Why are three quotes for the same job so different?
Usually because the three contractors have actually priced three different jobs. The difference lies in quantities, scope and caveats — not in the hourly rate. A shared set of measurements and a shared job description removes most of the spread.
Short answer: three quotes for "the same" job are rarely three prices for the same work. Most of the difference comes from different quantities (one guessed 30 m², another measured 33.8), different scope (is the ceiling included? the skirting? dust sheeting?) and different caveats. The hourly rate typically varies far less than the total price does. The fix is to give all three the same measured job description.
Rule one: don't compare bottom lines
Get three quotes where the most expensive is nearly double the cheapest, and the natural reaction is to pick the cheapest. But the three figures are only comparable if they cover the same work. In practice they almost never do, unless you've forced it by sending a shared brief.
A quote that's markedly cheaper than the other two is more often a sign that something is missing than a sign that someone is being generous. And a quote that's markedly more expensive is often the one that has taken every caveat and priced it in.
The five places the difference usually hides
1. The quantities
Let the contractors estimate the areas themselves, and they'll estimate differently. One living room might be guessed at 30 m² of net wall by one tradesman and 36 m² by another — a 20% difference before anyone has even talked price. Give all three the same measured net wall area, floor and ceiling area, ceiling height and opening schedule, and that difference disappears entirely.
2. The scope
The classic one: one has priced the ceiling in, the other hasn't. Or skirting, architraves, door leaves, radiator recesses, dust sheeting, moving furniture, tidying up and disposing of waste. Each of those is hours, and together they can easily shift the price 20-30% — without anyone having charged a penny more for their actual work.
3. Materials and quality
Two coats of paint or three. Standard paint or a pricier, washable type. Laminate or engineered wood flooring. Pine skirting or solid oak. Say nothing about the material standard in your request, and each contractor picks whatever they normally use — and that's three different standards.
4. Caveats and risk
The one who spotted the cracks in the plaster adds a caveat, or builds the filling work into the price. The one who didn't spot them, doesn't. One quote looks cheaper — until the cracks need filling, and an extra bill lands on top.
5. How busy they are
A contractor with a full diary quotes high, because the job is only worth taking on if it's worth their while. That isn't dishonesty; it's capacity. The same firm can hand you wildly different prices in spring and in autumn, without anything else about the job having changed at all.
What almost never explains it
The hourly rate. Within the same trade and the same area, hourly rates sit closer together than most people think. When two quotes are 40% apart, it's almost never because one charges 40% more per hour — it's because one has costed in substantially more hours, more square metres, or more line items.
Which is why "what's your hourly rate?" is a less useful question than "how many hours have you budgeted, and against which quantities?". You can't do anything with the first answer; the second one you can hold up against the other two quotes.
How to make the quotes comparable
- Send the same document to all three. Same quantities, same description, same photos. No verbal add-ons to just one of them.
- State the quantities yourself — net wall areas, floor and ceiling areas, ceiling heights, the count and size of every door and window, running metres of skirting. Say plainly that the figures are your own and are open to being checked.
- Describe the scope as a checklist. "Walls: yes. Ceilings: yes. Skirting: yes. Architraves and door leaves: no. Dust sheeting and clean-up: must be included in the price."
- Fix the material standard. Number of coats, product type, or "equivalent quality".
- Ask for the price broken down by room or by line item. Then you can compare line by line — and trim something without asking for a brand-new quote.
- Ask them to state in writing what isn't included, and what extra work is charged at.
- Ask for every price to include the applicable tax and to carry a validity period. A quote with no expiry date is a ballpark figure with a nicer name.
A worked example of how much can be explained away
Here are three quotes for painting the same living room. To keep the figures timeless, they're given as index numbers, where the cheapest quote is 100:
- A: index 100. Priced 30 m² net wall (guessed), walls only, two coats, no skirting, no dust sheeting.
- B: index 136. Priced 33.8 m² net wall (measured), walls and ceiling, two coats, skirting included, dust sheeting included.
- C: index 172. Same scope as B, plus filling of cracks and an extra coat of primer, because the base is old plaster.
The bottom lines span 72% from cheapest to most expensive. But the jobs aren't the same: A may cover only 60% of the work you actually need done. Pick A and then order the ceiling, skirting and dust sheeting as extras afterwards, and you'll typically end up above B — and without a fixed price, because extra work is rarely charged at quote rates.
Notice how little of the spread is actually "price". Between A and B there isn't a single figure that's about what an hour costs. There's a ceiling, some skirting, a set of dust sheets and 3.8 m² of wall making the difference.
What to do when the quotes still span wide
Call them and ask directly: "Your quote is a third above the cheapest one we've had — which items have you included that might not be in the other one?" Most contractors are happy to answer that, because it's exactly where their quote is strongest.
And be aware that a quote that can't be broken down into quantities can't be compared either. If it just says "painting of flat" and one lump sum, you don't know what or how much. Ask for a breakdown — and if you don't get one, the quote is in practice useless for comparison, however tidy the number looks.
One thing none of the quotes can settle
Whether a wall is load-bearing. If something needs breaking through, no quote, no tape measure and no LiDAR scan can decide that — it takes a building surveyor or an engineer looking at the structure on site, and that kind of work usually needs approval before it can start too. If the point is unresolved, it should stand as an open item in every quote. Otherwise you're back to three prices for three different jobs — and the most expensive of them is probably the most honest.
How to put together the shared job description
You can write it by hand after a round with the tape measure — reckon on 10-20 minutes per room. Or you can let the app handle the quantities: HouseSense gathers net wall areas with doors and windows subtracted, floor and ceiling areas, ceiling heights, and a door and window schedule for every opening, from a LiDAR scan on an iPhone Pro or from the graph paper in the app. The floor plan and takeoff can be sent as a PDF — the same file to all three contractors.
That's the whole point: once the quantities are the same, the only difference left is the contractor's price and how they'd go about the job. And that's precisely the difference you want to be able to see.