Light-touch renovation: what painting, carpets, cleaning and the garden really do to your house price

There are two kinds of home improvement. There is the kind that adds square metres — extensions, loft conversions, garage conversions — and there is the kind that changes how a property is perceived on the day someone walks in. The first is well studied: Nationwide's analysis of its own house price data puts an extension or a loft conversion with a bedroom at up to around a quarter more value. The second is what almost everybody selling this spring will actually do, and it is much less well measured.

This guide sets out what the evidence does and doesn't support for light-touch work — painting, small repairs, floors, cleaning, the garden and the outside of the building — how much each costs in south west London, and where the spending stops making sense. There's a calculator part-way down so you can put your own number in.

The honest framing: price, or speed?

A refresh very rarely moves a valuation the way an extra bedroom does. What it reliably moves is the number of viewings in the first fortnight and the strength of the offers those viewings produce. That matters, because a property that sits unsold for three months almost always ends up reduced — and a 5% reduction on a £700,000 flat is £35,000, several times the cost of doing the whole thing properly.

Presentation rarely raises the ceiling. It decides whether you get near it, and how fast.

The summary table

Costs are what this work typically runs to in south west London on a two- to three-bedroom property. The value column is a conservative range drawn from published UK research and agent surveys, not a promise.

1. Painting inside

Paint is the highest return per pound of anything on this list, for one reason: it is the only job that changes every single photograph at once. A property with fresh, consistent, neutral walls photographs light and cared-for. A property with three different whites, scuffed skirtings and a feature wall from 2014 photographs as a project.

• Warm off-white on walls, clean white on ceilings and woodwork — it holds up in UK light and in a photographer's flash
• Avoid cool greys in north-facing rooms; they read blue-grey and cold on camera
• Paint everything, not the worst rooms — a half-painted flat looks worse than an evenly tired one
• Do it after the repairs and before the floors, or you'll pay for the floors twice

Typical cost: £2,600–£6,400 for a two- to three-bed property done throughout, including preparation. Where it isn't worth it: a property being sold to a developer, or one where a buyer will certainly gut it.

2. Small repairs

Buyers cannot price a defect, so they price a fear. A dozen unresolved small faults — a sticking door, a cracked tile, a dripping tap, blown bulbs, black silicone around the bath — tell a viewer that the boiler probably hasn't been serviced either. That inference costs far more than the repairs.

This is also the work most likely to come back at you at survey stage, as a renegotiation, when you have far less leverage. Typical cost: £700–£2,200. Where it isn't worth it: nowhere, really. This is the cheapest anxiety you will ever buy off.

3. Carpets and floors

Clean before you replace. A professional carpet clean is a fraction of the cost of new carpet and gets most of the way there on anything that isn't stained through or holding a smell. Replace where the floor is genuinely finished, and in the rooms that carry the listing: the main bedroom and the reception.

Smell is the exception to every rule on this page. A property that smells of pets, damp or old smoke loses buyers before they reach the kitchen, and no amount of paint fixes it. If that's your situation, replacing the floor is not cosmetic — it's the whole job. Typical cost: £900–£4,200.

4. Deep cleaning

There is no credible study that puts a percentage on cleaning, and any page that gives you one has made it up. What is well established is that cleanliness is one of the things buyers consistently report noticing first, and that it costs a few hundred pounds. On a return-per-pound basis nothing else comes close, even if the percentage is unmeasurable.

• Windows inside and out — it changes the light in every photograph
• Oven, extractor, hob, and the inside of the fridge if it's staying
• Limescale off every tap, shower screen and tile
• Bins, drains and the space under the sink, for smell rather than sight
• Do it last, the day before the photographer, not the week before

5. Garden and outside space

Outside space has become a genuine price factor since 2020, and a tidy garden is the cheapest way to make an ordinary one read as usable. A cut lawn, edged borders, a jet-washed patio, a swept path and the bins out of shot is a day's work that changes the last two photographs in a listing — the ones people scroll back to.

You are not landscaping. Nobody recovers the cost of a new patio before a sale. You are making an existing space look looked-after. Typical cost: £400–£1,600. Even a first-floor flat with a balcony benefits: clear it, clean it, and put two chairs on it.

6. Outside painting and kerb appeal

The exterior photograph is the lead image in the listing and the first thing a viewer sees from the pavement, so it does disproportionate work. Surveys consistently find that around two thirds of buyers treat kerb appeal as important, and a Dulux Weathershield study found repainting the exterior raised the price people thought a property was worth by close to a quarter — that is perceived value from a survey, not a valuation, but the direction is not in doubt.

• Front door repainted and the furniture cleaned or replaced — the cheapest single upgrade there is
• Render, window frames and railings where they're chalky or peeling
• Gutters and fascias cleaned; a green streak down the front reads as neglect
• House number visible, doorbell working, path clear, bins hidden

Typical cost: £1,200–£4,800 depending on how much of the frontage is painted. Where it isn't worth it: a flat with a shared entrance you don't control — though it's always worth asking the freeholder.

Put your own numbers in

What doesn't pay before a sale

The improvements that reliably add value are the ones that add usable space, and none of them can be done in the weeks before a listing. Everything below tends to cost more than it returns when it's done specifically to sell.

• A new kitchen — expensive, slow, and the buyer probably wants a different one
• A new bathroom, unless the existing one is genuinely unusable
• Bold or bespoke decoration, including expensive wallpaper
• Landscaping, decking, garden rooms
• Anything that pushes you past the ceiling price of your street — the strongest constraint there is, and the one most people ignore

That last point deserves its own sentence. Every road has a price above which buyers simply go to the next postcode. If your property is already near it, no amount of spending moves the number — but presentation still decides how quickly you get there.

The order to do it in

• Clear and empty — every later job is cheaper in an empty room
• Repairs and filling
• Painting, inside then outside
• Floors: clean or replace
• Garden and frontage
• Deep clean
• Photographs, the day after the clean

Done at weekends, that sequence takes most people six to ten weeks and usually stalls somewhere around the painting. With one team on site it's under two weeks, which is the entire reason Presentable exists.

Where these figures come from

The ranges above are conservative readings of published UK research and buyer surveys, applied to south west London costs. They are averages across the country, not a valuation of your property — read them as direction and scale, and take your agent's view on the number itself.

• Nationwide — What Adds Value special report (2025)
• HomeOwners Alliance — kerb appeal and what buyers look for
• Dulux Weathershield — exterior paint and perceived value