Income Protection for Painters and Decorators

Decorating is the trade people assume is gentle, and the shoulders of anyone who has done it for twenty years say otherwise.

Cutting in a ceiling line, rolling a wall, sanding above your head, working a brush at full stretch: the arms are up, repeatedly, for most of the day. Add ladders, solvents, dust from sanding old paint, and long periods in rooms with the windows shut in winter, and the picture is a trade that damages people slowly in several directions at once.

Income protection pays a monthly amount while you cannot work, whether the reason is a torn shoulder or something you breathed in.

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The short answer

Decorating wears out shoulders, because the work is done above head height for hours at a time, and it is one of the few trades where what you breathe matters as much as what you lift. A self-employed decorator has no sick pay. Income protection replaces a monthly amount while you cannot work, and it responds to illness as well as injury, which matters in a trade with a genuine respiratory and skin exposure.

What actually stops you working

Shoulder injuries, particularly rotator cuff damage from overhead work
Falls from ladders and steps, which is how most decorators get hurt suddenly
Neck and upper back problems from looking up for hours
Dermatitis and skin reactions from solvents, strippers and trade paints
Respiratory problems from spraying, sanding and working in unventilated rooms
Hand and elbow strain from repetitive brush and roller work

Sick pay, if you get any

Nothing for the self-employed. Decorating is also commonly priced per room or per job rather than per day, so a job abandoned halfway is often a job that cannot be invoiced, and the next decorator will charge to put right whatever state the work was left in.

Why the definition of incapacity decides it

A decorator with a bad shoulder is fit for most things and cannot cut in a ceiling. That is the whole argument for an own occupation definition in this trade. The work is skilled and specific but does not look physically demanding from the outside, which makes it exactly the sort of occupation an any occupation assessment will decide you can work around.

Shoulders Are The Thing, And They Go Slowly

Ask a decorator with twenty years in what hurts and they will tell you about their shoulder before you finish the question.

Rotator cuff damage comes from repeated work above shoulder height, which is most of what decorating is. It builds for years, gets worked through, and eventually reaches the point where you cannot hold a brush at a ceiling line for more than a few minutes. By then it is often a surgical problem with a long recovery, and the recovery does not go well if you go back to overhead work too early.

That shape of claim, gradual rather than sudden, is the one insurers look at most carefully, and it turns on what was declared at the start. A shoulder that already aches is worth mentioning when you apply, even though it feels like nothing. A shoulder first mentioned at claim is the one that gets investigated.

What You Breathe And What You Touch

Decorating is one of the few trades on this site where the health risk is chemical as much as mechanical, and it is routinely ignored.

Sanding old paint, spraying in enclosed rooms, using strippers and solvents through a winter with the windows shut: these produce real respiratory and skin problems, and dermatitis bad enough to stop somebody working is not unusual in this trade. None of it is dramatic, none of it generates an incident report, and all of it can end a career as effectively as a fall.

Income protection responds to being unable to work whatever the cause, so an illness counts just as an injury does. It does mean being straightforward at application about any existing skin or breathing problem, because those are precisely the conditions an insurer will look back at if you later claim for something similar.

If you stop

Decorating is usually the last trade in, which means your dates are the ones everybody else's delays have already squeezed. A client with a finished extension waiting on paint will not wait several weeks, so the job goes to whoever is free, and decorators lose work to availability more than to price.

Common questions

Why do decorators get shoulder problems?+

Because the work happens above shoulder height for hours at a time, day after day. Cutting in ceilings, rolling walls and sanding overhead all load the rotator cuff, and the damage accumulates over years rather than arriving in one moment. It frequently ends up as a surgical problem with a long recovery, and going back to overhead work too early tends to undo it. That is a strong argument for arranging cover before the shoulder has a medical history.

Does income protection cover dermatitis or breathing problems?+

It responds to whether you can work rather than to a particular diagnosis, so a skin or respiratory condition severe enough to stop you decorating would be treated like any other medical cause. Both are genuine risks in this trade from solvents, strippers, trade paints, spraying and sanding. If you already have a skin or breathing condition, declare it when you apply: that is what decides whether a later claim is straightforward.

Do self-employed decorators get sick pay?+

No. There is no employer and no statutory sick pay. Decorating is also often priced per room or per job rather than per day, so a job abandoned part way through may produce no invoice at all, and the decorator who takes over will charge for sorting out whatever state it was left in. Income protection pays a monthly amount regardless of what you have managed to invoice.

I only use steps and short ladders. Does that help?+

It is worth describing accurately, because insurers ask about working at height and there is a real difference between steps in a hallway and scaffold on a commercial job. Most decorators are up something low several times a day, which is where falls in this trade actually happen. Answer the question as your week really looks rather than optimistically, since an answer that does not match how you work is the sort of thing examined at claim.

Should I take income protection or critical illness cover?+

They answer different questions. Income protection pays monthly while you cannot work, which fits a trade whose typical claim is a worn-out shoulder or a bad back. Critical illness pays a lump sum on diagnosis of one of a defined list of conditions, which will not help with a rotator cuff at all. Many people have both, but if you are choosing one as a decorator, the monthly cover matches the risk better.

Cover that often goes with this

The gaps we most often find sitting next to this one.