Carpenter Pay in the UK: 2026 Rates, Compared

1st fix vs 2nd fix: two different jobs

First fix is the carpentry you cannot see once the house is finished: roof trusses, floor joists, timber frames, stud partition walls, window and door linings. It is rough, fast work, often outdoors in winter, and it follows the build programme — when the plots are at frame stage, first-fix carpenters are in demand; when they are not, they are not. Typical self-employed day rates sit at £140 to £180 a day.

Second fix is the carpentry the client touches: hanging doors, fitting architraves and skirting, building and fitting kitchens, staircases and built-in wardrobes. It comes later in the programme, after plastering, and it is where precision shows. Second fixers typically command £150 to £200 a day — a notch above first fix, because the work is visible and the tolerance for error is lower. On new-build estates the pace is relentless: price work per door or per metre of skirting is the norm, and speed separates the earners.

Most chippies can do both, and most do both across a career. Specialists earn more within their lane: a second-fix carpenter known for kitchens that go in fast and square can name a rate and get it, while a generalist takes what the site offers. If you are choosing where to push, the finishing end usually pays better for longer — kitchens and bespoke joinery work does not disappear when the big sites slow.

Shuttering: the premium niche

Shuttering carpenters build the timber formwork and falsework into which concrete is poured — bridge decks, tunnel linings, retaining walls, concrete frames. It is a civil engineering trade more than a housebuilding one, and it pays like one: typical day rates of £180 to £230 a day put it clearly above both first and second fix.

The premium exists for reasons you can feel in your body. Shuttering is heavy, muddy, safety-critical work on major infrastructure projects, often with long shifts and weekend working. The projects move around the country, so you follow the work — weeks or months away from home are normal. When the big civils pipeline is full, shuttering carpenters are among the best-paid manual trades in Britain; when it thins, the rates soften fast.

It is also a smaller labour pool, which protects the rates. Fewer carpenters hold the shuttering tickets and the experience contractors want, so a good shuttering hand with a clean safety record can work near-continuously through a busy cycle. If you are a site carpenter looking for the highest day rate in the trade, this is where it is — at the cost of living out of a bag.

Site carpenters vs bench joiners

A bench joiner makes the components in a workshop: windows, doors, staircases, bespoke furniture and shop fittings, cut on the bench and sent to site finished. The work is steadier, drier and usually employed PAYE — but the typical equivalent of £120 to £150 a day sits below site rates. Workshops trade rate for regularity: forty hours a week, every week, through winter.

The site carpenter takes the higher rate and the higher risk. Weather stops play, phases end, and between contracts there can be gaps — four to eight unpaid weeks a year is common for self-employed site work, which is why the day-rate maths needs honest arithmetic. A £150 day rate across 48 paid weeks is £36,000 gross; the same rate across a full 52 weeks would be £39,000. The missing weeks are the price of the higher daily figure.

Some carpenters straddle both: workshop joiners who take site fitting work, or site carpenters who do bench-made kitchens in a home workshop. The combination can work well — the workshop smooths the gaps between site contracts — but it needs two sets of kit and two kinds of customer.

Price work: how chippies price the job

A lot of carpentry is not paid by the day at all. Price work — payment per unit finished — is how the trade has priced itself for generations: so much per door hung, per metre of skirting fixed, per kitchen fitted, per roof trussed. The attraction is obvious: a fast, skilled carpenter earns far more on price than on a day rate, because the day has no ceiling on it.

The maths cuts both ways, which is the part price workers learn early. Take door hanging at an example price of £45 a door: eight doors in a day is £360 gross — well above any day rate. Four doors in a day, because the frames are out of square and the doors need trimming, is £180 — and the day still took the same hours. Price work rewards speed and punishes snagging, bad materials and badly prepared work that is not your fault.

For employed carpenters price work usually appears as a bonus layer on top of the wage; for the self-employed it is the whole game. Either way, the discipline is the same: know your pace honestly, price from it, and never take price work on a job you have not walked around. The chippies who do well on price are the ones who say no to the jobs that will eat them.

CIS: how most self-employed carpenters get paid

If you are self-employed and working for a contractor, you will almost certainly be paid under the Construction Industry Scheme. The contractor deducts 20% from the labour element of your invoice if you are CIS-registered, 30% if you are unregistered or cannot be verified, and nothing at all if you hold gross payment status. The deduction is not a tax in itself — it is an advance payment toward your income tax and National Insurance, set against your bill at Self Assessment.

What matters is what the percentage applies to. CIS comes off labour, not materials: if you supply timber or fixings and charge them on the invoice, the deduction is taken from the labour figure only. VAT is excluded, as is plant hire and any materials the contractor pays for directly. This is why separating labour and materials clearly on every invoice is not bookkeeping fussiness — it is money.

Registration is free, and the 10-point gap between 20% and 30% is the most expensive admin failure in the trade. An unregistered carpenter loses an extra £100 on every £1,000 of labour invoiced, and gets it back only at year end through Self Assessment. The dedicated CIS and pay guide walks through invoice maths, statements and reclaiming overpaid deductions in full.

Getting on site: the CSCS card and the NVQ route

The CSCS card is the entry ticket to most building sites: no card, no start, on the majority of main-contractor and housebuilder sites. The standard route is the green CSCS labourer card to get going, then the blue skilled-worker card once qualified — and the blue card is the one that unlocks the proper carpentry rates, because it proves the skill, not just the right to be on site.

The qualification behind the blue card is the NVQ Level 2 in Carpentry and Joinery (or Site Carpentry), usually gained through an apprenticeship: two to three years of paid work with day or block release at college. Mature entrants can go through on-site assessment, building a portfolio of evidence from real jobs rather than sitting in a classroom. There is no shortcut that the industry respects — but there is also no degree required, and the apprenticeship pays from day one.

The NVQ matters for pay as well as access. Qualified carpenters with the blue card and a trade history are the ones who get the second-fix and kitchen work at the top of the rate bands; the card is the paperwork, but the portfolio of finished work is what contractors are really buying.

Where the numbers come from

The anchor figure on this hub is the ONS Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings 2025 (provisional): median gross hourly pay of £16.98 and median gross weekly pay of £673.70 for SOC 2020 occupation 5316, carpenters and joiners, all employees, for the pay period April 2025. Multiplied out, the hourly median is about £136 a day at eight hours and £35,318 a year at forty hours a week — the reference point every other figure on this page is measured against.

Day-rate ranges (£140–£180 first fix, £150–£200 second fix, £180–£230 shuttering, £120–£150 bench joiner equivalent) are typical self-employed ranges, clearly labelled as ranges: actual rates move with region, demand and the contractor. Take-home figures are computed with the 2026/27 UK tax model — England bands, Personal Allowance £12,570, employee National Insurance at 8% between £12,570 and £50,270 and 2% above, auto-enrolment pension at 5% of qualifying earnings. CIS rates and rules are from GOV.UK, verified on 24 September 2026.

How to use this hub

If you are employed, start with the take-home calculator: put your salary or hourly rate in and see the monthly figure after tax, National Insurance and pension. If you are self-employed, read the CIS and pay guide first — the 20% deduction changes every number on the page — then use the calculator with your annual gross to see the tax position your CIS deductions are prepaying. Everyone comparing offers should check the comparison table against the kind of carpentry they actually do: first fix, second fix, shuttering and bench work are different markets.