European Drywall Cost Index 2026

The headline number: professional drywall installation in a standard bedroom (45 sqm wall area) costs €1,813 in Copenhagen vs €709 in Bucharest at mid-range — a 2.56x spread, the widest in our EU cost index series after painting and insulation. The reason: drywall sheets are a cheap commodity (€3–6/m²), but the finishing work — taping, mudding, sanding to a smooth surface — is highly skilled and highly labour-intensive. Labour accounts for ~69% of the mid-range total, making drywall the third-most labour-sensitive renovation trade.

Why this matters

Drywall (plasterboard) has quietly become Europe's preferred interior wall finish, overtaking traditional wet plastering in most countries. It's faster, cheaper, drier, and easier to run services behind. In new builds, plasterboard is near-universal. In renovations, it's the go-to for partition walls, room divisions, and covering rough masonry.

The material itself is almost trivially cheap. A standard 12.5 mm plasterboard sheet costs €3–6/m² at any European builders' merchant. Jointing tape, compound, and screws add another €1–3/m². The total materials bill for 45 sqm of wall area is roughly €200–350, regardless of country.

The cost lives in the labour. A drywall finisher (taper) in Denmark costs €47.10/hour; in Romania, €10.30/hour. And drywall finishing is slow, skilled work: three coats of joint compound, drying time between each, and careful sanding. A Level 4 finish (standard for painting) on 45 sqm takes a professional 3–4 days. That's €1,250 in Danish labour versus €345 in Romanian labour.

The full ranking

Standard bedroom, 45 sqm wall area, Level 4 finish (ready for paint). Sorted from most expensive to cheapest. The full dataset is free to download as CSV.

* 2024 labour cost values for Austria and Finland are flagged provisional by Eurostat.

What's actually driving the difference

Labour is approximately 69% of the mid-range total — the third highest of any trade. Drywall is a textbook case of cheap materials plus expensive skilled labour. The plasterboard sheets are commodity goods manufactured at scale (Knauf, Saint-Gobain, Siniat all operate pan-European plants). But the finishing — taping joints, applying three coats of compound, feathering edges, sanding smooth — is painstaking handwork that can't be rushed. Each coat needs to dry before the next is applied.

Finish level is a bigger cost lever than you'd expect. A Level 3 finish (acceptable for textured paint or wallpaper) skips the final sanding pass and uses fewer compound coats. A Level 5 finish (painter-ready for gloss or semi-gloss in raking light) requires a skim coat across the entire surface, adding 20–30% more labour. The gap between budget and luxury tier in our table is driven almost entirely by this finish-level difference, not materials.

Drywall is replacing wet plaster across Europe. Traditional wet plastering (sand-cement render or gypsum plaster applied wet to block walls) is still common in southern and eastern Europe. But the trend is firmly toward plasterboard, because it's faster (no drying time for wet coats), lighter (matters for upper floors), and provides a cavity for insulation and services. In a renovation context, boarding over rough masonry is faster and cheaper than re-plastering.

DIY is possible for boarding, but finishing requires skill. Screwing plasterboard to studs is straightforward DIY. But taping and finishing to a paintable standard is genuinely difficult — amateur finishing shows every imperfection under painted light. This makes drywall a split-skill trade: DIY the boarding, hire a professional taper for the finishing.

How we calculated this

Costs are derived from RenoQuant's national-average baseline for a 45 sqm drywall installation with Level 4 finish (sourced from our drywall cost estimate calculator) combined with Eurostat's published hourly labour cost in construction.

The country multiplier is applied only to the labour share. Materials (plasterboard sheets, metal or timber studs, jointing compound, tape, screws, corner bead) are held constant across the EU single market. Budget tier assumes Level 3 finish, mid-range assumes Level 4, and luxury assumes Level 5 (full skim coat).

VAT excluded. Full methodology at EU renovation cost methodology.

Source: Eurostat, Labour cost levels by NACE Rev. 2 activity, dataset code lc_lci_lev, NACE Rev. 2 section F, total labour cost (D1_D4_MD5) in EUR, 2024 estimates. Licensed under CC BY 4.0.

See also

• Drywall Cost Estimate — interactive calculator with the underlying RenoQuant baseline used in this study.
• Drywall Calculator — material quantity calculator for sheets, compound, and fixings.
• Drywall Sheet Calculator — calculate exact sheet counts with waste allowance.
• How Many Drywall Sheets — quick-reference guide for common room sizes.
• European Painting Cost Index 2026 — same methodology, the highest labour share of any trade.

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RenoQuant Research is the data and analysis arm of RenoQuant, a free renovation calculator suite covering 18 trades across Europe. If you're a journalist or researcher, the CSV is free under CC BY 4.0 — please credit "Eurostat + RenoQuant" if you use it.