Painters and Decorators Insurance: The UK Guide

Reviewed by Matthew Bartlett, Director, Apex Insurance Brokers Limited · Last reviewed 2026-08-06

What insurance does a painter and decorator actually need?

Painting and decorating sits in an odd spot among the trades. You are rarely doing structural work, yet you spend almost all your time inside other people’s property, surrounded by their carpets, their furniture, their parked cars — and you are often the last trade in, when everything around you is newly finished and expensive to put right. That is exactly the shape of risk that liability insurance exists for.

In practice, a decorator’s insurance usually comes down to three building blocks. Public liability covers injury to other people and damage to their property arising from your work. Employers’ liability covers your legal responsibility for injury to the people who work for you — and this one is not optional if you have staff. Tools cover replaces the kit that keeps you earning: brushes and rollers are cheap, but airless spray units, dustless sanding systems, towers and quality ladders are not.

Around those three, some decorators add personal accident cover (a self-employed painter who breaks a wrist has no sick pay), hired-in plant cover for rented towers and access equipment, and proper business use on the van. None of it is exotic — but the details, particularly around heat work and working height, are where painters get caught out. We will come to those.

What does public liability cover on a painting job?

Public liability insurance covers your legal liability for injury to third parties and damage to their property. It is not required by law — but try winning commercial work, or getting onto a builder’s site, without it. For domestic customers it is increasingly the first thing they ask about, and rightly so.

The claims we see from painters and decorators follow familiar patterns. A tin of emulsion goes over on a client’s stair carpet, and it turns out the carpet runs through three rooms and cannot be patch-matched. Overspray from an exterior job drifts on a breezy afternoon and settles on cars parked along the street — spray work is quick, but a fine mist travels much further than most people expect. A ladder foot slips on a wet patio. A heat gun used to burn off old paint on a window frame smoulders unseen inside the frame and flares up hours after you have packed up — fire following heat work is one of the most serious losses in this trade, and many policies carry specific conditions about hot work methods, checks after finishing, and keeping an extinguisher to hand. If your policy has a heat condition, know what it says before you plug the gun in, because breaching it can jeopardise a claim.

One point worth understanding: most public liability policies distinguish between damage to third-party property generally and damage to the actual item you are working on. If you scorch the very door you were stripping, some policies exclude it or apply a higher excess. It is exactly the kind of small print a broker checks for you.

Do I legally need employers’ liability insurance?

If you employ anyone, yes. The Employers’ Liability (Compulsory Insurance) Act 1969 requires most UK employers to hold employers’ liability insurance — usually with a minimum limit of £5 million, though policies are commonly written at £10 million. It covers your legal liability if someone working for you is injured or made ill through their work: a labourer who falls from a tower, an apprentice with solvent burns, a long-term condition linked to dust from sanding old surfaces.

The part that trips up decorating firms is who counts as an employee. It is not just people on the payroll. A labour-only subcontractor — someone you pay day rates, who works under your direction with your materials and equipment — will generally be treated as your employee for insurance purposes. So can a mate who helps out on a big job for cash, or a family member lending a hand over a busy fortnight. Genuinely independent (bona fide) subcontractors who work under their own direction and carry their own insurance are a different category, but insurers will usually want to know you check their cover.

If you are a sole trader with no help of any kind, employers’ liability is generally not required. The moment that changes — even casually, even briefly — the legal requirement can apply. Tell your broker before the first day, not after the accident.

Larger or more complex risk? Speak directly to a director — call 0117 325 0027 or email info@apexinsurancebrokers.co.uk.

Domestic or commercial contracts — why does it change my insurance?

This is the question that matters most for painters, because the trade genuinely splits in two, and the insurance should follow the work.

Domestic work — occupied houses and flats — produces frequent, smaller claims. You are working around a family’s belongings: sofas that should have been sheeted, wooden floors under the ladder, a hallway of framed photos. The property damage risk is constant, the injury risk more modest, and a £1m or £2m public liability limit is often where domestic-only decorators start. The practical discipline here is protection and tidiness — the trades with the best claims records are almost always the ones who dust-sheet properly.

Commercial and contract work is a different animal. Painting offices, schools, communal areas, new-build plots or industrial units usually means working for a principal contractor or facilities manager, and the contract will dictate your insurance rather than the other way round. Expect a minimum public liability limit of £5m — sometimes £10m — written into the terms before you can set foot on site. Commercial sites in Great Britain run under the Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 2015, you will often be asked for your insurance schedule alongside your RAMS, and the work itself carries heavier exposures: towers and MEWPs rather than step ladders, night and weekend working around live premises, intumescent and specialist coatings, and far more valuable third-party property to damage. Some insurers also apply height limits — cover only up to a stated working height unless you have declared otherwise.

The trap is drift. A decorator who insured a domestic round three years ago quietly picks up a school over the summer holidays or a subcontract from a local builder, and the policy never catches up. If the split of your work has shifted, that is a five-minute conversation with a broker now versus a very uncomfortable one at claim time. If you are not sure where your book of work sits, tell us the mix and we will place it properly.

What about my tools, sprayers and access kit?

Tool theft is the claim every decorator eventually meets, and it almost always happens the same way: the van, overnight, on the drive or outside the digs near a contract. An airless spray unit alone can be a four-figure replacement, and by the time you add sanding systems, dust extraction, ladders, podiums and the hand tools accumulated over a career, most decorators are carrying more value than they think.

Tools cover is usually bought as an add-on to a liability policy or within a tradesman package. The details matter more than the headline sum:

• Overnight-in-vehicle conditions — many policies exclude theft from an unattended van overnight, or require it to be locked, alarmed, and sometimes parked in a secure or lit area. Check the hours and the security wording.
• Single-item limits — a policy with a healthy total sum insured can still cap any one item below the cost of your sprayer.
• Hired-in plant — if you rent towers or a MEWP, the hire agreement typically makes you responsible for the kit while it is in your care. That needs its own cover.
• New-for-old versus wear and tear — older kit may be settled at less than replacement cost unless the policy says otherwise.

List your kit honestly, including the expensive pieces by name. Underinsuring tools to save a little premium is a false economy the day the van door is found forced.

Is my van covered for work use?

Motor insurance is a legal requirement under the Road Traffic Act 1988 wherever a vehicle is used on the road, and for a working decorator that means commercial vehicle insurance with the correct business use — not a social-domestic-and-pleasure policy quietly doing double duty. Carrying trade materials, driving between jobs and letting an employee drive all need to be reflected on the policy. Remember, too, that your van policy covers the van; it usually does not cover the tools inside it. Those two covers need to meet in the middle, and it is worth checking the join.

What affects the price of painters insurance?

We will not quote premiums in an article — anyone who does is guessing — but the factors insurers weigh are consistent. Turnover and headcount drive the liability rating. The split of domestic versus commercial work matters, as does anything on the hazardous end of the trade: regular heat work and burning off, spraying (especially external spraying), maximum working height, and any work airside, rail-side or in industrial environments. Your claims history counts, and so does the public liability limit you need — stepping from £1m to £5m to satisfy a contract is routine, but it should be priced deliberately, not bolted on in a panic the day before a site induction.

The honest way to keep the cost down is accuracy: declare what you actually do, no more and no less. Over-declare and you pay for exposure you do not have; under-declare and you risk a claim being reduced or declined. A broker’s job is to get that description exactly right and then find the insurer whose appetite matches it. That is what we do — start with a few details about your work and we will take it from there.

Why arrange it through Apex?

Apex Insurance Brokers is an independent, FCA-authorised broker based in Bristol, arranging cover for trades across the UK. We are not a comparison site: a person reads your answers, asks the follow-up questions a form never would — do you burn off? how high do you work? who helps you on the big jobs? — and places you with an insurer whose policy actually fits. When a contract lands demanding £10m public liability by Friday, or a loss adjuster starts asking about your heat-work practices, you have someone in your corner who knew your business before the phone rang.

Cover can usually be arranged quickly, with documents the same day in most cases — useful when a principal contractor wants your schedule before they will confirm the start date.

Apex Insurance Brokers Limited is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FRN 724952). This article is general information, not advice on a specific policy.