Can I plaster a wall myself, or should I get a plasterer in?

Plastering is unusually unforgiving among DIY trades. Tiling and painting let you stop, assess and correct. Plaster sets on a clock you do not control, the window for each stage is a few minutes wide, and a poor result cannot be sanded flat — it has to come off. That is why the honest advice is neither "anyone can do it" nor "never try", but a judgement about which surface you are practising on.

Step by step

1. Judge the job by how visible it will be.A wall behind kitchen units, inside a cupboard, in a garage or under a future tiled surface is the right place to learn. A hallway wall in raking light from a window is the wrong one.
2. Judge it by area.A patch you can cover in one mix is a manageable first attempt. A whole wall means multiple mixes, joins between them, and the flattening passes have to be done across the lot before any of it sets. That is where beginners lose it.
3. Judge it by orientation.Ceilings are dramatically harder than walls — the plaster is fighting gravity, your arms tire within minutes, and the trowelling passes have to be done above your head at exactly the right moment. Almost nobody's first ceiling looks acceptable.
4. Judge it by what the background needs.Skimming over sound existing plaster or new plasterboard is the easiest case. A background with mixed suction, old paint, several materials in one wall, or depth to be built out is where the preparation decisions matter more than the trowel work.
5. Practise on something disposable first.A sheet of plasterboard leaned against a wall in the garage, one bag of finish, and three mixes. You will learn what the stages feel like, which is the entire skill, for about the price of a coffee.
6. Cost the alternative properly before deciding.Get two or three quotes. Plastering is priced by area and access, and a plasterer skims a room in a day that would take you a weekend badly. Compare that against your time, the materials you will waste and the risk of paying someone to take your work off.
7. Know what a bad job costs to fix.A poorly skimmed wall usually has to be sanded back hard or re-skimmed, and plasterers charge more to skim over someone else's failed attempt than over a clean background. That is the real financial risk in trying it.
8. Consider the routes that avoid plastering altogether.Tape and joint on new plasterboard gives a paintable surface with no plastering skill at all. Heavy lining paper hides a poor but sound wall. Overboarding replaces the surface without touching what is behind it.

Common mistakes

• Starting on the most visible wall in the house — The first attempt is where you learn the timing, and it will look like a first attempt. Learn where nobody will see it.
• Mixing a full bucket — It sets on you. Working time is short and it is spent laying, flattening and trowelling — a beginner cannot get through a full bucket in the window.
• Trying to sand a bad skim flat — Finish plaster is 2 to 3mm thick. Sanding hard goes through it, and sanding it at all creates enormous quantities of very fine dust for a poor result.
• Assuming preparation is optional — Most amateur plastering failures are background failures — dust, suction, unsound paint, a surface that was never going to hold plaster. The trowel work gets blamed.

Alternatives

• Tape and joint instead of skim: On new plasterboard, jointing compound and tape over the joints and screw heads, sanded flat, gives a paintable wall. Much slower than skimming but forgiving, correctable, and entirely learnable.
• Fill and sand: Where the wall is sound and reasonably flat, a careful filling and sanding job produces a better result than an amateur skim and cannot go irreversibly wrong.
• Heavy lining paper: Hangs like wallpaper, hides a multitude of surface faults on a stable wall, and is cheap and reversible.
• Overboarding: Plasterboard fixed over the existing surface, then taped or skimmed. Turns a plastering problem into a carpentry problem, which most DIYers find easier.

Questions people ask