Two decorators stand in front of the same three-bed semi. One quotes five days, the other quotes eleven. Same paint, same walls, same elevations. The gap has almost nothing to do with painting — it’s what each of them decided needed doing before the first tin was opened.

Rolling masonry paint onto sound, clean render is quick, predictable work, and it’s the only part the customer pictures when they ask for a price. Getting that render sound and clean is where the days actually go. Guess the prep and you’ll spend the back half of the job working for nothing.

Survey each elevation separately

Walk all four sides with a notepad and a screwdriver, and treat each elevation as its own small job. A south-facing front wall that’s been baked for ten years and a north gable with algae on it need different work, and if you price the house as one average you’ll be wrong on both.

For every elevation, write down:

The substrate. Smooth render, pebbledash, tyrolean, painted brick, bare brick, timber cladding, UPVC. Texture drives your paint quantities more than area does — a pebbledash wall swallows far more than the coverage figure on the tin, which assumes a smooth surface.
How the existing coating is holding up. Press and scrape in a few places. Sound and firm is a wash and two coats. Flaking in patches means scraping, feathering and spot-priming. Chalky, powdery masonry that comes off on your hand needs a stabilising solution before anything else, and that’s a whole extra operation.
Cracking. Hairline crazing you can fill and coat, or structural cracking you should not be papering over with masonry paint. Tap suspicious render with your knuckles — hollow means blown, and blown render is a repair, not a repaint.
Timber, honestly. Put the screwdriver into fascia ends, bargeboard tips, window sills and the bottom rails of doors. That’s where rot starts. Note what’s bare, what’s sound and what you suspect.
Metalwork and rainwater goods. Cast iron gutters, painted downpipes, railings, a metal garage door. Rust treatment is separate prep with its own products.
Access for each wall. More on this below, but note it per elevation while you’re stood there.
Obstructions. A conservatory roof under the rear elevation, a tight side alley, a neighbour’s drive you’d need permission for, dense planting against the wall.

Measure elevation by elevation — length times height to the eaves for masonry, linear metres for fascias, soffits and bargeboards, then count windows and doors by type. Don’t bother deducting small openings: cutting in neatly round a window takes longer than rolling the wall you’d be deducting.

Photograph every elevation and every defect close up. When the customer later says the sill was “fine before you started”, the photo settles it.

Price prep as its own stage, in the open

This is the single biggest swing on an exterior quote, and burying it inside a square-metre painting rate is why decorators under-price these jobs. Break it out as separate lines so the customer can see what they’re paying for — and so you can see what you’ve allowed.

A realistic prep schedule for a repaint:

Substrate	Prep that’s often needed	Coats after
Sound painted render	Pressure wash, fungicidal wash to shaded walls, fill hairline cracks	2 full coats
Flaking painted render	Wash, scrape back to firm edges, feather, spot-prime bare patches	2 coats, sometimes 3 over patching
Chalky or bare masonry	Wash, brush down, stabilising solution or thinned mist coat	2 full coats
Pebbledash / tyrolean	Wash, treat algae, point up missing dash	2 coats, well over the tin’s stated usage
Previously painted timber	Wash, scrape, sand, fill, caulk gaps, spot-prime bare areas	Undercoat + 2 topcoats
Bare or stripped timber	Sand, knot, prime fully, fill, re-sand, caulk, mastic to frames	Primer, undercoat, 2 topcoats
Rusted metal	Degrease, wire-brush or abrade back, rust-inhibiting primer	2 coats
UPVC	Degrease, abrade, adhesion primer	2 coats

Two things worth putting in writing while you’re at it. First, say how many coats you’ve priced — “two full coats” is a line a cheaper competitor’s “one coat over” quote cannot match on paper. Second, if the colour is a significant change, particularly a light colour over a dark one, say that coverage may need a third coat and price it as an option rather than absorbing it.

One warning on prep: on pre-1960s woodwork, assume old paint layers may contain lead, and sanding or burning them off needs the right precautions. The same goes for asbestos cement soffits, downpipes and garage roofs, which should not be abraded at all. Check the current HSE guidance before planning the prep, and allow for the safe method in the price.

Access is a line item, not a detail

Scaffold costs real money and it’s usually the first thing a rushed quote forgets. Work out, per elevation, what you actually need — ladders and a hop-up, a tower you’ll shift along the wall, a scaffold, or a hired platform for a gable you can’t reach safely.

Put it on the quote as its own line with the elevations named, for two reasons:

If the customer decides to drop the rear elevation to save money, you can take the scaffold off with it instead of eating the hire.
If they want to add a second job while the scaffold’s up — redoing the soffits, a chimney repoint by someone else — the price for doing it now versus later is obvious to both of you.

Note the hire period too. Scaffold priced for two weeks and used for five because the weather turned is a cost somebody carries, so say who.

Build the weather window into the programme

Exterior work is weather-dependent in a way interior work isn’t, and a quote that ignores that creates an argument in week two.

Check the data sheet for the product you’re using. Most masonry and exterior paints state a minimum air and surface temperature, and need a dry substrate — walls washed one afternoon are often not dry enough to coat the next morning.
Shoulder-season work is slower, not just riskier. Short days, dew in the morning and damp returning by late afternoon can cut a usable painting day down sharply from October onwards.
Don’t chase the sun round the house in high summer either — coating a wall in full direct heat dries the film too fast to lay off properly.
Say on the quote that the programme is weather-dependent, give a realistic span rather than fixed dates, and state that the price holds for a defined validity period. A repaint quoted in October for a spring start needs re-pricing anyway, because paint and scaffold prices will have moved.

Put the repairs you can’t price yet as provisional sums

You can see a soft fascia end from the ground. You can’t see how far it runs until the paint’s off and the gutter’s down. Swallowing that risk is how a profitable repaint turns into a week of carpentry you didn’t charge for.

Handle it the way you would any job you can’t fully see at survey: name a provisional allowance, and state that anything beyond it is priced and agreed first. A short block on the quote does it:

Provisional sums — charged only if required, and agreed in writing
before the work is carried out:

  Replacement of defective timber (fascia, sill or bargeboard
  sections) — allowance only; actual extent to be confirmed once
  prep is complete.

  Patch re-rendering to blown or hollow areas — allowance only.

Excluded: structural crack repair, repointing, damp investigation,
gutter replacement, and any works to asbestos-containing materials.

That beats a vague “subject to condition” line: it gives the customer a number to budget against and gives you permission to stop and talk instead of pressing on. Every extra beyond it follows the same route — priced and agreed before you do it, never added at the end.

Present it by stage and elevation

Lay the quote out so the prep is visible, the access is separate, and the painting is the smallest-looking part of the page — because on a repaint, that’s the truth.

Illustrative shape only — your rates, hire costs and local prices will differ:

Exterior repaint — 3-bed semi, all elevations

Access
  Scaffold: rear elevation and gable (erect, hire, dismantle)   £  850
  Tower and ladders: front and side elevations                  £  120

Preparation
  Pressure wash all masonry; fungicidal wash to north gable     £  380
  Scrape, feather and spot-prime flaking render                 £  520
  Rake out and fill hairline cracking, make good                £  240
  Prepare fascias, soffits and bargeboards (48 lm)              £  460
  Prepare, knot and prime bare timber — 6 windows, 2 doors       £  540
  Mask, sheet and protect throughout                            £  180

Painting
  Masonry: stabilising coat where required, then 2 full coats    £1,150
  Fascias, soffits, bargeboards: undercoat + 2 topcoats          £  620
  Windows and doors: undercoat + 2 topcoats                      £  780
  Rainwater goods: degrease and 2 coats                          £  210

Provisional sums (only if required, agreed first)
  Replacement of defective timber — allowance                    £  300
  Patch re-rendering to blown areas — allowance                  £  400
                                                               -------
                                                                £6,750
                                                     (+ VAT if registered)

Split by elevation as well where it helps. A customer who can’t afford all four sides this year can do the front and the weather side now and the rest next spring — and you keep the job instead of losing it to a cheaper whole-house price. Clear stages, clear inclusions, one total: the same structure behind every quote that wins work.

The takeaway

Survey elevation by elevation with a screwdriver in your hand, and price what the substrate needs rather than what the area measures. Put prep on the page as its own stage with the number of coats stated. Make access a separate line so it can come off if the scope does. Build the weather into the programme and the validity period. And turn the things you can’t see — rot, blown render — into named allowances rather than risk you’ve quietly absorbed.

Do that and the job decorators most often under-price becomes one of the most predictable on the books — because the expensive half is finally written down.

Queezy lets you build a repaint quote elevation by elevation on site, with trade-specific prep and painting tasks for painters and decorators, then send it as a branded PDF before you’ve packed the van. Download it free on iPhone.

How to Quote an Exterior Repaint