Exterior Spray Painting in Clayton West

What the age of the housing means for the walls

Of the 3,020 properties the Valuation Office Agency records around Clayton West centre, 31.8% pre-date 1919 (well above the 21% average), so solid-walled stone or brick houses that must be able to breathe sit alongside later cavity-wall housing that can take a wider range of coatings, and we establish which you have before recommending a system. Across the other 83 West Yorkshire towns we cover, pre-1919 housing averages 26.0%, 5.8 points lower than here, so solid walls that need breathable coatings are more of a feature here than elsewhere in the county.

The interwar and postwar decades account for just 22.2% of homes here, against 42% on average, so heavy pebbledash and roughcast are less common than in many Yorkshire towns. Across the other 83 West Yorkshire towns we cover, 1919 to 1972 housing averages 39.2%, 17.0 points higher than here, so dashed render is likely to be less of the work here than in neighbouring parts of the county.

Homes built from 1973 to 1999 make up 22.5% of properties here (above the 19% average), and houses of that era are mostly brick-faced, so the exterior work on them is usually rendered panels, timber cladding and roofline boards, where original timber or early uPVC soffits and fascias are often weathered, yellowed or chalky by now.

The 22.8% built since 2000 (above the 17% average) include many homes with through-coloured renders such as silicone or K-Rend type systems, which need compatible coatings and are sometimes designed to need only cleaning for years. If a wash is all a newer render needs, we will tell you that rather than sell you a respray.

House type, access and what gets sprayed

Detached homes make up 41.7%, well above the 20% average for the towns we cover, and a detached house usually means four elevations, gable ends at height and a tower or scaffold for the upper walls. The rest of the stock includes 28.4% semi-detached, 25.3% terraced and 4.4% flats. Across the other 83 West Yorkshire towns we cover, the detached share averages 23.6%, 18.1 points lower than here, so a job here is more likely to involve four elevations and work at gable height than in the rest of the county.

Owners, landlords and timing

Owner-occupiers make up 78.7%, above the 63% average for the towns we cover, so most exterior jobs here are long-term decisions about the house, which is why we would rather spend an extra day on render repairs than skip them. Of the other households, 15.1% rent privately and 5.9% rent from a council or housing association. Across the other 83 West Yorkshire towns we cover, owner-occupation averages 70.4%, 8.3 points lower than here, so decisions about the outside of the house rest with owners more often than in the rest of the county.

How Clayton West compares with nearby towns

The share of pre-1919 housing is broadly similar in the nearest towns (29.8% in Skelmanthorpe, 30.8% in Denby Dale and 31.1% in Flockton). The biggest contrast in house type is with Skelmanthorpe, where only 37.9% of homes are detached, so more jobs in Clayton West involve four elevations and the access equipment that goes with them. Renting is at a similar level across the area, 21.0% of households here against 19.3% in Denby Dale, and on any rented home the colour of the outside walls is normally the landlord's decision.

For housing built from 1919 to 1972, the main pebbledash and roughcast era, the three range from 16.4% in Flockton to 31.8% in Denby Dale, and Clayton West sits within that range. Flockton has the most recent building of the three, with 39.3% of homes dating from 2000 onwards, so through-coloured renders that may only need cleaning are more common there than in Clayton West.

What the figures suggest about a quote

The most common home around Clayton West centre is a detached house: roughly 1,180 of the 2,833 households live in detached houses. Because elevations, gable heights and access vary so much from one detached house to the next, these are priced from the survey rather than from the front-elevation starting figure of around £1,200. Next come semi-detached houses, roughly 800 households, where the side elevation is usually the main addition to the front. The largest group of properties was built before 1919, so the survey also decides whether a wall should be coated at all, and with what.

With this much pre-1919 housing, listed buildings and conservation areas are more likely here than in most of the towns we cover, so if yours may be one, check with Kirklees Council before booking any change of colour or painting of bare masonry.