What does a painter cost? Hourly rate and price per job

As a national market guide, you pay from €30 per hour for interior work and from €40 per hour for exterior work. An hourly rate only tells you something once you know how many hours the job takes, so the prices per square metre and per item are below as well. They are lower limits for a simple job, not a quote for your home.

A from-price assumes sound woodwork that only needs sanding and a top coat. In Friesland it is often not like that. Wind and damp come in from the south-west, and you can see it on the sills of a 1930s house or the barge boards of a farmhouse.

One of our customers had a house that had gone ten years without maintenance, and a lot of wood rot turned up under the paint. Then the job is no longer just about a coat of gloss. That is why we probe the wood with a screwdriver at the site visit. Whatever we find goes straight into the quote.

The better we can look in advance, the more focused the site visit is. This helps us most:

• photos of every facade, including the back and the side you never see yourself;
• close-ups of places where paint is coming off or the wood feels soft;
• measurements, or a building drawing if you have one;
• the year the house was built and when it was last painted;
• indoors: whether the rooms are empty or furnished.

You can send this by WhatsApp to 06 3006 0558, or include it with your request for a quote. Don't have everything? No problem, we will see the rest on site.

• Condition of the surface. Flaking paint and open wood joints need more sanding, priming and filling.
• Access. A window frame at ground level is a different job from a gable end above an extension.
• Small parts. Glazing bars, glazing beads and ornamental ironwork take more time than a flat door.
• Gloss. High gloss shows imperfections sooner, so the preparation has to be tighter.
• Old paint. If there is doubt about lead in old paint, we do not sand dry, and that needs a different approach.
• Empty or furnished. Moving and covering furniture is part of the job, as is masking neatly.

If a painter hires scaffolding or a lift elsewhere, the market guide is from €50 per day. As a worked example, ten days comes to from €500, and in a rainy week the meter simply keeps running.

We have our own scaffolding and charge a fixed price for putting it up and taking it down. So no daily hire, and no surprises when the weather turns against us. If scaffolding is not practical, we use a cherry picker, as at the harbour crane in Stavoren. When you look at another painter's quote, this is the first line to ask about.

Exterior work depends on the weather. According to the technical data sheet for Sigma S2U Satin, it needs to be between 5 and 30 degrees Celsius, with humidity up to 85 percent, and dry. On our page about painting weather in Friesland you can see how many suitable days there were each month in Stavoren and Leeuwarden, based on KNMI figures for 2016 to 2025.

You can plan around that, because a job that starts in a wet spell takes longer. Interior work does not depend on the season. If you want both done, you can schedule the interior work for the cold months and the exterior work for the dry ones.

The lowest price is only the lowest if the same things are included. When comparing quotes, look at these points:

• how many coats are applied, and with which product;
• whether wood rot repair is included or priced separately;
• whether scaffolding or a lift is included;
• which Dutch VAT rate is shown per item;
• which guarantee period is stated.

If there is only a total with no description, ask for more detail. It saves you a discussion later about what was or was not included.

You tell us your plans, and photos and measurements help with that. Then comes the site visit: we look at the surface, discuss colours and agree the work. You then receive a fixed quote covering the agreed work, and once it is finished we go through the result together.

We are members of OnderhoudNL and a recognised training company, and we work with Sikkens, Sigma and Wijzonol, among others. On Google we are rated 4.8 from 25 reviews. Customers often mention the clear communication and the neat masking. The guarantee period is always stated in the quote and terms.

From Mirns we work across Friesland, mainly in De Fryske Marren and Súdwest-Fryslân. Send us a few photos and your plans, and we will arrange the site visit, after which you get a fixed price instead of an indication. Mohamed is also happy to talk the work through by phone first.

All amounts on this page are a national market guide and not prices from MJA Allround Bouw. Source: Werkspot, Trustoo, Homedeal and Slimster, as of October 2026.