Last updated 21 October 2026
Google Ads for painters and decorators.
Short version: decorating clicks are cheap next to the emergency trades. "painter and decorator near me" averaged £3.47 a click in UK keyword data pulled August 2026, against £22.57 for "emergency plumber", 6.5 times as much. But a one-room job is a small job, so a cheap click can still cost more than it will carry. Point the ads at exterior, whole-house, kitchen spraying and commercial work, and keep the paint shoppers out.
Three things are different for a decorator. There is no Local Services Ads category for you in the UK, so Search is the route. Most of the searches Google suggests for your trade are people buying paint or wallpaper. And UK demand peaks in early autumn, not in the spring that American guides plan around.
Cheap clicks, small jobs
Do the sum before you pick the first search.
At £3.47 a click and 7.33%, a US benchmark for home-services search ads and the only published one, a lead works out at about £47. MyJobQuote's terms let up to three trades take each lead, and its help centre says to expect to win one job in 3. At that rate, the advertising behind each job you win comes to about £142. Here is that figure against Checkatrade's June 2026 prices for decorating work:
| Job | Typical price | £142 as a share of the job |
|---|---|---|
| Painting a small room (8 sq m) | £350 | 41% |
| Wallpapering a room, labour only | £350 to £500 | 28% to 41% |
| Exterior of a 3-bed semi | £1,100 to £1,500 | 9% to 13% |
| Painting a 5-bed house | £5,500 to £7,500 | 2% to 3% |
Everything here about MyJobQuote's contract comes from its own published terms and conditions, last read on 23 September 2026. Terms get revised, so check yours against the current version before you act on anything.
A rough rule of thumb puts a healthy advertising cost per won job at 10 to 15 percent of the job, so £142 needs a job worth roughly £947 to £1,420 or more. A single room does not get there; an exterior or a whole house does. That decides which searches you pay for and what the ad says: talk about outsides, whole floors and kitchens, and let the one-room jobs come through referrals.
The other lever is what each quote costs you. A quote form on your website that asks for a photo of each room and the rough sizes lets you price small jobs from the van instead of driving out, and get a price back to the customer the same day. See how to write a quote and how fast to reply to a lead. Picking a monthly spend for a decorating firm is covered in how much to spend on Google Ads.
What a click costs
Commercial costs the most. Your postcode costs even more.
Google's Keyword Planner, UK, pulled October 2026. These are the top-of-page bid ranges, low to high: the planner's estimate of what it takes to show above the free results, which is a different measure from the average click price above.
| Search | Job | Searches a month | Top-of-page bid |
|---|---|---|---|
| commercial painters and decorators | Commercial | 90 | £2.08 to £14.15 |
| commercial painting | Commercial | 260 | £2.05 to £13.14 |
| commercial interior decorators | Commercial | 590 | £2.33 to £6.25 |
| industrial painting | Commercial | 480 | £1.49 to £6.16 |
| kitchen cupboard spraying near me | Kitchen spraying | 110 | £1.20 to £5.48 |
| kitchen cabinet painters near me | Kitchen spraying | 170 | £0.99 to £4.11 |
| kitchen cabinet spraying | Kitchen spraying | 2,900 | £0.75 to £3.60 |
| painting companies near me | General | 3,600 | £1.45 to £4.44 |
| painters near me | General | 5,400 | £1.04 to £3.89 |
| painter decorator near me | General | 4,400 | £1.05 to £3.88 |
| painter and decorator near me | General | 18,100 | £0.86 to £3.04 |
| wallpaper installation near me | Wallpapering | 590 | £1.13 to £3.47 |
| wallpaper installer | Wallpapering | 720 | £1.00 to £3.45 |
| wallpaper hangers near me | Wallpapering | 260 | £0.81 to £2.49 |
| exterior painting companies near me | Exterior | 390 | £1.14 to £4.03 |
| exterior painters near me | Exterior | 1,300 | £0.83 to £2.93 |
| outside house painters | Exterior | 390 | £0.67 to £2.50 |
The top of the "commercial painting" range, £13.14, is 4.3 times the top of "painter and decorator near me", on a fraction of the searches. Commercial buyers search differently, and want different proof, so give them their own campaign, ads and budget rather than letting them share one with homeowners. Kitchen spraying is the same: "kitchen cabinet spraying" has 2,900 searches a month of its own, and if you do it, it deserves its own ad.
Where you work moves the price more than what you do. Same planner, same day:
| Search | Searches a month | Top-of-page bid |
|---|---|---|
| painter and decorator kensington | 140 | £3.82 to £29.67 |
| painter and decorator chelsea | 50 | £2.14 to £29.69 |
| liverpool decorators | 170 | £0.90 to £2.30 |
The top of the Kensington range is 12.9 times the top of the Liverpool one. A decorator in prime London faces auction prices a northern decorator never sees, so a budget copied from somebody else's area tells you nothing about yours.
Local Services Ads
There is no decorator box to tick yet.
Local Services Ads are the pay-per-lead listings with the Google Verified badge that Google shows prominently in the results. In the UK they are open only to a fixed list of categories, from appliance repair to window repair. Plumbers, electricians, roofers, carpenters, handymen and flooring firms are on it. Painting and decorating is not.
It is an easy thing to misread. Google's UK screening page opens by describing home services as providers "like locksmiths, cleaners, painters, landscapers", but locksmiths have no UK category either, and there is no painter entry in the list that follows. So for a decorator, Google Ads means Search: you pick the searches, write the ad and choose the website it lands on. How the badge and the per-lead charging work for the trades that do qualify is in Google Local Services Ads, and the trade-by-trade contrast is in Google Ads for plumbers and Google Ads for electricians, who can use both, and Google Ads for locksmiths, who, like you, cannot.
Stop paying for these
Most of your searches are people buying a tin.
Of the 4,180 search ideas Google's Keyword Planner gives for a decorator (October 2026), 1,176 contain the word "paint" and 1,291 contain "wallpaper". Nearly all of them are shoppers. The biggest dwarf the searches you want: "black wall paper" alone gets 33,100 a month against 18,100 for "painter and decorator near me".
| Search | Who is searching | Searches a month |
|---|---|---|
| black wall paper | Wallpaper shopping | 33,100 |
| wallpaper b&q | Retailer | 27,100 |
| masonry paint | Paint shopping | 22,200 |
| sandtex masonry paint | Paint brand | 12,100 |
| dulux weathershield | Paint brand | 5,400 |
| substance painter | 3D software | 2,400 |
| best paint for outside wood | DIY | 1,000 |
| brewers decorators centre near me | Merchant | 390 |
| checkatrade painter and decorator | Directory | 390 |
Google's negative keywords do not stretch to close variants, so a negative for "paint" stops "masonry paint" without touching "painter" or "painting". That makes "paint" one of the safest negatives a decorator has. "Wallpaper" is the opposite: as a negative it would also block "wallpaper installer" (720 a month) and "wallpaper installation near me" (590), who are customers. Exclude the shopping words that travel with it instead: colours, patterns, retailer names, "peel and stick". Because singulars and plurals are not covered, add both.
Two more are particular to your trade. "substance painter" is 3D texturing software, and bidding on the single word "painter" pays for those searches too, so bid on painter with decorator, house or near me beside it. And add the usual jobs, apprenticeship and course words. Negatives every trade needs are in why Google Ads are not working.
What the ad can claim
A scheme badge is an edge, or an offence. Not both.
Decorating has two schemes customers recognise. Dulux Select Decorators says its members "are assessed and approved by Dulux" and offer a 24-month workmanship guarantee; the Painting and Decorating Association says its members "are vetted for quality workmanship". Either is a reason to pick you over the next ad, which is exactly why the rules on claiming one are strict:
| Rule | What it bans | In your ads |
|---|---|---|
| DMCC Act 2024, Schedule 20, paragraph 3 | Displaying a trust mark, quality mark or equivalent without the necessary authorisation | Use a scheme logo only while you are a member |
| DMCC Act 2024, Schedule 20, paragraph 4 | Claiming approval by a public or private body when it is false, or when you are not keeping to its terms | No "approved" or "accredited" wording you cannot point to |
| Google's misrepresentation policy | Making it seem a brand or organisation supports you when it does not; misleading claims about affiliations or qualifications | Breaks Google's rules as well as the law |
Both paragraphs have been in force since 6 April 2025 and sit on the list of practices that are unfair in all circumstances. If you are a member, put the scheme and the guarantee in a headline, because a homeowner choosing between three ads has little else to go on. If you are not, sell what you can show: your own photos, your reviews, your insurance. The schemes themselves are covered in decorating leads. Read this as a plain outline of the rules, not legal advice on your own wording.
When to spend
Spend in autumn, not in spring.
UK searches for "painter and decorator near me" peaked at 22,200 a month in September and October and dropped to 6,600 in December, 3.4 times apart (Google Ads keyword data, pulled September 2026; the tool rounds volumes into bands). Guides written for American painters tell you to load the budget into spring and summer. UK demand runs the other way: the busiest months are early autumn and the quietest is the run-up to Christmas.
So spend most in early autumn, pull back hard for December and rebuild from January. Do it with the daily budget. Google paces each month towards 30.4 times the average daily budget whatever schedule you set, so switching hours off in a quiet month moves the spend into the hours left rather than saving it.
Setting up the account
Built for a planned job, not a panic call.
| Setting | How Google handles it | For a decorator |
|---|---|---|
| Location option | Out of the box, ads reach people in your area and people elsewhere showing an interest in it; Presence keeps them to people who are there | Presence. A homeowner two counties away will not book you for a hallway |
| Radius | Nothing under 1 km is allowed, and a very small area can leave the ads showing only now and then | The distance you would drive for a two-day job; wider for commercial work |
| Monthly budget | Each month paces towards 30.4 times the average daily budget, schedule or not | Raise the daily figure for autumn and cut it for December |
| Call button | The call asset can be limited to the hours someone answers the phone | Off while you are up a ladder; the website quote form catches the rest |
| Conversions | Calls over a minimum length you choose can count, and a forwarding number logs calls over 15 seconds | Count quote forms and calls long enough to describe a room |
Account setup from scratch is in how to set up Google Ads, and the picture across every trade in Google Ads for tradesmen.
The bigger picture
The homeowner who clicks should ring only you.
A decorating lead bought from a lead site can be passed to other decorators too, so you quote against them for a room you may not get. An ad you pay for, landing on your website with your number on it, puts the homeowner on the phone to you and nobody else. When we run Google Ads for a decorator, the account is opened in the decorator's name with their own card on it, they pay Google direct for the clicks, and the account with all its history is theirs to keep if they ever stop working with us.
Why a shared lead costs more than its price is set out in the shared lead trap.
Straight answers
What decorators ask about Google Ads.
- Are Google Ads worth it for a painter and decorator?
- They can be, but not because the clicks are cheap. "painter and decorator near me" averaged £3.47 a click in UK keyword data pulled August 2026. At a US benchmark conversion rate of 7.33% and MyJobQuote's figure of one quote won in 3, that is roughly £142 of advertising per job won, which is too much for a £350 room and within reach on a £1,100 to £1,500 exterior. Build the ads around exterior, whole-house, kitchen spraying and commercial work.
- How much does a decorator pay per click in the UK?
- In Google's Keyword Planner for the UK (October 2026), the top-of-page bid for "painter and decorator near me" ran £0.86 to £3.04 and "commercial painting" £2.05 to £13.14. Postcode matters as much as the job: "painter and decorator kensington" ran £3.82 to £29.67 and "liverpool decorators" £0.90 to £2.30. These are bid ranges, not your average cost, which depends on your own account.
- Can decorators use Google Local Services Ads in the UK?
- Not as a category of their own. Google's UK list of Local Services Ads categories runs from appliance repair to window repair and has no painting or decorating entry, even though its UK screening page mentions painters as an example of a home service. For a decorator in the UK, Google Ads means Search ads.
- What negative keywords should a decorator use?
- Start with paint and wallpaper shoppers: "black wall paper" is searched about 33,100 times a month in the UK and "masonry paint" 22,200. Add retailer and paint brand names, "substance painter" (it is 3D software), DIY phrases and directory names. A negative for the word "paint" does not block "painter" or "painting", but a negative for "wallpaper" would block people looking for a wallpaper installer.
- Can I put Dulux Select Decorator in my ad?
- Only if you are one. UK consumer law bans displaying a trust mark without authorisation and claiming an approval you do not have, and Google's ad policy bans making it look as if another brand or organisation backs you when it does not. The same goes for the Painting and Decorating Association. If you are a member, the scheme and its guarantee are worth a headline. That is the rule in outline, not legal advice on your own wording.
- When should a decorator spend most on Google Ads?
- UK searches for "painter and decorator near me" peaked at 22,200 a month in September and October and fell to 6,600 in December (Google Ads keyword data, pulled September 2026, in rounded bands). Put the most budget into early autumn, cut it for December and build back from January. Change the daily budget to do it: switching hours off does not lower what Google spends in a month.
Keep reading
More straight answers for trades.
Want the whole-house jobs ringing your phone this autumn?
See what it costs, then tell us about your business and we'll show you a website and ads, in your own account, that fill your diary with the exteriors, whole houses and kitchens worth quoting for, with every homeowner calling you alone. Got a question first? Just message us.