House Painting Cost VIC 2026 - Get Free Quotes

What House Painting Costs in Victoria

Interior repainting of a three bedroom home in Victoria runs $3,500 to $9,000 covering walls, ceilings and trim, with a two bedroom home at $2,500 to $6,000 and a four bedroom at $5,000 to $12,000. A full exterior repaint of a standard three or four bedroom house runs $5,000 to $10,500, or $18 to $40 a square metre of wall. Weatherboard sits separately at $6,000 to $16,000 because every board edge is cut in by hand. The broader service is set out under house painting.

Individual rooms price more usefully for a partial job. Bedroom walls run $350 to $700, a room including its ceiling $500 to $1,100, a living or dining room $700 to $1,600 and a hallway $400 to $1,200, with skirtings and architraves adding $180 to $400 a room.

The single largest variable on an interior is whether the house is occupied. An empty house is masked once and worked through continuously, while an occupied one needs furniture moved twice in every room and each space made liveable again each evening, and the gap frequently runs to a third of the total. On the exterior the largest variable is condition rather than size. Two houses of identical footprint in the same street can differ by thousands, and the difference sits in preparation, which is most of the labour and the only part nobody can see once the job is finished.

Figures on this page are indicative Victorian rates for 2026 and assume ordinary residential work. Heritage properties, homes with lead paint, weatherboard in poor repair and two storey work all carry additional cost covered further down.

The Victorian Rule That Applies to Painting Specifically

Victoria regulates domestic building work through the Domestic Building Contracts Act 1995, available through Victorian legislation, and there is a provision in it that applies to painting directly and that most homeowners have never heard of. A major domestic building contract is required for domestic building work worth more than $10,000 where that work involves more than one trade. Consumer Affairs Victoria publishes the list of work that falls outside the requirement when it is the only trade involved, and painting is explicitly on it, alongside plastering, tiling, electrical work, glazing, insulating, plumbing and installing floor coverings. That means a painting job on its own does not require a major domestic building contract regardless of what it costs. A $20,000 whole-house repaint by a painter doing nothing but painting sits outside the requirement, while the same painting forming part of a renovation with other trades does not.

The distinction matters because the protections attach to the contract. Where no major domestic building contract is required, there is no domestic building insurance obligation and no registered builder requirement, which puts more weight on the written agreement you make yourself. Consumer guarantees still apply in full, and they apply even without a signed contract. Work must be performed in a workmanlike manner, with reasonable care and skill, and using materials fit for purpose, and those implied warranties are the backbone of any complaint.

A written quote and scope is therefore worth more in Victoria on a painting job than many owners realise, because it is the document doing the work that a building contract would otherwise do. Guidance for consumers is published by Consumer Affairs Victoria.

Who Regulates Building Work in Victoria Now

The Victorian regulatory landscape changed considerably over the past two years, and anyone searching for older guidance will find references to bodies that no longer operate independently. The Building and Plumbing Commission was established on 1 July 2025 and brought together three previously separate organisations. It absorbed the Building and Plumbing Commission, which handled registration and enforcement, Domestic Building Dispute Resolution Victoria, which handled conciliation, and the domestic building insurance function of the Victorian Managed Insurance Authority. Practically that means there is now a single regulator for the building system, and registrations and licences issued under the previous arrangements transitioned automatically and remain valid until their usual expiry.

A further change took effect on 1 July 2026 with the First Resort Home Warranty Scheme, which replaced domestic building insurance for eligible contracts signed from that date. The significant difference is that it is a first resort scheme, so an owner can claim without waiting for a builder to become insolvent, die or disappear. Existing domestic building insurance policies continue on their own terms, so a contract signed before 1 July 2026 with a certificate issued under the old scheme stays under that scheme. General information is published at vic.gov.au.

None of this changes the painting position directly, since single-trade painting sits outside the contract and insurance requirements. What it does change is where a dispute goes, and single-trade disputes are filed directly with VCAT instead of going through the commission's conciliation process first.

Interior Painting Costs Room by Room

Pricing an interior room by room shows where the money goes and makes a quote far easier to read than a single whole-house figure. Bedroom walls run $350 to $700 and a bedroom including its ceiling $500 to $1,100, so three bedrooms done together land around $1,500 to $3,300. The spread inside each range comes from wall condition and ceiling height, not from floor area. Living and dining rooms run $700 to $1,600 each and are the largest single lines on most quotes.

Window count matters more than room size, since every frame and reveal is cut in by hand, and open plan spaces flowing into a kitchen are priced as one larger area. Interior painting breaks those rates down further. Kitchens run $500 to $1,200 and bathrooms or laundries $350 to $800, both taking disproportionate time for their size because of the cutting in around fixtures and cabinetry. Ceilings in wet areas deserve a mould resistant product rather than standard ceiling white, and ceiling painting and repair covers that surface separately. Hallways and stairwells at $400 to $1,200 are the line most often left out of a first quote.

A hallway touches every other room, so omitting it leaves a visible boundary at every doorway, and it is almost entirely edges and architraves, not open wall. Trim is where an interior quietly accumulates cost. Skirtings and architraves run $180 to $400 a room and internal doors $120 to $280 painted both sides, so a house with ten doors and full trim can carry $2,000 or more in that category. Cabinetry is a separate specialty at kitchen cabinet painting.

Exterior Painting and Victorian Weatherboard

A full exterior repaint of a standard three or four bedroom house runs $5,000 to $10,500, with larger or heavily detailed single storey homes at $8,000 to $15,000 and two storey work $10,000 to $25,000. Measured against wall area the rate is $18 to $40 a square metre. Exterior painting sets out the full range. Weatherboard deserves its own figure in Victoria because the state has so much of it. At $6,000 to $16,000 across all sizes, a weatherboard house costs more than a rendered one of the same footprint, and the reason is linear cutting, not area.

Every board has a top and bottom edge that must be cut in by hand, not rolled, so a hundred square metres of weatherboard carries several times the edge work of the same area in render. Board condition adds a second variable, since split, cupped or rotted boards need replacing before any coating goes on. That repair work is a carpentry job rather than a painting one and should be quoted separately. A painter who identifies failed boards and recommends replacement before painting is giving you the right advice, and weatherboard painting covers the coating that follows.

Preparation drives the position within every exterior range. A wall needing washing and spot priming sits at the bottom, and one that is chalking, cracked or carrying failed coating sits at the top, because the labour before any colour goes on is several times greater. Eaves, fascia and trim can be quoted separately at $1,500 to $4,000 and are worth pricing both ways. On a house with sound walls, refreshing the trim alone lifts the appearance considerably for a fraction of a full repaint, and eaves, fascia and soffit painting prices that on its own.

Victorian Weather and When to Paint

Victoria imposes a narrower exterior painting window than the warmer states, and working with it rather than against it affects both the finish and how long it lasts. Spring and autumn are the reliable seasons. Temperatures sit in the range most acrylic exterior products are formulated for, there is enough settled weather to complete preparation, priming and two coats, and established painters book those periods well in advance. Winter is the season to avoid for exterior coating across most of the state. Most products specify a minimum application temperature commonly around ten degrees, Melbourne mornings through July frequently sit below that, and overnight dew on an uncured film ruins a day's work.

The problem extends beyond the daytime reading. A coating applied at three in the afternoon is still curing at midnight, so the overnight minimum matters as much as the maximum, and inland and elevated areas including the Dandenongs, the Macedon Ranges and the high country run colder again. Summer brings the opposite problem on exposed elevations. A wall in direct afternoon sun reaches temperatures well above air temperature, and coating applied to a hot wall flashes off before it can flow out and bond properly, which is why crews follow the shade around a building.

Interior work is largely unaffected and can be scheduled with confidence year round, which is why winter is the easiest season to book it. Postponing exterior work on a poor forecast protects the job, and general weather planning information is available through vic.gov.au.

Asbestos in Older Victorian Homes

Lead is not the only hazard in older Victorian housing, and painting work frequently disturbs the other one. Fibro cladding, eaves lining and some wall sheeting installed before 1990 may contain asbestos cement. It looks like a flat or lightly textured sheet, not a board, and houses across the inner north, the west and the older outer suburbs carry a great deal of it. Intact and painted asbestos sheeting is not dangerous and does not need removing. The risk comes entirely from disturbance, which means cutting, drilling, sanding, breaking and pressure cleaning are all activities to rule out before a painter starts.

Pressure cleaning is the error most often made in the lead-up to an exterior repaint. It drives water through the sheet, releases fibres and washes contaminated slurry into the soil and the stormwater system. Eaves lining is the element most often disturbed on a painting job specifically, since it sits directly in the path of preparation work on a roofline. Asking a painter how they intend to prepare fibro before any coating is a reasonable question, and consumer guidance sits with Consumer Affairs Victoria.

Where sheeting is damaged or needs replacing, that is licensed removal work instead of painting, and it should be priced separately. Weatherboard repair and replacement handles damaged boards and sheeting.

Lead Paint in Older Victorian Homes

Victoria has a large stock of housing predating 1970, and any paint applied before then should be assumed to contain lead until testing establishes otherwise. The hazard is in the preparation rather than the intact paint film. Sanding, grinding, heat stripping and pressure cleaning all mobilise lead into dust or into the soil beneath the wall, and that contamination persists in the garden where children play and vegetables grow. Dry power sanding is the specific practice to rule out. It produces fine dust that travels across the property and into neighbouring ones, and wet sanding, chemical stripping and careful containment with drop sheets are the accepted alternatives.

Interior work carries the same issue with less dispersal and more concentration. Sanding lead paint inside a house spreads dust through the whole dwelling and it settles on surfaces long after the work finishes, with health guidance available from the Department of Health Victoria. Soil beneath exterior walls accumulates flakes over decades, which is the consequence owners least anticipate. Disturbing that ground during preparation spreads it further, and disposal of contaminated material is subject to waste requirements overseen by EPA Victoria.

For a small repair, containment and wet methods are the practical approach, and for a full strip the sensible answer is a contractor experienced in lead safe work. Lead paint removal covers a full strip.

Ceilings, Trim and the Lines People Forget

Ceilings and trim are where an interior quote quietly grows, and they are the two categories most often left out of a first estimate. Ceilings at $250 to $550 a room are frequently omitted on the assumption they still look acceptable. They rarely do once the walls are fresh, because a ceiling ages slowly and uniformly and the contrast only becomes obvious against new paint. Ceiling condition varies more than wall condition in older Victorian homes. Lath and plaster ceilings crack and sag, pressed metal needs different preparation entirely, and a ceiling with a past water stain needs a stain blocking primer or the mark bleeds through.

Trim is the other accumulating category. Skirtings and architraves at $180 to $400 a room and doors at $120 to $280 painted both sides mean a house with ten doors and complete trim carries around $2,000 in that line alone. Window frames deserve their own mention because they take longer than their size suggests. Timber sash windows in period homes need each pane cut in by hand, and a room with three of them can take as long to trim as it does to paint the walls.

The practical approach is to price walls, ceilings and trim as separate lines so you can see the components and defer one if needed. Ceiling painting and repair prices that line on its own.

Heritage Homes and Period Properties

Melbourne and the regional centres carry one of the largest concentrations of Victorian, Edwardian and Federation housing in the country, and painting those homes is a different exercise from painting a project home. Ceiling height is the first practical difference and it changes the arithmetic more than owners expect. A period home with ceilings between 3.2 and 3.9 metres carries a third to half again the wall area of a modern room of the same floor plan, plus platform access, not a step ladder. Ornate detail is the second.

Pressed metal ceilings, decorative cornices, ceiling roses, picture rails, fretwork and sash windows all have to be cut in by hand, and a room with elaborate trim takes longer than a larger plain one. Solid plaster on masonry behaves differently from plasterboard under filling and sanding, and lath and plaster ceilings are fragile enough to limit how aggressively they can be prepared. Both need gentler preparation than a modern plasterboard wall will tolerate. Where a property is heritage listed or sits in a heritage overlay, external colour changes can require consent. Councils apply overlays across large parts of inner Melbourne, Ballarat, Bendigo and other regional centres, and checking before choosing an exterior scheme is cheaper than repainting. Heritage home painting covers period properties in detail.

How a Repaint Runs and How Long It Takes

Painting is disruptive in a way that surprises owners who have only had a single room done, so understanding the sequence helps you plan around it. An interior repaint of a three bedroom home runs four to seven working days. The first day is preparation and masking across the whole house rather than one room, which is why nothing looks like progress until the second day.

Ceilings go first, then walls, then trim and doors last. That order matters because each stage can drop onto the one below it, and a painter working the other way around is creating rework for themselves. Occupied houses run longer than the working days suggest. Rooms have to be made liveable each evening, furniture is moved twice, not once, and bedrooms are frequently done in pairs so the household always has somewhere to sleep. Exteriors run six to fourteen days and are weather dependent throughout. A forecast that interrupts the middle of a wall is worse than one that delays the start, which is why crews will often wait for a settled run instead of beginning.

Cure time extends past the final coat. Walls take days to reach full hardness even when touch dry within hours, so hanging pictures and pushing furniture back against fresh walls is worth delaying by a week. Smaller follow-up jobs go to handyman painting and touch ups.

Preparation and Why Quotes Differ

Preparation accounts for most of the labour on any repaint and it is the single largest reason two quotes on the same house differ by thousands. The economics are unforgiving. Paint over a sound, correctly prepared surface lasts ten to fifteen years externally, while the same paint over a chalking or poorly adhered surface fails within one to three years regardless of what the tin cost, because the failure happens at the bond, not in the film. Chalking is easy to test yourself before you get quotes.

Rub a dark cloth firmly across a north or west facing wall, and if it comes away powdery the binder has broken down under ultraviolet exposure and a stabilising primer is required. Drummy plaster is the interior equivalent and it deceives owners because it looks perfectly sound. Plaster that has lost its bond to the masonry sounds hollow when tapped, cannot be surface filled, and takes any new coating off with it when it eventually releases. Fixing it is a job for plastering and gyprock repairs. Reactive clay soils across Melbourne's west, north and south east produce seasonal cracking at cornice junctions and above openings.

That movement reopens each summer regardless of the filler used, which is why flexible products and late summer timing both help. Ask what preparation a quote allows for in specific terms instead of accepting a general assurance. A scope naming what will be washed, filled, sanded and primed can be checked against what happens, and one reading prepare as required cannot. Patch-ups and single walls go to handyman painting and touch ups.

Rental Properties, Owners Corporations and Investors

Painting an investment property or a common area follows different rules from painting your own home, and the differences affect both who decides and who pays. For rental properties in Victoria, painting is generally the rental provider's responsibility as part of maintaining the premises in good repair. Fair wear and tear on wall finishes is not something a renter can be charged for at the end of a tenancy, which is a point frequently misunderstood on both sides.

Renters cannot paint without consent, and a modification made without it can be required to be reversed. The consent process and the repairs framework are both set out by Consumer Affairs Victoria. Investors weighing a repaint between tenancies should weigh the vacancy cost against the saving.

An empty property paints for around a third less and lets a full house be done in one continuous run, so a week of vacancy frequently pays for itself. Owners corporations painting common property work through a resolution and not an individual decision. Common area corridors, foyers, external walls and balconies are corporation matters, and an owner painting an external wall of their own lot unilaterally is generally altering common property. Scale changes the pricing for corporation work. A multi-storey exterior needs access equipment and traffic management that a house does not, and those are quoted as their own lines. Owners corporation and strata painting covers building-scale work.

Doing Some of It Yourself

Painting is one of the few trades where a homeowner can genuinely do part of the work and reduce the bill, provided the split is chosen sensibly. Moving furniture, taking down curtains and blinds, removing wall hangings and clearing rooms before the crew arrives is the easiest saving. It takes hours off an occupied-house premium and needs no skill at all. Minor filling and sanding is within reach on modern plasterboard walls. Nail holes, small dents and hairline cracks fill readily, and a wall presented ready to paint reduces the preparation line.

Where DIY stops paying is on anything at height, anything requiring cutting in, and anything on an older Victorian home. Ceilings, trim, sash windows and lath and plaster all take skill that shows immediately when it is absent. Exteriors are the clearest case for leaving it alone. Two storey work needs proper access equipment, weatherboard demands consistent hand cutting across every board, and a failure on an exposed wall is visible from the street for years. The practical split most painters will accommodate is that you prepare the rooms and they do everything from the walls up. Raise it at quoting stage so it is priced in rather than assumed, and handyman painting and touch ups covers the small stuff you would rather hand over.

Melbourne and Regional Victoria

Pricing across metropolitan Melbourne tracks house age and ceiling height far more closely than suburb, which surprises owners who assume a particular postcode automatically costs more. The inner suburbs carry the highest rates for structural reasons, not affluence. Older housing means solid plaster that cannot be surface filled where it has gone drummy, fragile lath and plaster ceilings, elaborate cornices cut by hand and frequently lead paint on anything pre-1970. Weatherboard concentrates through the inner north, the west and the bayside suburbs, and it prices above brick and render everywhere it appears. The middle and outer suburbs with brick veneer and plasterboard linings produce quotes that cluster tightly.

Access is the metropolitan variable owners least anticipate. Narrow blocks, shared driveways, no off-street parking and tight side access all add setup time on every visit, and inner suburban housing is where those conditions concentrate. Regional centres including Geelong, Ballarat, Bendigo, Shepparton, Warrnambool and Traralgon have their own established painters at rates close to Melbourne levels, with smaller towns generally serviced from those centres. Coastal properties along the Bellarine, the Surf Coast and the Mornington Peninsula carry salt exposure that shortens the exterior recoat cycle, and commercial painting covers larger premises.

Mould, Damp and Painting Over Problems

Melbourne's cool damp winters produce mould in more homes than owners like to admit, and painting over it is the most common wasted expense in interior work. Mould is a symptom of moisture, not a surface stain. It grows where warm moist air meets a cold surface, which is why bathrooms, south facing bedrooms, behind wardrobes on external walls and the corners of poorly ventilated rooms are the reliable locations. Painting over it without treating the cause achieves nothing beyond a few months of appearance. The spores remain, the moisture source continues, and growth returns through the new coating, sometimes within a single winter. Treating it properly means killing the growth with a suitable product, letting the surface dry fully and then addressing why the moisture was there.

Exhaust fans discharging into a roof space instead of outside, unvented bathrooms and clothes dried indoors through winter account for a great deal of it. Rising damp is a different problem again and it appears on solid masonry in older homes as a tide mark on internal walls. It needs a damp course solution, not a coating, and mould resistant paint does nothing for it. Condensation has become more common as homes have been sealed and insulated, which makes ventilation the fix rather than the paint. Raising the cause before quoting the room is the more useful advice you will get. Handyman wall and plaster repairs covers the making good beforehand.

Products, Brands and What to Specify

Product choice matters more than most owners assume and the difference in cost is smaller than the difference in outcome. The workmanship reference is AS/NZS 2311, the guide to the painting of buildings, published by Standards Australia. It sets out preparation, coating systems and inspection for domestic work, and two provisions are worth knowing: bare plaster and bare timber want three coats, not two, and where plasterboard is sprayed the first and last coats should be back-rolled. Brands commonly specified across Victoria include Dulux, Haymes, Wattyl and Taubmans, and each publishes a technical data sheet naming the correct primer, the film build and the recoat interval for a given substrate. Asking which system is quoted, and for the data sheet, is a reasonable request. Low sheen is the practical default for interior walls.

Flat paint is porous and marks easily, full gloss shows every imperfection in the wall behind it, and low sheen sits between the two and wipes down. Waterborne enamels have largely replaced solvent based products on trim and hold their colour instead of yellowing. The trade-off is a longer cure before a door can be closed against its frame, which is worth asking about instead of assuming. Colour behaves differently in Victorian light than in the northern states. A colour chosen under showroom lighting frequently reads cooler and lighter on a wall here, so testing at A3 size on the actual wall and viewing it morning and evening is worth the few days it takes. Spray painting suits large flat areas and cabinetry.

Getting the Best Value

A few decisions made before any quote is requested change the total more than negotiating the rate will. Painting between tenants or before moving in is the largest saving available and it is purely about timing. The difference between an empty and an occupied house is around a third of the interior total. Doing the whole house at once beats doing it room by room across several years.

Setup, masking and travel are shared across the job, and the per-room cost on a whole-house repaint is meaningfully lower than on a single room. Combining interior and exterior in one engagement captures the same effect on a larger scale, particularly where the painter would otherwise mobilise twice. Deferring a colour change saves more than most owners realise. Repainting in the existing colour needs fewer coats than going dark to light, and where the current scheme is acceptable, a refresh in the same colour is considerably cheaper. The false economies are cutting preparation, using cheap product on exposed elevations and skipping primer on bare substrates. Each saves a little at the time and brings the next repaint forward by years, and roof work is priced separately at roof painting.

Insurance, Registration and What Painters Actually Need

Painting sits in an unusual position in Victoria because the registration requirements that apply to builders largely do not apply to it, which makes the checks you can do more important. There is no painter registration category equivalent to a registered building practitioner for single-trade painting work. A painter is not required to hold building registration to paint a house, however large the job. Public liability insurance is therefore the most valuable thing to verify. A painter working in your home can damage flooring, furniture, fixtures and a neighbouring property, and spray work in particular carries overspray risk that can reach cars and fences.

Ask for the certificate of currency instead of accepting a verbal assurance, and check the policy is current rather than simply existing. The certificate names the insurer, the period of cover and the limit. Workers compensation matters where a painter has employees instead of working alone. Injury on your property to an uninsured worker is a situation worth avoiding through a simple question at quoting stage. Membership of a trade association is not a licence and does not substitute for insurance, though it does indicate a business operating formally. Commercial and larger-scale work carries its own arrangements at commercial painting.

What to Look Out For

Ask what preparation the quote allows for in specific terms. Preparation is most of the labour and the only part nobody sees afterwards, so a quote describing it as required has committed the painter to nothing measurable. Confirm how many coats are included and whether that means two coats of colour or a primer plus one finish coat. Both are commonly described as two coats and they produce noticeably different results on a colour change.

Check whether ceilings, trim and doors are in scope or quoted separately, since a walls-only price and a full repaint can look similar on paper while differing by thousands on a whole house. Get the written agreement right, because on a single-trade painting job it is doing more work than it would elsewhere. A major domestic building contract is not required for painting alone, so the scope, the products, the coat count and the payment terms need to be set out in your own document. Disputes go directly to VCAT. On any home built before 1970, raise lead paint before preparation is discussed, and rule out dry power sanding explicitly.

Work health and safety obligations on site are administered by WorkSafe Victoria. Be cautious of a deposit request out of proportion to the job. Painting is labour and not custom manufacture, materials are bought as needed, and a large upfront payment on a domestic repaint is worth questioning. Owners corporation work has its own process at owners corporation and strata painting.

Common Mistakes That Cost Money

A handful of avoidable errors account for most of the disappointment with residential painting, and each costs far less to prevent than to correct. Choosing on price without comparing scope is the most common. Two quotes at similar figures can cover quite different work, and the cheaper one frequently excludes ceilings, trim or both, which becomes apparent only once the walls are done. Pressure cleaning before an exterior repaint is the second and it causes two problems at once. It drives water into weatherboards and behind them, raising grain and leaving a substrate too wet to coat, and on fibro it creates a contamination problem across the property. Painting over a problem instead of fixing it is the third.

Mould returns through fresh paint within months unless the moisture source is dealt with, and rotted boards continue deteriorating under a new coating. Choosing colour from a small chip is the fourth. A colour that reads well at swatch size frequently looks considerably darker or more saturated across a whole wall, and Victorian light makes most colours read cooler than they do in a showroom. Skipping primer on bare substrates is the last and the most invisible. Bare plaster and bare timber want three coats and not two under the Australian standard, and a job finished in two over bare material will show it within a few seasons. Preparing damaged plaster falls to plastering and gyprock repairs.

Getting Comparable Quotes

Three quotes are only useful if all three price the same work, and a short written brief before you call is what makes that happen. List every surface room by room and say explicitly whether ceilings and trim are in or out. Ambiguity there is the single largest source of incomparable quotes on residential painting. Say whether the house will be occupied or empty and give the intended timing. That detail moves an interior price by around a third and a painter cannot allow for it unless told.

Name the house age and the construction, since solid plaster, lath and plaster ceilings and lead paint all follow from it, and weatherboard against render changes an exterior quote a great deal. Mention any colour change, particularly dark to light, because it changes the coat count. If colours are undecided, say what direction you are heading so a blocking primer can be priced provisionally. Ask each painter to itemise preparation, ceilings, walls, trim and doors as separate lines. That structure exposes where one quote assumed sound walls and another allowed for patching, and it lets you remove a line to meet a budget. Boundary work is quoted as fence painting and staining.

Rendered and Textured Finishes

A significant share of Victorian housing carries render or texture coating and not bare brick or weatherboard, and those surfaces price and behave differently from both. Rendered walls are generally cheaper per square metre to paint than weatherboard because they roll instead of requiring edge cutting. The trade-off is preparation, since render cracks and the cracks have to be opened, filled and sealed before coating. Hairline cracking is normal on render and is addressed with a flexible filler and an elastomeric or high build coating that can accommodate movement. Structural cracking is not normal, and a crack wider than a couple of millimetres or one that steps at a corner deserves investigation before painting.

Drummy render is the equivalent of drummy plaster and it is the failure that catches people out. Render that has lost its bond to the substrate sounds hollow when tapped, cannot be painted over meaningfully, and takes the coating with it when it releases. Texture coatings are thicker than paint and are applied as a system rather than a finish. Recoating an existing texture with ordinary paint fills the profile and flattens the appearance, which is rarely the intended result. Where render needs repair instead of coating, that is a separate trade and should be a separate line on the quote. Render and texture coating covers repair and recoating systems.

Making the Decision

On painting the decision is rarely about which quote is cheapest, since prices on straightforward modern housing tend to cluster closely. Where quotes differ widely, the reason is almost always preparation or scope, not margin. Ask the outlier what they allowed for that the others did not, or what they left out, since the answer is informative either way. Favour the painter who asked questions over the one who quoted fastest.

Someone who walked the house, tapped a wall, asked about the ceiling construction and raised lead paint on a pre-1970 property is pricing your house rather than an average one. Get the agreed scope in writing before any deposit, covering the product range by name, the number of coats, the surfaces included and what happens if the walls turn out worse once work begins. On older Victorian housing that last point is realistic, not a formality. Finally, keep the colour formulations and product details somewhere you will find them. Touch-ups over the following years are far easier with the original specification, and it matters again at the next repaint. Roof coating is a separate trade at roof painting.