own economics — see our garden fence painting cost guide.

Paint: how much you need, and the coverage trap

MyJobQuote puts a 3-bed semi at 30-50 litres of masonry paint for one to two coats. Getting from that to a bill is where people go wrong, because coverage claims differ by three times:

Dulux Trade Weathershield Smooth Masonry: around 15 m²/litre on smooth surfaces, up to 16 m²/L on low-porosity render — a 10L tin covering up to 150m² in one coat.
Sandtex Ultra Smooth: 12-16 m²/litre, recoatable in 3-4 hours.
Checkatrade, real-world: about 5 m² per litre for two coats — roughly a third of the manufacturer figure.

Both are honest. Manufacturer figures assume a smooth, sealed, low-porosity wall in good conditions. Absorbent render, bare masonry and pebbledash destroy coverage. If you are buying paint for a textured wall, budget on the trade figure, not the tin. Masonry paint runs £2-£4/litre for textured products and £3-£10/litre for smooth, depending on source and colour — and a tinted colour can cost several times brilliant white for the same 10L tin.

One thing worth reading before you pay for a premium product: Dulux Weathershield's lifetime guarantee returns the value of the replacement product — not the labour, and not the scaffolding. On a job where access alone is £875 a month, a product-only guarantee is worth much less than it sounds.

When can you actually paint outside in the UK?

Everyone quotes "10°C", but a single manufacturer's range has three different thresholds. Dulux Weathershield All Seasons Masonry works down to 5°C provided the surface is not damp; Dulux Trade Weathershield Smooth Masonry says do not use below 7°C, in rain or fog, or above 80% relative humidity; standard Weathershield masonry wants above 10°C with no bad weather forecast.

The detail that matters most is one Dulux Trade states and almost nobody repeats: the temperature of plaster, render and masonry can be several degrees lower than the air, especially early in the day. An 8°C reading on your phone can mean a 4-5°C wall — below every threshold above. In practice the UK exterior season runs mid-April to mid-September, strongest in May, June and September, with November to February rarely viable. That compresses all exterior work into about five months, so book early rather than expecting a seasonal discount; we found no reliable source showing a genuine off-season price cut.

How long it lasts — and why the answers vary so much

Claim	Source	Read it knowing…
Repaint every 5-10 years	Checkatrade, exterior guide	The mainstream trade figure
Pebbledash paintwork 10-15 years	Checkatrade, pebbledash guide	Same brand, twice the interval
Up to 15 years	Dulux Weathershield, Sandtex	Manufacturer claim, prep-conditional
Every 2-3 years	A permanent-wall-coating vendor	Sells the alternative to paint

The honest answer: the interval is set by preparation quality and exposure, not by the tin. A coastal or north-facing elevation will go first. And every manufacturer guarantee is conditional on the surface having been prepared correctly — which is exactly why the prep line in your quote matters more than the brand name.

A genuinely free alternative to the quote-funnel sites

Every source quoted above is a lead-generation business: Checkatrade, MyJobQuote, MyBuilder and HaMuch all make money when you press "post your job". Their numbers are useful, which is why we cite them by name — but the page you land on exists to collect your details. paintingquotation.com does not. The free calculator gives you a number instantly, with no form, no email and no postcode, and never passes your details to anyone.

Work out your own exterior before you ring anyone.

The free calculator takes about two minutes and needs no sign-up. Then check what you are quoted against it — our quote sanity-check guide shows how to turn any price back into painter-days.