When you decide to decorate a room, the main decision to make is do you go for painted walls or wallpaper? With painting the main cost is the labour cost. With wallpapering the materials cost is significantly higher and it also takes longer to wallpaper a wall then it does to paint it. So you’re paying more for both materials and labour. The costs of wallpaper varies significantly depending on what type of paper you choose.

Wallpapering takes longer than painting, so if you’re getting a decorator in to do the work for you then wallpapering is going to be more expensive because it takes longer. Because of this some people will choose to maybe only wallpaper one room (perhaps the lounge?). Or they maybe decide to create a feature wall and only paper one wall in a room.

However, to wallpaper a whole room, homeowners pay on average £550. 

There are a few things to consider however when deciding how much it costs to wallpaper a room. Let’s take a look at these factors.  

On average the cost of the wallpaper itself is between £10 and £50 per roll. An average roll is around 5 square metres. So the cost per square metre is between £2 and £10. The average homeowner will spend around £25 a roll and that gives you an average wallpaper price of £5 per square metre.

Designer Wallpaper

Designer wallpaper can be a lot more expensive. You may spend £200 per roll which would give you around £40 per square metre.

Patterned Wallpaper

Most wallpapers will give you around 4 drops per roll. But the pattern on your wallpaper can vary in length. The longer the pattern is, the less drops you may be able to get from each roll. So pattern length also has an impact on how much it costs to wallpaper a room.

Wallpaper Paste

Wallpaper paste varies, but is generally pretty low cost. You can get packet wallpaper paste that needs to be made up and this might cost as low as 10p per square metre. Pre-made paste will be around 50p per square metre. There are also more expensive pastes which tend to need to be used with more expensive wallpapers.

It won’t surprise you to know that the most significant factor in determining how much it costs to wallpaper a room is the room size. That means both the length of each wall, but also the height. If you have an older house with high ceilings you will use significantly more wallpaper and paste.

The average room is around 30 metres square. The average height of a room is 2.3 metres. Therefore the average wall surface is around 70 square metres. Take off around 30 square metres for skirting, doors and windows and you have around 40 square metres to wallpaper. That’s about 9 rolls leaving room for error. If you’re spending the average of £25 per roll then you get a wallpaper cost of £225.

Labour Costs

Next to consider is the labour cost. A typical room will take a painter and decorator around 8 hours to wallpaper. However, if there is old wallpaper to remove and work to be done on preparing the surface (e.g. filling holes) you can increase this time considerably. 

We therefore estimate an average of 1.5 days work which is an average cost of £300.

However, there are also wallpaper specialists who charge more. If you are using a designer wallpaper that costs a lot of money you may choose to spend more on using a specialist wallpaper hanger. In these circumstances, you can easily double your labour costs.