How many metres of line are on a football pitch?

A full-size 11v11 pitch carries roughly 700 metres of line. 9v9 is about 360 m, 7v7 about 300 m and small-sided 5v5 around 210 m.

How much paint does it take to mark a football pitch?

Overmarking a full-size pitch takes roughly 10 litres of ready-to-spray mix through a typical spray marker. Depending on concentrate price and dilution, the paint cost is usually £4–£12 per overmark; initial marking uses about double.

How long does line marking a pitch take?

An experienced operator overmarks an 11v11 pitch in 35–50 minutes following existing lines. Initial marking from string-out is closer to half a day.

Line Marking Costs: What a Football Pitch Really Costs to Mark (2026)

Real numbers for line marking a football pitch — metres of line by pitch size, paint use and cost per pitch, initial marking vs overmarking, time on site, and what to charge.

Line marking is priced blind more than any other grounds task — "call it £40 a pitch" — because few contractors know their metres of line and litres of paint per pitch. Here are the working numbers.

Metres of line by pitch type

Measured from standard layouts (these are the template figures we use in SwardOps line-marking templates):

11v11 full-size football: ≈ 700 m of line
9v9: ≈ 360 m
7v7: ≈ 300 m
5v5 / 3v3: ≈ 210 m
Rugby union (with hash lines): 1,000 m+
400 m athletics track (full lane set): ≈ 4,000 m — a different job entirely
Rounders: ≈ 26 m · Volleyball: ≈ 81 m · Ultimate frisbee: ≈ 350 m

Multi-sport summer layouts add up fast: a school field with a track, three softball diamonds and a scatter of small courts can carry more line than five football pitches.

Paint use and cost per pitch

A useful rule of thumb: an 11v11 pitch (≈700 m of line) takes about 10 litres of ready-to-spray mix through a typical spray marker. What that costs depends on concentrate dilution: a £30–£60 tub of concentrate mixing 1:4 to 1:8 puts the paint cost for a full-size overmark somewhere between £4 and £12 per pitch. Initial marking (burning in new lines) uses roughly double the paint of an overmark, plus string-out time.

Time on site

With a wheel-to-wheel spray marker and existing lines to follow, an experienced operator overmarks an 11v11 in 35–50 minutes. Initial marking from string is a half-day the first time. Small courts are quick individually but the walking between them adds up — which is why timing each template separately (rather than "2 hours doing lines") tells you which layouts actually pay. SwardOps' line-marking checklist records a split time per template as the crew tick them off, so after a month you know your real minutes per pitch type.

What to charge

Build it from the numbers above: paint + machine share + operator time at your loaded rate + travel + margin. As a 2026 sanity check, UK overmarking rates commonly land at £30–£60 per adult football pitch for regular fortnightly work (paint included), more for initial marks, multi-sport summer sets priced per layout from the metres table. The contractors who win schools work quote the whole seasonal set — winter pitches plus the summer athletics/rounders conversion — as one seasonal price built from metreage.

Don't forget the season switch

Schools flip from winter pitches to summer athletics layouts around April/May and back in September. Both the marking sets and the price should be seasonal — a summer set with a 400 m track is several times the metreage of the winter football set on the same field.