4 Bedroom House Painting Costs SA 2026 - Get Free Quotes

Painting a Four Bedroom Home in South Australia

Four bedrooms is where a painting job stops being a few days' work and becomes a project, and where the variables that barely registered on a smaller house start driving the figure. Interior repainting of a four bedroom home in South Australia runs $5,000 to $12,000, rising to $8,000 to $18,000 where the house is two storey or carries five bedrooms. Exterior repainting sits at $8,000 to $15,000 for a large single storey and $10,000 to $25,000 once there is a second floor. The wide spread is not vagueness, it reflects how differently four bedroom homes are built in this state.

The useful thing to understand at this size is that economies of scale work in your favour up to a point and then stop. Spreading the setup across more rooms genuinely lowers the cost per room compared with a two bedroom house, and that benefit is real. What does not scale is access, height and complexity, and those are precisely what a four bedroom home tends to add. A second storey does not simply mean more wall, it means scaffolding, stairwell voids and working at height.

That is why the single largest question on a four bedroom quote is usually whether the house is single or two storey. Two identical floor areas, one spread across a level footprint and one stacked over two levels, can differ by half again on the exterior alone. Internally the difference is smaller but still real, concentrated in the stairwell. Answering that question first tells you which half of the range you are in.

This page covers interior and exterior pricing, the variables that matter at this size, what two storey work actually adds, how the housing stock differs across South Australia and what belongs in a written scope. It also covers staging, since a four bedroom repaint is large enough that doing it in phases is a realistic option rather than simply poor value. A painter based nearby can also return quickly if a warranty issue arises. It treats interior and exterior separately because they behave differently under the same variables.

Read the section on two storey work before assuming a quote is high. Staging is covered as well, since a repaint of this size is large enough to phase sensibly.

Figures are indicative South Australian market rates for 2026 and assume standard residential work in reasonable condition. Properties with structural cracking, salt damp, failed plaster or lead paint carry additional work, with general guidance published at sa.gov.au before painting begins. Broader interior scope sits at interior house painting, and exterior scope at exterior house painting. A quote given without anybody walking the perimeter is an estimate rather than a price.

On a two storey house that gap can run to five figures. Walk it with them rather than describing the house over the phone.

Interior Costs Across a Larger Home

With the house empty, spray application can move faster across broad walls, covered at spray painting. Four bedrooms with ceilings land around $2,000 to $4,400, working from $500 to $1,100 a room, and that is usually less than half a whole-house interior total. The rest sits in living areas, circulation, wet areas and trim, and in a four bedroom home those categories are all larger than the bedroom count suggests.

Owners consistently budget for the bedrooms and are surprised by everything else. Reading a quote by category rather than by room count avoids that.

Living areas are where four bedroom homes differ most from smaller ones. These houses commonly have two separate living spaces, a formal lounge and a family room, plus a dining area, and each runs $700 to $1,600. Open plan spaces flowing between kitchen, meals and family are priced as one larger area rather than several, which generally works in your favour. Ceiling height and window count matter more than floor area in all of them.

Wet areas multiply at this size and each is priced separately. A four bedroom home frequently has two bathrooms plus an ensuite and a laundry, at $350 to $800 each, and a kitchen at $500 to $1,200. Their size understates the work, since fixtures, cabinetry and tiling all have to be cut around by hand.

Ceilings in wet areas deserve a mould resistant product rather than standard ceiling white. Products for damp-prone rooms are covered at mould resistant coatings.

Circulation is the category that grows fastest with house size and is the most often underestimated. Hallways, entries and landings run $400 to $1,200 and a four bedroom home may have several distinct runs rather than one. Refinishing joinery is separate work, covered at kitchen cabinet painting.

A double height entry void or a stairwell is priced well above a standard hallway because of the access required. Leaving circulation out of a quote produces a visible boundary at every doorway in the house.

Trim is where a four bedroom interior quietly accumulates cost. Skirtings and architraves run $180 to $400 a room and internal doors $120 to $280 painted both sides, and a four bedroom home with twelve to fourteen doors and full trim throughout can carry $2,800 or more in that category alone. Waterborne enamels have largely replaced solvent based products in South Australia and hold colour better in this light. In exchange the cure runs longer before a door can sit against its frame.

What a Second Storey Actually Adds

The largest single variable on a four bedroom quote is whether the house has one level or two, and the difference is concentrated in the exterior. A two storey repaint runs $10,000 to $25,000 against $8,000 to $15,000 for a large single storey of comparable floor area. Most of that gap is not paint and not even labour in the ordinary sense. It is access, and access is a fixed cost that lands on the job before anybody picks up a brush.

Scaffolding is the usual answer above the first floor and it is priced separately from the painting. Hire and erection on a two storey house runs into thousands and scales with the perimeter and the duration rather than with the wall area, which means a slow job costs more in scaffold than a fast one. Elevated work platforms are an alternative on some sites and rope access on others. Ask which method a quote assumes and see it as its own line.

Working at height slows everything down independently of the access cost. A painter on scaffolding carries less, moves more deliberately and cannot simply step back to check a line, so the same square metre takes longer at five metres than at two.

Fall protection requirements apply and are administered by SafeWork SA. A contractor who describes their harness and anchor arrangements has thought about it.

Internally the second storey adds less than people expect, with one exception. Bedrooms upstairs are the same job as bedrooms downstairs, but the stairwell is not. A stairwell void with a raked ceiling needs platform or trestle access built inside the house, cannot be reached from a step ladder and frequently takes a day on its own. Mention the stairwell specifically when requesting quotes, since a painter who has not seen it has not priced it.

Adelaide Hills and sloping sites complicate the single against two storey distinction. A nominally single storey house on a steep block can have one elevation sitting several metres above ground, which brings scaffolding into a job that looks straightforward from the street. Scaffolding on a nominally single storey house is a genuine requirement, not an upsell.

Walk the perimeter with the painter rather than describing the house over the phone. Scaffold hire that runs an extra fortnight because the job slipped is a cost somebody pays.

Exterior Repainting on a Large Home

Exterior repainting of a large single storey four bedroom home runs $8,000 to $15,000, and $10,000 to $25,000 once there is a second floor. Measured against wall area the rate is $18 to $40 a square metre, and the position within that range is driven by substrate and condition rather than by size. Two houses of identical footprint in the same street can differ by many thousands. The difference is what the walls are doing rather than how big they are.

Preparation accounts for most of the variation and almost all of the labour. A wall needing washing and spot priming sits at the bottom, and one that is chalking, cracked, previously poorly patched or carrying failed coating sits at the top. Chalking is the common South Australian condition and it is easy to test by rubbing a dark cloth across a north or west facing wall. Powder on the cloth means the binder has degraded under ultraviolet exposure, and a stabilising primer becomes necessary.

Substrate sets the specification as well as the price. Rendered and brick veneer homes are straightforward, while weatherboard and clad sit higher at $6,000 to $16,000 because every board has a top and bottom edge cut by hand. Solid stone needs particular care, since bluestone, sandstone and limestone walls need to breathe and an impermeable coating traps moisture inside them. Painting previously unpainted stone is effectively permanent. Heritage fabric sits at heritage house painting.

Eaves, fascia and trim are frequently quoted separately at $1,500 to $4,000 and are worth pricing both ways. On a large home with sound walls, refreshing the trim alone lifts the appearance considerably for a fraction of a full repaint. Being shaded and seldom rinsed by rain, eaves fail before the walls do. On pre-1990 homes they may be asbestos cement rather than timber, which changes the preparation entirely and must be established before anybody sands.

Detail and articulation move the rate more than owners expect on larger homes. A plain rectangular elevation is fast, while the same area broken up by gables, dormers, a return verandah, decorative brackets and multiple window styles takes considerably longer because every edge is cut by hand. Four bedroom homes tend to have more of that articulation than smaller ones. This alone can put a third between two houses of equal wall area.

Coordinating With Roof, Gutters and Other Trades

On a four bedroom exterior repaint there is a genuine opportunity most owners miss, which is that the access you are already paying for can serve more than one trade. Scaffolding erected for painting is equally useful for gutter replacement, fascia repair, roof work and solar installation, and hiring it once for several trades is dramatically cheaper than hiring it three times. That coordination is worth raising before the job is booked rather than afterwards. Most painters will hold scaffold for an extra few days if asked in advance.

Gutters and fascia are the obvious candidates because they sit exactly where the painter is working. Replacing a failing gutter after the scaffold has come down means paying for access twice, and a fresh fascia coat applied before the new gutter goes on is neater than working around it.

Ask the painter whether they can hold the scaffold for an extra few days. Most will, and the marginal hire cost is small.

Roof work follows the same logic though it needs more care with sequencing. Roof coating and tile repointing generate debris and traffic that can damage a fresh wall finish, so the roof should be completed before the walls are painted rather than after. Roof scope sits at roof painting. Getting the order wrong means touching up newly painted walls at the end.

Windows and glazing are worth checking at the same time. Timber window frames that are being repainted may have failed putty, rotted sills or seized sashes, and repairing those while the access is in place costs far less than returning later. A painter will usually point out what needs a carpenter rather than a brush. Asking them to flag it during preparation is a reasonable request. Anyone who has not looked at the stairwell has not priced it.

The practical approach is to walk the whole exterior once before booking anything, listing everything at height that needs attention over the next few years. Bringing that list forward into a single access window is the single biggest saving available on a two storey property. Bringing that work forward costs planning rather than extra budget. Most owners only realise it after the scaffold has gone.

What Moves a Four Bedroom Quote

Storey count is the first and largest variable at this size and it mostly affects the exterior. Everything else being equal, a second floor brings scaffolding, slower work at height and a stairwell void, and those three together account for most of the gap between a $12,000 and a $22,000 exterior quote. Establish it before comparing any figures. It explains more of the spread than any other single factor.

Occupancy is the second and it is the one within your control. A vacant house is masked once and worked straight through, whereas an occupied one means shifting furniture twice per room and restoring each space every evening. On a four bedroom interior the gap frequently runs to a third of the total, which at this size is several thousand dollars. Where a vacancy can be arranged at all, it is worth doing.

Wall condition is the third and it is established by touching rather than looking. Drummy plaster looks perfectly sound and sounds hollow when tapped, and it cannot be surface filled because anything applied over it releases when the section lets go.

Cracking, water damage and failed previous patching all sit in the same category. Patching and making good before painting sits at paint preparation and repairs.

Ceiling height matters across the whole house rather than in one room. Four bedroom homes from the 1990s onward frequently carry 2.55 or 2.7 metre ceilings rather than 2.4, and older character homes considerably more, and that difference applies to every wall in the building. On a house this size a 300 millimetre increase in ceiling height adds meaningfully to the total wall area. Measure floor to ceiling before you call.

Trim and door count is the fifth and it compounds at this size. Twelve to fourteen internal doors, full skirtings and architraves throughout, window frames in every room and sometimes cornices and picture rails are all cut in by hand rather than rolled. Counting your doors before requesting quotes is the single most useful number an owner can supply. It shapes the labour estimate more directly than floor area does. Ask for that to be stated on the written quote.

Four Bedroom Housing Across South Australia

Four bedroom homes in South Australia split fairly cleanly into three groups, and the group predicts the cost far better than the bedroom count does. Knowing which you have lets you sense-check a quote before accepting it. The differences are structural rather than cosmetic and each group carries a distinct profile for identical floor area. The three groups below cover most of the four bedroom stock in this state.

Each carries a distinct cost profile for identical floor area. Identifying yours before you call makes the whole conversation shorter.

Project homes from the 1990s onward across the northern and southern growth corridors are the most common four bedroom type in this state. Plasterboard on timber frames, ceilings at 2.55 or 2.7 metres, open plan living and simple trim make them predictable to quote, and three prices usually land close together. The main variable is whether the builder's original finish was a single coat over a sealer, which shows joints in raking light and needs two coats to cover properly. Recently completed homes are covered at new home painting.

Two storey homes in the same corridors are the second group and the most expensive to maintain externally. The internal job is little different from a single storey of the same size beyond the stairwell, but the exterior brings scaffolding every time it is repainted. That is a recurring cost over the life of the house rather than a one-off. Factoring it into the maintenance cycle rather than treating each repaint as a surprise is the sensible approach.

Extended and renovated older homes are the third group and the most variable. A four bedroom house created by adding to a 1920s villa carries two construction types under one roof, with solid plaster on masonry in the original portion and plasterboard in the extension. Those behave differently under filling and sanding, and the junction between them is where seasonal cracking concentrates. Lead paint should be assumed in the original portion if it predates 1970, and management options sit at lead paint removal.

Rural and regional four bedroom homes across the Barossa, the Clare Valley, the Fleurieu, the Limestone Coast and the Riverland frequently sit on larger blocks with more articulated elevations. Stone and solid brick construction is far more common outside the metropolitan area, which changes the exterior specification considerably. Timber decking and fencing is separate work at deck and fence painting. Coastal properties carry airborne salt that shortens the recoat cycle. Confirm the wall construction before assuming an Adelaide rate transfers.

Choosing a Scheme for a Larger Home

Colour decisions carry more weight on a four bedroom house than a smaller one, simply because there is more of every surface and the cost of changing your mind is higher. A repaint of this size is also a decision you live with for a decade or more, so it is worth spending real time on before the crew arrives rather than during. Painters will generally hold a start date for a week while colours are settled. Very few will happily change them on day three.

Test on the actual walls rather than choosing from a chip, and test in more than one room. South Australian light is strong and clear for much of the year, and a colour chosen under showroom fluorescents frequently reads several shades lighter and cooler once it is on a wall with that light across it. A north facing room and a south facing room will read the same paint quite differently. Paint sample patches at least A3 sized and look at them morning, midday and evening.

Limit the number of colours rather than maximising them. A four bedroom home with a different colour in every bedroom costs more in labour than one with a consistent scheme, because each change means cutting in a new boundary, cleaning equipment and often a separate tin with waste at the end. Two or three colours across a whole house is a practical scheme. Six is an expensive one that rarely looks better.

Dark colours need more coats and better preparation, which has a cost implication as well as an aesthetic one. Deep bases carry less opacity, so three coats is common rather than two, and every imperfection in the wall shows more under a dark finish.

On a four bedroom house that additional coat is a meaningful line rather than a rounding error. Ask whether the quote assumes two coats or three on the colours you have chosen.

Think about how the scheme ages as well as how it looks new. Strong colours on walls that take afternoon sun through western windows fade faster, and a saturated feature wall that looks striking in year one can look tired by year four. Keeping strong colours to walls out of direct afternoon sun is the simple answer. Mid tones and warm whites hold their appearance far longer in this climate.

Staging a Large Repaint

A four bedroom repaint is large enough that doing it in phases becomes a realistic option rather than simply poor value, which is not true on a smaller house. The setup cost is still repeated with each phase, but on a job of this size that repetition is a smaller proportion of the total. Where budget rather than convenience is the constraint, staging is worth pricing rather than dismissing. That said, staging badly costs more than not staging at all.

The next paragraphs set out how to do it without wasting the saving. Grouping by area rather than by room is what keeps the saving intact.

The right way to stage is by area rather than by room. Doing all the bedrooms and the upstairs in one phase and the living areas, kitchen and circulation in another repeats the setup twice rather than eight times, and it keeps colour boundaries at natural junctions like doorways and landings. Doing one room at a time is the version that wastes money. Ask the painter to propose a two or three phase sequence.

Interior first is usually the right order where both are needed. Interior work is not weather dependent and can be scheduled with certainty, while exterior work needs a seasonal window and carries the risk of delay. Getting the inside done through winter and the outside in spring uses the calendar rather than fighting it. It also spreads the cost across two financial periods, which some owners find useful.

Where staging across years, keep the colour formulations and product details rather than relying on memory. Paint applied a year apart does not match exactly even from the same formulation, so plan the phase boundaries at points where a small difference will not show. A doorway or an internal corner hides it, and the middle of a long wall does not. Take a photograph of every tin label before the crew clears the site.

The exception worth naming is exterior preparation. Where the exterior needs sizeable preparation, staging it across two seasons generally costs more than doing it once, because the preparation and the access are set up twice. If the exterior is the part that needs attention, it is usually better to do all of it in one season and stage the interior instead. Preparation and access are the two costs that do not want repeating.

Interior work, trim and individual elevations all stage without penalty. Set the phase boundaries so that preparation and access each happen once.

Empty Against Occupied

The largest saving available on a four bedroom interior is painting it empty, and at this size the dollar difference is sizeable. A vacant house is masked once and worked through continuously, finishing in five to nine days, while the same house occupied takes nine to thirteen and costs around a third more. On a $9,000 interior that is $3,000 for the privilege of keeping the furniture in place. It is worth arranging a vacancy where one exists at all.

The mechanics are the same as on a smaller house but multiplied. There is no furniture to shift or cover in eight or nine rooms, no need to leave spaces usable each evening, no working around a household and no risk to belongings. An empty house also lets a crew work several rooms in parallel, so the fixed drying time between coats stops being dead time. On a four bedroom house there are enough rooms for three painters to work efficiently.

The window between settlement and moving in is worth protecting, and on a house this size a week is realistic rather than optimistic. Painting before floor coverings and furniture arrive removes the two largest sources of protection work. With new flooring, schedule painting after the sanding and before the carpet goes down, because sanding throws dust onto wet paint and carpet laying does not. Small jobs and touch-ups sit at handyman painting.

For investment properties the tenancy change is the obvious window. A vacancy that already exists costs nothing extra to use, and a full repaint completed in it is both cheaper and faster than the same work around a tenant.

Most agents will sequence painting with cleaning and repairs so the property relets sooner. Weeks of lost rent usually outweigh what the painting costs.

Where the house cannot be emptied, staging by area is the workable compromise and it works better on a four bedroom home than a smaller one. There are enough distinct zones to phase sensibly without the household losing access to essential rooms. Tell the painter the constraint up front so the sequence can be planned. Knowing the household is staying changes how the job is approached from day one.

How Long the Work Takes

An empty four bedroom interior takes five to nine working days with a small crew, covering walls, ceilings and trim throughout. The same house occupied stretches to nine or thirteen for the reasons above. Exterior repainting runs eight to thirteen days on a rendered or brick veneer single storey and longer on two storey work where scaffolding has to be erected and struck. Those are working days, and exterior figures are weather dependent in a way interior ones are not. Builder specifications in those corridors are consistent enough to quote from the estate and the build year.

Recoat waiting is the fixed constraint, and adding painters does not reduce it. Touch dry comes within the hour on water based wall paint, but the recoat window is two to four hours and it holds regardless of how many painters attend. What extra painters buy is more rooms progressing in the same window. A four bedroom house is large enough that two or three painters genuinely help, which is not true of a two bedroom cottage.

Scaffolding adds days at both ends of an exterior job rather than in the middle. Erection and striking are separate operations with their own schedule, and on a two storey house they can add two or three days to the overall duration without adding any painting. Ask whether the quoted timeframe includes the scaffold or only the painting. The two answers produce very different completion dates.

Adelaide's dry climate works in your favour for interior work most of the year. Dry air keeps curing on schedule and recoat timing predictable, which is why interior work is easiest to book here over winter. A cold damp week slows recoat times and a heatwave can flash off a cut-in line before it is rolled out. Opening the house up while work proceeds helps in both cases.

Build a buffer into any timeline that matters. Settlement dates, tenancy starts and family events are poor things to schedule tightly against a repaint of this size, because patching that reveals more patching is the usual cause of an overrun.

Older homes with solid plaster are the most likely to run over. Ask what they anticipate once preparation begins in earnest.

Adelaide Pricing Patterns

Pricing across metropolitan Adelaide tracks construction type, storey count and ceiling height far more closely than suburb. Equal floor areas in two different suburbs can be half again apart, and the cause lies in how each is built rather than where it sits. A 1995 project home in Golden Grove and a 1920s villa extended to four bedrooms in Unley are different jobs regardless of what either is worth. What matters is the construction, not the address.

The growth corridors north and south are where four bedroom stock concentrates and where quotes cluster most tightly. Angle Vale, Munno Para, Blakeview, Andrews Farm, Seaford and Aldinga carry large volumes of project housing built to similar specifications, and painters working those areas price them quickly and keenly. Where one quote is a clear outlier in those suburbs, ask what it includes or excludes rather than assuming a better rate. Builder specifications in those corridors are consistent enough that a local painter can often quote accurately from the estate and the build year.

Consistent specifications mean fewer surprises once work begins. Mentioning the estate and the build year speeds up a quote considerably.

The inner and eastern suburbs carry the highest rates for structural reasons. Extended older homes mean two construction types under one roof, ceilings above three metres in the original portion, ornate cornices cut by hand and frequently lead paint. Each adds labour rather than margin. A painter quoting an extended villa at project home rates has probably not inspected it properly.

Access is the metropolitan variable that catches people out on larger homes. Narrow blocks, no off-street parking, established gardens against the walls and neighbouring buildings close to the boundary all complicate scaffolding and add setup time. On a two storey exterior those constraints can determine which access method is possible at all. Mention them when requesting quotes rather than leaving them to be discovered.

Asking a painter what they see most often in your area is genuinely useful at this size. Operators working a particular corridor constantly know the builder specifications, the typical ceiling heights and the common defects before opening anything up. That shows in both the accuracy of the quote and the absence of variations. Request a local reference on a house of comparable age and construction.

Regional South Australia

Regional pricing on a four bedroom home follows metropolitan structure with travel added, and at this size that component is a small proportion of the total. Regional work is therefore better value on a large house than on a small one, where mobilisation can dominate. The mobilisation of scaffolding on a two storey regional job is the exception and should be asked about specifically. Asking whether scaffolding has to travel is worth doing on a two storey regional job.

It is the one component that can dominate a country quote. Some regional operators own their own and some hire it in, which changes the figure.

Established painters operate out of Mount Gambier, Whyalla, Port Lincoln, Murray Bridge, Victor Harbor and Port Augusta, pricing near metropolitan levels. Work in outlying towns is generally run out of those bases, and the travel component follows from that. Asking a painter where they are based is a reasonable first question and tells you how quickly they can return for a warranty issue. It also indicates how readily they can come back if something needs attention. Someone based two hours off is a different arrangement from a local operator.

Inside work travels better than outside work, being independent of weather and therefore schedulable with confidence. A painter can commit to a fortnight of interior work in a country town regardless of forecast, while exterior work risks a wasted trip. Where both are needed, combining them into one mobilisation gives the painter weather-independent work to fall back on. That flexibility is worth something to them and frequently shows in the price.

Regional four bedroom homes are often more articulated than metropolitan ones, with return verandahs, multiple gables and larger eaves overhangs. That detail adds hand cutting on the exterior and it is a legitimate cost driver rather than padding. Ask for eaves and verandah work to be itemised separately so you can see what it is contributing. Verandah ceilings in particular are slow work and belong on their own line.

Along the Fleurieu, the Yorke and Eyre Peninsulas and the Limestone Coast there is an exterior factor that inland properties escape. Salt carried on the air settles on walls, finds any flaw in the film and cuts the recoat interval appreciably. Those jobs need a fresh water wash down before any coating. Budgeting for a shorter exterior recoat interval on a coastal property is realistic.

What to Look Out For

Press for the specific preparation included rather than a generic statement. Preparation is most of the labour and the only part nobody sees once the job is finished, so a quote describing it as required has committed the painter to nothing measurable.

A scope that itemises washing, filling, sanding and priming is one you can verify on site. Asking it distinguishes quotes far better than comparing the totals does.

On any two storey quote, establish the access method and see it costed separately. Scaffolding, elevated work platforms and rope access are very different propositions with very different prices, and a quote that folds access into a square metre rate is hiding the largest variable in the job. Ask how long the scaffold will be standing, since hire scales with duration. Two extra weeks of standing scaffold because the program slipped is money somebody has to find.

Confirm the coat count and whether it means two coats of colour or a primer plus one finish coat. Each gets called two coats and the two finish quite differently where the colour is changing. Going from dark to pale, check that a blocking primer has been priced in. Finding a third coat is needed once work is under way turns it into a variation. Extended homes are where two construction types meet and where seasonal cracking concentrates.

Check whether ceilings, trim and doors are in scope or quoted separately, since on a four bedroom home that distinction can account for $3,000 or more. Have each painter break them out separately, since that is what makes three quotes comparable. Without that itemisation you are comparing different jobs. Ask for the itemisation at the enquiry rather than after the quotes arrive.

Painting and decorating is building work in South Australia, so contracts above the licensing threshold need a licensed building contractor registered with Consumer and Business Services. Verify the licence number against the public register and request a certificate of currency for public liability insurance. On a job of this value both are worth two minutes. Neither question is unreasonable and both are routine on a job of this value.

Licensing, Insurance and Standards on a Larger Job

A four bedroom repaint is comfortably above the licensing threshold, so a building work contractor's licence issued by Consumer and Business Services is required. Check the number on the CBS public register before any deposit changes hands.

Building indemnity insurance is the item owners most often miss on jobs of this size. Since 15 January 2026 carrying out building work without it, where it is required, attracts a $20,000 expiation fee, which is four times the fee for working unlicensed. Ask whether BII applies to your contract and, if it does, ask for the certificate before work starts rather than afterwards.

The same reforms brought $5,000 expiations for unlicensed work, for advertising outside your licence, for non-compliant contracts and for improper payment demands, with repeat offences reaching $150,000 for individuals and $550,000 for companies. New offences also cover hiring unlicensed subcontractors and using another contractor's licence number.

On a two storey job the safety framework matters as much as the licensing one. Work at height is regulated under South Australian work health and safety law administered by SafeWork SA, and scaffolding above four metres requires a licensed scaffolder. A contractor who can describe their access method, their anchor points and who is erecting the scaffold has thought about it properly.

Workmanship sits under AS/NZS 2311:2017, Guide to the painting of buildings, from Standards Australia. Bare plaster and bare timber want three coats rather than two, and sprayed plasterboard should be back-rolled on the first and last coats. Both are easy to write into a scope and difficult to argue about afterwards.

Brands commonly specified across South Australia include Dulux, Haymes, Wattyl and Taubmans, each publishing technical data sheets that name the primer, film build and recoat interval for the substrate. Broader guidance sits with house painters in SA.

Getting Comparable Quotes

Three quotes on a four bedroom home are only useful if all three price the same work, and at this value a written brief is worth the effort it takes. Without it the cheapest quote is usually the one covering the least. A page covering rooms, surfaces, storey count, timing and colour is enough to work from. Send the same brief to all three so the comparison holds.

State the storey count, the approximate floor area and whether the block slopes. Those three determine the access method and therefore the largest single cost on the exterior. A painter cannot price scaffolding for a house they have not seen described accurately. Getting it wrong at this stage produces a quote that will be revised.

List every surface room by room and say explicitly whether ceilings and trim are in or out. Include the stairwell, the entry, every hallway run and the laundry, since these are the items most often omitted and most awkward to add later. A line dropped at quoting stage costs nothing, while one added later is a variation. A line removed from a quote is far easier than a variation added to an invoice.

State the occupancy position and your preferred dates up front. That detail moves the interior price by around a third, and a painter cannot allow for it unless told. If the timing is flexible, say so, since a painter who can fit you around a larger job will often price accordingly. Flexibility on dates is a genuine bargaining position in this trade. On a two storey job that position is worth settling before the scaffold goes up.

Ask each painter to itemise preparation, access, walls, ceilings, trim and doors as separate lines. That structure exposes immediately where one quote assumed sound walls and another allowed for patching, or where one has scaffolding and another has not. It also shows which element to drop if the total needs to come down. Ask for that breakdown and most painters will provide it.

Making the Decision

On a four bedroom home the quotes carry enough money that the differences between them deserve real attention. It is rarely about which painter is cheapest and almost always about scope, access method and whether the person quoting understood the building. Compare the scopes first and the totals become interpretable. The cheapest total is frequently the narrowest scope rather than the best value.

Where quotes differ widely, the reason is almost always preparation, access or scope rather than margin. Ask the outlier directly what they allowed for that the others did not, or what they left out. A painter who has priced proper scaffolding where another has assumed ladders is not more expensive, they are quoting a different and safer job. That distinction matters at height.

Favour the painter who walked the whole property over the one who quoted fastest. Someone who walked the perimeter, looked at the stairwell, tapped a wall and asked about the extension is pricing your house rather than an average one.

Speed of quoting is not a virtue on a job this size, and the fastest quote frequently carries the most assumptions. Ask what they found rather than only what they charge.

Have the scope recorded in writing before any deposit, covering the access method, the product range, the coat count and the position if the walls prove worse once work begins. On a job of this value a payment schedule tied to completed stages rather than to dates is also worth agreeing. Where a dispute cannot be settled directly, SACAT is the forum that hears it. Staged payments against completed work protect both parties equally.

Keep a record of the colours and products with your house documents. On a house this size touch-ups over the following years are inevitable, and they are far easier with the original specification than without it. Record the labels before the tins go, and ask for any surplus to stay behind marked up by room. A labelled tin of the original finish beats any later attempt at matching.