Not every rendering job is a whole house. Plenty of the work we do is a single elevation — the weather side that has taken forty years of south-westerlies while the other three walls are fine, or an extension that needs bringing in line with the original house. The question is whether doing one wall is a sensible repair or a job you will regret in two years.
Here is how we think about it.
Why one wall costs more per square metre
The instinct is that a quarter of the house should cost a quarter of the price. It does not, and the reason is scaffold. A single gable elevation still needs a full scaffold run, still needs the team mobilised, still needs the same delivery of materials and the same site setup. Spread that fixed cost over 40 square metres instead of 160 and the rate per square metre roughly doubles. A single elevation is still good value for a genuine repair — it is just not a proportional fraction of a full render.
When a single elevation is the right call
- One weather-beaten face. If the north or south-west elevation has failed and the rest is sound, there is no reason to strip good render off three walls to match it.
- An extension or a porch. New work that was left in bare block or a different finish, and just needs pulling into line with the main house.
- Storm or impact damage. A section knocked off by a fallen branch or a delivery lorry, where the rest of the wall is fine.
- A wall that was patched badly by someone else and now needs doing properly.
When it is a false economy
- The other elevations are the same age and the same system. If the west wall has gone, the others are usually two or three winters behind it. Doing one now and the rest separately means paying for scaffold and mobilisation twice, and it works out dearer than doing the lot in one visit.
- You cannot live with a colour step. Which brings us to the real problem.
The colour-match problem
Render colour is never a perfect match across jobs done at different times. Through-colour renders are mixed in batches, the surface weathers, and a fresh elevation next to a ten-year-old one will show a line at the corner — usually a shade or two lighter and cleaner. On a rear elevation nobody sees, that does not matter. On the front of the house it can look worse than the failed render did.
There are ways to manage it: taking the new render to a natural break point like a corner or a downpipe rather than stopping mid-wall, choosing a colour that the weathered render will move towards rather than away from, or accepting that the front elevation is done as a pair with whichever wall it turns the corner into. We will talk this through on the survey — it is the single thing that most often changes a one-wall job into a two-wall job.
A rule of thumb
If the elevation that has failed is at the back, or it is genuinely a one-off (damage, an extension), do the one wall. If it is at the front, or the other elevations are the same age and system, price both options — one elevation now versus the whole house — and compare them properly. The gap is often smaller than people expect once the second lot of scaffold is in the figures.
What to ask for in the quote
A single-elevation quote should still spell out what happens to the existing render on that wall, how the new work meets the old at the corners, and what the warranty covers on a partial job. If it is vague on the join, that is where it will go wrong.
