Websites for Painters and Decorators That
Win More Work.

How people choose a painter and decorator

Most decorating jobs start with a trigger. A house sale, a new baby, a tenant moving out, or the hallway that's been scuffed for three years and finally can't be ignored. People search for the job ("wallpaper hanger near me", "exterior house painters", "kitchen cabinet painting") or simply "painter and decorator" plus their town.

What happens next is quick. They open a few websites and look for three things: work that looks as good as they want theirs to, signs that you'll respect their home, and some idea of the cost. Price matters, but it's rarely the first filter. Most people would rather pay a bit more than look at a wobbly line on the ceiling every day for the next ten years.

There's a second kind of customer, too: landlords, letting agents and property managers. They want reliability over flair. Turn up when you said, finish between tenancies, send photos and an invoice. A decorator who shows that on their website gets the repeat work.

Decorator website design that shows the finish

Decorating is sold on photos, so good decorator website design starts with the camera. Shoot in daylight with the ceiling lights off. Get one wide shot of the finished room, then close-ups of what customers notice: the cut-in line where wall meets ceiling, the gloss on a stair spindle, the pattern match on a wallpaper join. Before and after shots from the same spot do the rest.

Colour and finish galleries

People rarely picture "a painted room". They picture a colour. So I tag each project by room, colour and finish: a dark green hallway in eggshell, a sage kitchen with sprayed units, a white Victorian staircase with glossed spindles. Using the paint maker's colour names, where you know them, helps people imagine it in their own house.

A word of honesty here. Plenty of people search colour names for inspiration, and most of them aren't looking for a decorator. The gallery's real job is to convince the person who has already found you, not to pull in browsers from the other end of the country. That's still worth a lot.

Specialist work earns its own page

The jobs that pay best are often the ones people search for by name. If you do any of these well, each deserves its own page on your painting and decorating website:

• Kitchen cabinet painting and spraying. A popular way to change a kitchen without replacing it. Show the prep, the finish and before and after shots of real kitchens.
• Wallpaper hanging. Feature walls, murals, lining paper and expensive papers people don't want to risk themselves. Close-ups of matched joins sell it.
• uPVC and exterior spraying. Windows, doors and garage doors resprayed instead of replaced. Explain how you prepare the surface and what the customer can expect from the finish.
• Exterior painting. Render, masonry, fascias, sash windows and front doors, with a line on why you watch the forecast.
• Commercial and rental work. Out-of-hours working, larger areas and quick turnarounds between tenancies.

That's how I build websites for painters and decorators: each page talks only about that job, shows only those photos and asks for the details you need to price it. That's how one page matches what someone typed and convinces them in the same visit.

Dulux Select, the PDA and the proof that counts

Two schemes come up again and again with homeowners. The Dulux Select Decorators scheme has run since 1996. Members go through reference checks and an on-site assessment, follow a code of conduct and offer a two-year workmanship guarantee. The Painting & Decorating Association vets its members for quality of workmanship, expects them to follow a code of practice and offers a mediation service if a customer and a member fall out.

If you hold either, it goes near the top of the site, with a link so people can check. So do your public liability insurance and any guarantee you give yourself. If you don't hold one, that's fine: clear photos, honest prices and good reviews do much of the same job. I won't put a logo on your site that you haven't earned.

Prices, day rates and the cheaper quote

Every decorator knows the call: "someone else said half that". Your website can head it off. Explain what's in your price: filling and sanding, caulking, a mist coat on new plaster, primer on bare wood, two full coats, the trade paint you use and the tidy-up each evening. Once people see the work behind a quote, the cheaper one starts to look like what it is.

Publishing prices helps too, as long as they make sense to a customer. A day rate on its own doesn't, because nobody knows how many days their job takes. A starting price for common jobs does: a single bedroom, a hallway, stairs and landing, a set of kitchen units.

A worked example, with made-up numbers. Say you're a decorator in Chesterfield and a hallway, stairs and landing leaves you £500 after paint and materials. My Job Winning Website is £497 one-off, plus £20 a month for hosting and your web address. Two extra hallways in a year and it has paid for itself with change. Try your own numbers in the calculator above, and see what a tradesman website costs in the UK for the full comparison.

Quiet winters, busy summers

Decorating has a rhythm. Exterior work piles up from spring to early autumn, then the phone goes quiet just as the days get short. A website can lean into that. Over winter, the homepage pushes interiors, wallpaper and commercial work. From February, exteriors and spraying move to the front, so you're booking summer work before the good weather arrives.

Reviews keep the whole thing working. Ask every customer while the paint is still drying, and make it easy for them. My guide on how to get more Google reviews has the wording I'd use. And if you plaster as well as decorate, have a look at websites for plasterers, because the two trades often share customers.

Once the site is live, SEO for painters and decorators is how you get it in front of more people in the towns you want, month to month, and only if you want it. If you'd like to see your own site before deciding anything, ask for a free website mockup.