Guides for expats in Poznań

Written for people navigating Polish paperwork

Most advice about painting a flat assumes you grew up with the local conventions — that you know rates are quoted per square metre of wall rather than floor, that trades quote net and add 23% VAT afterwards, and that the handover protocol you signed on moving in is the document that decides whether your deposit comes back. If you moved to Poznań for work, none of that is obvious, and getting it wrong is expensive.

These guides cover the three situations we are called about most often by people renting or renovating here. They are written from what we actually see on site, and they include the cases where the honest answer is that you do not need a contractor at all.

What each guide answers

• End of tenancy painting — what a Polish landlord can and cannot deduct from a deposit, how wear and tear differs from damage, when a repaint is cheaper than the deduction you are facing, and why an empty flat is the cheapest possible painting job.
• Hiring a painter in Poland — how quotes are actually constructed here, why the same job can look like PLN 40/m² or PLN 20/m² depending on which surface the rate refers to, what belongs in a contract, and the four questions that separate a registered company from a phone number.
• Wall painting ideas for a rented apartment — accent walls, colour blocking and texture that change how a flat feels without putting your deposit at risk, with the cost of reversing each one before handover.

Where the numbers come from

Every figure in these guides comes from the same published price list we quote from: PLN 15–25/m² for two-coat roller painting, PLN 12–20/m² sprayed, PLN 35–50/m² for plastering, all calculated on the working surface — walls plus ceilings — with a PLN 2,000 net minimum order. Nothing is a marketing number invented for an article. If you want the full breakdown with worked examples for real flat sizes, that lives on the wall painting cost page.