Plastered wall or plasterboard: which suits your renovation

What wet plastering and plasterboard actually involve

Wet plastering means applying a cement-lime or gypsum-based render directly onto the existing wall, in one or two coats, then sanding it smooth once it has cured. It bonds to the wall itself, so the finished surface follows the wall's own shape unless a lot of material is built up to correct it.

Plasterboard work means fixing sheets of gypsum board to a metal or timber frame, or gluing them directly to the wall with adhesive dabs, then taping and filling the joints. The frame creates a new, independent surface in front of the old one, which is what makes it good at hiding problems the wall itself has.

Which one suits a crooked Soviet-era wall

Many panel block and brick walls built from the 1960s to the 1980s are out of true by a noticeable margin, sometimes several centimetres over a wall's length. Wet plaster can correct small dips and bumps, but correcting a genuinely leaning wall means very thick coats applied in stages, which takes time, adds weight, and costs more the further the wall is out of plumb.

A stud or dot-and-dab plasterboard wall is built to a plumb line independently of what is behind it, so it straightens things out in one pass regardless of how uneven the original wall is. For a wall that is only slightly rough, plaster is usually the simpler and cheaper route; for one that is visibly leaning or bowed, plasterboard is normally the more sensible fix.

Speed and mess during the renovation

Wet plastering is wetter and slower. Each coat needs to dry before the next stage, which in an unheated or poorly ventilated Estonian flat during winter can stretch a job out over a week or more per room, and the process generates a fine dust when the dried plaster is sanded.

Plasterboard goes up dry and is ready for filling and painting much sooner, often within a couple of days per room including the taped joints drying. There is still dust from cutting boards and sanding the joint compound, but it is far less than a full wet-plaster job, and there is no long wait for a render to cure through.

• Wet plaster: several days of drying per coat, more dust at the sanding stage
• Plasterboard: frame and boarding in a day or two, joints ready to fill quickly
• Plasterboard is the better choice if you are working room by room and need each one usable sooner
• Wet plaster suits a gutted flat where you can leave the drying time uninterrupted

Sound insulation and how much space each takes up

A plastered wall keeps the room's original dimensions almost untouched, since the coat is usually only a few millimetres to a couple of centimetres thick. This matters in smaller flats, particularly in older Kalamaja or Nõmme buildings where every centimetre of floor area counts.

A plasterboard stud wall takes up more depth, typically several centimetres once the frame and board are in, and that eats into the room. In exchange, a stud wall with insulation in the cavity between board and old wall usually deadens sound noticeably better than a thin plaster skim, which is worth considering on a wall that borders a noisy stairwell or neighbour.

Price and when each option works out cheaper

Wet plastering tends to be cheaper on a wall that only needs light correction, since the labour and material go directly onto the existing surface with no frame to build. The cost rises quickly once several thick coats are needed to true up a badly out-of-plumb wall.

Plasterboard has a fairly consistent cost regardless of how uneven the wall underneath is, because the frame absorbs the unevenness rather than the material. For a single crooked wall it is often the cheaper overall option once you account for how much plaster a bad wall would otherwise need. We quote plasterboard work from 28 € per job, and painting and decorating from 12 € per job, with a fixed price given once we have seen the wall or photos of it.

Which option we usually recommend

For a wall that is basically flat and only needs smoothing before paint, we would normally suggest plaster: it is simpler, keeps the room's size, and there is less to go wrong. For a wall that is visibly out of true, damp-affected, or needs better sound separation from a neighbour, plasterboard is usually the more practical answer even though it takes a little more depth off the room.

In practice a flat often needs both: plaster on the straighter walls, plasterboard on the one that is not, followed by the same painting finish across the room so it all reads as one job. We are happy to look at photos of a specific wall and say honestly which route we would take before any work starts.