Per square metre or per hour: how does a plasterer set a price that covers winter and waiting?

A plasterer works out a sound price per square metre by first setting the cost price per hour and dividing it by the number of square metres you achieve per job hour. A job hour is every hour you spend on the job, so also masking, priming, fitting corner beads and cleaning up. In the worked example in this article the cost price is €56.92 per hour excluding VAT and materials. All amounts and work rates are an example: fill in your own figures.

About the amounts: the worked example assumes a self-employed plasterer without staff in 2026, mainly doing indoor work for private clients and contractors. Profit, costs, hours and square metres per hour are assumptions, not market figures.

In this article

1. How does a plasterer work out a cost price per hour?
2. How many productive hours does a plasterer have per year?
3. How do you convert an hourly price into a price per square metre?
4. How do you know how many square metres you really achieve per hour?
5. When does winter count in your price?
6. How do you include extra work and provisional sums in your quote?
7. How do you test a price per square metre that a contractor offers you?

How does a plasterer work out a cost price per hour?

You add the profit you need to your fixed business costs, and divide that by your productive hours. Productive hours are the hours you actually spend on a job and can pass on in your price. The result is your cost price per hour, excluding VAT and excluding materials.

The profit has to pay for more than your private spending. Income tax, your pension and disability insurance also come out of the profit. The KVK calls pension and disability insurance private expenses, which you therefore pay from your profit (KVK, 2026). In the example the profit needed is €58,000 a year, before tax.

For a self-employed plasterer the pension is not a free choice. If you work as a self-employed person in the finishing trades, you are a compulsory member of bpfBOUW and you register yourself. You pay both the employer's and the employee's share of the contribution. The basis is your business profit, in the first three years the estimated profit for that year. You build up no pension over the first €19,172, and none above €82,494.75 either (bpfBOUW, pension rules 2026). This obligation as a self-employed person does not apply to the director and major shareholder of their own private limited company.

The contribution is set out in the rules. In the finishing trades the total contribution in 2026 is 25.93% of your pensionable income minus the offset. Of that, 0.20% is for disability pension, and you do not pay that part as a self-employed person (bpfBOUW, pension rules 2026). For a self-employed person that comes to 25.73%. In the example that is 25.73% of €58,000 minus €19,172, so €9,990 a year. Ask bpfBOUW for the amount that applies to you.

How many productive hours does a plasterer have per year?

Far fewer than the hours you work. The KVK assumes 230 working days of 8 hours, so 1,840 hours a year, after 30 days of holidays and public holidays. According to the KVK, as a starter it is good if you can charge 50 to 60% of that, because you also spend time finding clients and on administration (KVK, 2026).

With plastering, waiting comes on top. The substrate is not ready, the electrician or the carpenter is running late, or a coat has to dry before you can carry on. There is no official source with drying times or waiting hours for plasterers. That is why this part is an assumption in the example: 150 hours a year that you cannot fill with other work.

In the example, 230 hours of the 1,840 go on quotes, measuring up, purchasing and administration, 150 hours on waiting and drying time, 120 hours on travel time you do not charge for and 40 hours on sickness. That leaves 1,300 productive hours. That is just over 70%, more than the KVK assumes for a starter. So the example assumes a plasterer with regular clients.

The number of hours has a big effect. If as a starter you achieve 60% of 1,840 hours, so 1,104 hours, the cost price in the example rises from €56.92 to €67.03 per hour. The same costs and the same profit, just fewer hours to spread them over.

How do you convert an hourly price into a price per square metre?

Divide your cost price per hour by the number of square metres you achieve per job hour, and add the materials per square metre. Do not use the square metres you achieve while you are only plastering. A price per square metre that only covers the plastering hours leaves the rest of the job unpaid.

A worked example with a living room of 90 m² of walls and ceiling. Suppose you plaster 6 m² per hour. That is 15 hours. On top of that come 4 hours of masking and priming, 3 hours of fitting corners and beads and 2 hours of cleaning up. So the job takes 24 hours, which is 3.75 m² per job hour. Both work rates are assumptions.

Per plastering hour the labour is €9.49 per square metre, per job hour €15.18 per square metre. With €180 of materials, the living room priced per job hour comes to €1,546.08 excluding VAT, or €17.18 per square metre. Pricing per plastering hour gives €1,033.80. That is €512.28 less for the same room.

If the home is more than 2 years old, you charge a private client 9% VAT. That also applies to the preparation, the pre-treatment and the materials used. Installing plasterboard partition walls, tiling walls and laying floors fall under 21% (Belastingdienst, plastering). The living room in the example then costs the client €1,685.23 including VAT.

How do you know how many square metres you really achieve per hour?

By measuring it after every job, not by estimating it. For each job, write down the square metres, the type of work and all the hours on the job. After ten or twenty jobs you know what you achieve per job hour on a ceiling, on a wall with many window frames or on an old substrate.

Estimates are almost always too favourable. Psychological research showed that people are too optimistic about how quickly they finish their own tasks. They mainly think about how the work will go according to plan, and less about what happened the previous times. Participants who deliberately linked their prediction to earlier experiences no longer estimated too favourably (Buehler et al., 1994). That research was about study tasks and everyday chores, not plastering. The lesson is still useful: look at your previous jobs before you fill in a work rate.

Other contractors calculate in the same way. A survey of British contractors, from very small to large, found that they build up their prices item by item with fixed figures for labour and materials. As the main causes of an inaccurate estimate, they named a lack of practical knowledge among those estimating, too little time for the estimate and poor tender documents (Akintoye & Fitzgerald, 2000). For a plasterer this means: your figure for square metres per job hour is only as good as the jobs it is based on.

When does winter count in your price?

Frost only counts for outdoor work, such as façade rendering and external wall insulation. Indoor work can go on all year round. If you mainly work indoors, your price does not need a frost buffer. If you also do façades, you calculate that part with fewer productive hours in winter.

The government only looks at frost, black ice and snow in the period from 1 November to 31 March. That is set out in the Unworkable Weather Regulation, which determines when an employer does not have to keep paying wages in bad weather (Unworkable Weather Regulation). As a self-employed person you do not fall under it, but the period gives a useful picture of when outdoor work may come to a halt.

A worked example. Suppose you lose 10 days of outdoor work in winter and do not fill them with indoor work. That is 80 hours fewer, so 1,220 productive hours. In the example the cost price then rises from €56.92 to €60.66 per hour. If you already plan indoor work in November, you keep those hours.

If you have staff, waiting costs you paid hours. Under the finishing trades collective agreement an employee receives 100% of the hourly wage in unworkable weather. In frost the minister's regulation applies and you top up the unemployment benefit to 100% of wages (finishing trades agreement, articles 54 and 55, Stcrt. 2026, 11596). You also simply keep paying for hours in which your people are waiting for a coat to dry or for another contractor.

How do you include extra work and provisional sums in your quote?

Put what you cannot yet see in the quote as a provisional sum, and report extra work before you do it. A provisional sum is an amount or a number of hours for work whose scope is not yet fixed. You settle that item afterwards based on what the work actually cost. With plastering this is often loose old plaster, cracks in the substrate or extra corners and window reveals.

You only get paid for extra work if you warned the client in good time. If the client wants to add or change something, you may only ask a higher price if you said in good time that the price will rise as a result. That is not needed if the client should have understood this themselves (Dutch Civil Code, article 7:755). So record it in a message, with the extra amount or the number of hours.

A provisional sum lowers your risk without raising your price. Research at two large British construction firms followed 670 hours of tendering work. Some bids included a risk allowance of 1 to 2%, but it could be taken out again to bid more competitively. Risk was mainly handled through the contract, not through the price (Laryea & Hughes, 2011). That research was about large firms. For a small plastering business the same idea works: an open item for the substrate is fairer than a mark-up the client cannot see.

Prefer to charge small jobs and repairs per hour. With a few square metres of repair around a new pipe or an old wall with unknown layers, you do not know in advance how much time it will take. A price per hour, with an estimate of the number of hours, fits better there than a fixed price per square metre.

How do you test a price per square metre that a contractor offers you?

Convert the price per square metre back into an hourly price and an annual turnover. Multiply the price per square metre by the number of square metres you achieve per job hour. That is what you earn per hour. Multiply that by your productive hours, and you can see whether the year adds up.

A worked example with an offer of €12 per square metre for labour. At 3.75 m² per job hour that is €45 per hour. Over 1,300 hours that brings in €58,500. The example needs €74,000, so you fall €15,500 short. If you achieve 6 m² per job hour on large, open walls in new build, the same offer is €72 per hour. So the same price per square metre can be good or bad, depending on the work.

Watch the materials too. If you supply the materials yourself at a fixed price per square metre, you carry the risk if the purchase price rises. According to CBS, prices in the wood and building materials industry rose by 4.5% in the second quarter of 2026, after 3.7% in the first quarter (CBS, 20 August 2026). On a long job, agree how you will deal with material price rises, or let the contractor supply the materials.

Sources

• KVK, Hoe bereken je je uurtarief? (How do you calculate your hourly rate?), updated 30 April 2026. kvk.nl
• bpfBOUW, Pensioenreglement bpfBOUW 2026 (pension rules), in force from 1 January 2026. bpfbouw.nl
• Belastingdienst, Stukadoren (plastering), accessed 28 October 2026. belastingdienst.nl
• Buehler, R., Griffin, D. & Ross, M. (1994). Exploring the "planning fallacy": why people underestimate their task completion times. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 67(3), 366-381. doi.org
• Akintoye, A. & Fitzgerald, E. (2000). A survey of current cost estimating practices in the UK. Construction Management and Economics, 18(2), 161-172. doi.org
• Regeling onwerkbaar weer (Unworkable Weather Regulation), in force from 1 January 2020. wetten.overheid.nl
• Extension of the finishing trades collective agreement 2026/2027, decision of 14 April 2026, Staatscourant 2026, 11596. officielebekendmakingen.nl
• Dutch Civil Code Book 7, article 755, in force from 8 October 2026. wetten.overheid.nl
• Laryea, S. & Hughes, W. (2011). Risk and price in the bidding process of contractors. Journal of Construction Engineering and Management, 137(4), 248-258. doi.org
• CBS, Bouw zet meer om in tweede kwartaal (Construction turnover up in second quarter), 20 August 2026. cbs.nl