Painter and decorator website cost

A painter and decorator website costs £300-£1,200 for a one-off build or £49-£199 a month managed. The single thing that decides whether it brings you work costs nothing: before and after photographs of jobs you have actually done.

A decorator I know spent £180 on a template site and £0 on design thinking. He also photographed every job for two years. Sixty before-and-afters, each with the town named. He was booked solid and turning work away, while a competitor with a beautifully designed site and four stock images could not fill a diary.

Why photos beat everything else

A customer choosing a decorator is quietly asking two questions, and only one of them is about painting.

Is the finish any good? Photos answer that.

Will they be careful in my house and tidy up after? Photos answer that too, if you take them right. A shot of a room with dust sheets down and everything covered says more about you than a page of copy about attention to detail.

The before shot is the one people forget and it is the more important half. An after photo on its own is just a nice room. Paired with the before, it is proof of what you changed.

Domestic and commercial want different pages

Two different customers, and most decorator sites speak to only one.

Domestic. A homeowner, one or two rooms or a full house. Decided on finish quality, tidiness, reviews and whether you seem trustworthy in their home. Job values £400 to £4,000.

Commercial and landlord. Letting agents, property managers, offices, pubs, schools. Decided on speed, reliability, insurance, whether you can work out of hours, and whether you turn up when you say. Repeat contracts rather than one-off jobs, and far more valuable over a year.

Landlord and letting agent work in particular is underserved. Agents need decorators for void periods between tenancies, they need them repeatedly, and they need them fast. A page written directly to letting agents, covering turnaround times, insurance and that you can work to a deadline, catches work almost nobody is competing for.

What the site needs

Six pages does it:

1. Home, with your best three before-and-afters and a phone number that taps.
2. Interior decorating, what you do, the process, rough prices.
3. Exterior painting, which is seasonal and searched separately.
4. Commercial and landlord work, written for agents rather than homeowners.
5. Gallery, the full set, organised by job type with towns named.
6. Areas covered, naming real towns rather than a county.

Add wallpapering if you do it, because people search it by name and many decorators do not offer it any more, which makes it easier to rank for.

Getting found

Local search does the work here. “Painter and decorator” plus a town, and the variations: “exterior painting Chester”, “wallpaper hanging Harrogate”, “commercial decorators Norwich”.

The Google Business Profile matters and it is free. Photos, which for a decorator are the same photos you are already taking. Reviews after each job, which in this trade get read carefully because it is work done inside someone’s home. Service areas set to the towns you actually cover.

Then area pages on the site catch what the profile does not. Two or three proper ones, written with real detail about the area, beats ten thin templates.

One-off or monthly

Pay once if you are established with a full diary from word of mouth, and just need somewhere for referrals to check you out. £500 to a freelancer, add photos yourself, keep the profile current. Entirely reasonable.

Pay monthly if you want work you do not currently get, particularly commercial and landlord contracts, or if you know the photos will never make it onto the site otherwise. That last reason is the honest one for most tradespeople. It is not that you cannot, it is that you are on site at 7am and quoting at 8pm.

The maths: one full-house repaint at £2,600 covers years of a monthly plan. One letting agent who uses you four times a year is worth considerably more. Nobody can promise you those jobs, and a provider who guarantees leads is telling you something about themselves.

Trade detail is in online presence for painters and decorators, with comparable numbers for builders and roofers.

Our plans are £49, £99 and £199 a month, no contract, and you own the domain and everything on the site. Most decorating businesses fit £49 or £99. The pricing page has the scope, or tell us your area and whether you want commercial work and we will say which tier fits.