Frequently asked questions

No. We are an enquiry and quote-matching service. We collect the details of your job and pass them to independent joinery businesses covering your area. They do the work, set their own prices and carry their own insurance. That is why you will not see "our team" or a gallery of "our work" anywhere on this site.

No. Not to submit an enquiry, not to receive contact from a fitter, and not at any later point. Joinery businesses pay to receive matched enquiries — that is the commercial model, and you should know it before you fill anything in.

Up to 3, and never more. Services that sell one enquiry to eight fitters produce eight phone calls and a homeowner who stops answering, which serves nobody.

We will not publish a time we have not measured. You get an automatic acknowledgement with a reference within seconds. How fast a fitter then calls depends on them, and once we have enough data to state a genuine median we will publish it with the date attached.

Tell us, by replying to your confirmation email. We follow up on enquiries anyway to ask exactly this, and fitters who repeatedly ignore accepted enquiries are removed from the list.

It depends on the style, the wall and the finish. What surprises people is that it is driven more by the number of individual panels than by wall area, because the labour is in cutting and mitring. And whether painting is included is often the single biggest difference between two quotes.

Usually because they are not for the same work. One may include painting, battening out an uneven wall and an electrician for the sockets; another may assume a flat wall, no electrics and you painting it. Compare what is included line by line before comparing the numbers.

Choose "show me the options" in the form and send a picture of something you like — a magazine page, a screenshot, a photo from a hotel. Panelling is a visual job and one reference image is worth several paragraphs.

It depends on your ceiling height more than on fashion. Dado height suits a standard or low room; three-quarter or full height suits a taller Victorian or Georgian one. In a tall room dado height can look stranded. Choose "not sure" and ask for advice — it is a genuinely good question to put to a fitter.

One wall, usually, unless the room is large. Panelling every wall in a standard-sized room is a big commitment and can make it feel smaller. A single feature wall gives most of the effect for a fraction of the cost.

In a modern house with flat, plumb walls, a competent DIYer can get a good result. In an older property where nothing is square and everything needs scribing, that is where self-fitted panelling starts to look self-fitted. The setting out is the hard part, not the fixing.

MDF for almost all painted panelling — it is stable, has no grain to fill and no knots to bleed through, and takes paint better than timber. Solid timber earns its place where it is being stained, in a listed building, or where it must match existing historic joinery.

Not on the panelling itself. The bracket has to fix back to structure — a stud, a purpose-fitted noggin, or the masonry behind with any void packed out. It needs planning before the panels go on, so say in your enquiry if a TV is going up and roughly what size.

They need bringing forward to sit flush with the new surface, which means extending the back boxes. That is electrical work under Part P of the building regulations and wants a qualified electrician. It is also the cheapest opportunity you will ever have to move a socket somewhere more useful.

It depends on the style. Panelling with a backing board or full-height battens can be packed level and give you a genuinely flat surface. Shaker panelling leaves the wall showing through the middle of each frame, so a poor surface is still visible inside it.

Yes, with moisture-resistant board, every cut edge sealed, nothing in the direct splash zone and decent ventilation. Standard MDF looks identical once painted and fails within a couple of years. If a bathroom quote is noticeably cheaper, check which board it is priced on.

No. It absorbs sound within the room, which reduces echo and is genuinely useful in a hard-surfaced office. It does not stop sound passing through the wall. Blocking sound between rooms needs mass and isolation, which is a different job entirely.

In the great majority of homes, yes, and it is very common. What applies is Part B of the building regulations covering surface spread of flame on escape routes, which affects the material specification rather than banning the idea. In flats and houses in multiple occupation the requirements are tighter.

It can matter a great deal. Fixing into historic fabric or covering original joinery can require listed building consent, and obtaining it is the owner's responsibility. Shropshire Council's conservation team is the right first call. Tell us in the enquiry and it affects who it goes to.

We use them to handle the enquiry and, where there is a sensible match, share them with up to 3 independent joinery businesses selected for the style and area. We do not sell your details to anyone outside that process.

Not unless you tick the separate, unticked box asking for it. Asking for a quote is not consent to be marketed at, and we do not treat it as if it were.

To private storage with no public URL. They cannot be browsed or guessed at. Links sent to a matched fitter are individually signed and expire. Photos are never published on this site without asking you first.

Not in the form. We ask for the job postcode, which is what is needed to check coverage and route the enquiry. A fitter will need the full address once a visit is being arranged, and that is your call to give them directly.

Reply to your confirmation email, or email privacy@shropshirepanelquotes.co.uk, quoting your reference. We delete the enquiry record and the photos, and tell any business it has already reached.

Only if you accept analytics in the cookie banner, and nothing is loaded before you choose. Even then we never send names, phone numbers, email addresses or full postcodes into analytics — only the postcode district, the style and the page.