Interior House Painting Costs SA 2026 - Get Free Quotes

Interior House Painting Costs in South Australia

Interior repainting across South Australia generally costs $350 to $700 for a bedroom's walls, $500 to $1,100 for a room including its ceiling, $700 to $1,600 for a living or dining room, and $250 to $550 for a single ceiling. Whole house work runs $3,500 to $9,000 for a three bedroom, $5,000 to $12,000 for a four bedroom and $8,000 to $18,000 for a two storey or larger home. Interior painting is more predictable than exterior work, which is the good news. The surfaces are protected from weather, the substrate is usually sound, and the variables are largely things you can see.

That predictability makes the cost drivers easy to name. Whether the house is empty or lived in. How big a colour change you are making. How high the ceilings are.

How much trim is included. And how much patching the walls need first. Change any one of those and the price moves in a way you can anticipate, which is not true of an exterior job where the wall might be hiding anything. The one that catches people is occupancy. An empty house between tenants or before moving in is the cheapest possible version of the job, and the same house full of furniture with a family living in it can cost half as much again for identical wall area.

South Australia adds a few conditions of its own. A large share of Adelaide's older housing has solid plaster on masonry rather than plasterboard on studs, which behaves differently when you patch it. Ceilings in the pre-war suburbs are often well over three metres, which changes access on every wall. Reactive clay soils crack interiors seasonally at predictable points. And the state's cold, dry winter nights combined with closed up houses produce condensation and mould on cold surfaces, particularly in bathrooms and on south facing walls.

The scheduling advantage here is genuine though. Interior work is weather independent, so it fills the winter months when exteriors cannot be done, which makes June through August the easiest time in the year to book a good painter at a sensible price. This page covers what a repaint includes, costs room by room, ceilings, colour change, working around an occupied household, wall construction, cracking and mould, trim, high ceilings and sequencing with other trades. Exterior work is covered in the SA exterior painting guide, and general background in the SA painters guide.

What an Interior Repaint Includes

The word repaint covers a range of scopes and quotes differ mainly on which elements are in. Walls are the baseline. Beyond that sit ceilings, cornices, doors and door frames, architraves, skirtings, window frames and sills, built in wardrobe doors, and sometimes feature elements like picture rails, dado rails and exposed beams. A quote for a room repaint that does not list these individually is ambiguous, and the ambiguity is nearly always resolved in the painter's favour.

Preparation is the other half and it should be described rather than implied. Washing down walls to remove grime, cooking residue and soap film, filling nail holes and dents, patching damaged areas, sanding filled spots flat, spot priming bare patches and stains, caulking gaps at architraves and skirtings, and masking or removing hardware, switch plates and light fittings. That last item is worth raising specifically. Painters generally cannot remove light fittings or power points, because that is licensed electrical work, so switch plates get masked or the painter cuts around them. If you want fittings removed for a cleaner result, an electrician does it before and after.

Protection matters more inside than outside. Floors, carpets, furniture, benchtops, appliances and window furnishings all need covering, and a good painter treats this as part of the job rather than an afterthought. Ask what protection is included and who is responsible if something is marked. Repairs sit at the boundary and should be identified before work starts. Cracked cornices, damaged plaster, water damaged ceiling sheets and holes larger than filler will handle belong to a plasterer. Plaster patching specialists handle those, and the work needs to be finished and dry before painting starts rather than squeezed in around it.

Room by Room Costs

Pricing by room is how most South Australian painters quote smaller interior jobs, and the figures below assume sound surfaces, standard ceiling height and a similar colour going back on. A bedroom's walls run $350 to $700, and adding the ceiling brings it to $500 to $1,100. A living or dining room is larger and runs $700 to $1,600 including the ceiling. A hallway sits at $400 to $900, though a hallway with a stairwell runs $700 to $1,800 because there is nowhere flat to stand and every setup takes longer.

Kitchens and bathrooms are smaller in wall area but slower per square metre. There is cabinetry, splashback, tiling, plumbing fixtures and exhaust fans to cut around, the paintable area is broken into small sections, and moisture resistant products are usually specified. A kitchen runs $500 to $1,200 and a bathroom or laundry $350 to $800. Whole house pricing is more efficient than adding the rooms together, because setup, travel and mobilisation happen once. A three bedroom home runs $3,500 to $9,000, a four bedroom $5,000 to $12,000, and a two storey or five bedroom $8,000 to $18,000.

The gap between the low and high ends of those whole house figures is almost entirely occupancy, colour change and trim. An empty three bedroom house in a similar colour, walls and ceilings only, sits near the bottom. The same house furnished, changing from dark to light, with all doors, skirtings and architraves included sits near the top. Cabinet work is a separate trade and should be priced separately, because a proper cabinet finish is sprayed rather than brushed and requires different preparation. Kitchen cabinet painting covers that, and bundling it into a wall painting quote usually produces a disappointing result.

Ceilings and Why They Cost Extra

Ceilings are quoted separately for good reasons and they are worth including more often than people do. A ceiling is overhead work, which is slower and more tiring than wall work, and it needs a roller pole or platform. Cutting in at the cornice line is the fussiest part of any interior job, because the line is long, continuous and immediately visible, and any wobble reads from the doorway. Ceiling paint is also a different product. It is formulated flat, because flat hides the surface variation and joint lines that raking light from windows exposes, and it usually has higher opacity to cover in fewer coats. Using wall paint on a ceiling is a false economy that shows.

The reason to include the ceiling is that a freshly painted wall makes an unpainted ceiling look grubby, and the contrast is more obvious than the original tiredness ever was. Ceilings yellow gradually from cooking, heating and general use, and because it happens slowly nobody notices until there is new white beside it. Kitchens and bathrooms are the exception where ceilings genuinely need doing on their own schedule, since cooking grease and steam mark them faster than the rest of the house. Ceilings with damage need attention before paint. Sagging sheets, cracked joints and water stains all have causes that paint will not address, and a water stain in particular requires a stain blocking sealer because the compounds bleed straight through ordinary ceiling paint and reappear weeks later. Ceiling repair specialists handle the structural side, and on older Adelaide homes the ceiling may be lath and plaster rather than sheet, which is fragile and needs a different approach entirely.

Colour Change and Coat Count

This is the variable homeowners most often forget to mention when asking for a price, and it can change the quote by 30 per cent. Painting a similar colour over a similar colour is the cheapest scenario and generally covers in two coats. Going lighter over a dark or strong colour is the expensive one, because the existing colour will show through two coats of pale paint and needs either a blocking primer first or a third coat, and sometimes both. Strong colours are the hardest to cover. Deep reds, oranges, purples and vivid blues frequently need a tinted primer plus two finish coats, and a feature wall in one of those colours can take as long as the rest of the room.

Going darker is easier and usually covers in two coats, though deep colours have their own problem in that they show application marks more readily and demand a more even technique. Tell the painter the existing colour and the intended colour when you first enquire. It costs nothing and it is the difference between an accurate quote and a variation later. Test the colour in the actual room before committing. Adelaide's bright natural light makes colours read considerably lighter than they do on a swatch under shop lighting, and a north facing room and a south facing room in the same house will show the same colour quite differently. A sample pot on a square metre of wall, looked at in morning and evening light, is a small cost against repainting a room you dislike.

How Long Interior Painting Actually Takes

Timeframes matter more on interior work than on exterior, because you are living around it rather than watching it from the garden. Knowing the realistic duration lets you plan the household rather than discovering on day three that the spare room is unusable. The figures below assume an average crew working at a normal pace rather than a rushed one. Treat them as planning numbers rather than a guarantee, since every house throws up something.

A single bedroom with walls only is a day for one painter, including moving furniture to the centre, protecting the floor, cutting in, two coats and cleaning up. Adding the ceiling pushes it to a day and a half, and adding trim to two days once drying times between coats are counted. Two painters do not halve that, because drying time between coats is fixed. What a second painter buys you is more rooms in the same window rather than one room faster. Ask for that to be stated on the written quote.

A three bedroom house painted throughout while empty runs four to seven working days with a small crew. The same house occupied stretches to seven or ten, because rooms have to be done in sequence, furniture moved twice and the household given somewhere to sleep each night. Occupancy is therefore the single biggest schedule variable in interior work. If the house can be empty for a week, the job is both faster and cheaper.

Drying time is the constraint people underestimate. Water based wall paint is touch dry within an hour but needs two to four hours before recoating, and that gap is fixed regardless of how many painters are on site. It is why a crew of three does not finish three times faster than one. Rushing a recoat produces a finish that looks acceptable on the day and shows roller marks within a month. Sample pots cost a few dollars and settle the question.

Adelaide's climate works in your favour for most of the year. Interior work is not weather dependent in the way exterior work is, though a cold damp week in July slows recoat times noticeably and a heatwave can flash off a cut-in line before it is rolled out. Ventilation matters in both cases, so opening the house up while work proceeds helps more than people expect. Winter is still the easiest season to book, because exterior work has stopped and crews have capacity.

Build a buffer of a day or two into any timeline that matters, particularly before a settlement, a tenancy start or a family event. Patching that reveals more patching underneath is the usual cause of an overrun, and it is far more common in older homes than in newer ones. Older Adelaide homes with solid plaster are the most likely to run over. Ask the painter what they expect to find once the first wall is opened up. Ask the painter which they would choose in that room.

Choosing Colours That Work in South Australian Light

Colour behaves differently here than it does in the eastern states, and the reason is light. Adelaide gets strong, clear light for much of the year, and a colour chosen from a chip under showroom fluorescents often reads several shades lighter and cooler once it is on a wall with that light falling across it. That gap between chip and wall is the single most common cause of a repaint nobody budgeted for. Painters see this constantly and will usually tell you to sample first if asked.

Test on the wall rather than on a card, and test on more than one wall. A north facing room and a south facing room in the same house will read the same paint quite differently, and the south facing wall is usually the one that disappoints. Paint a sample patch at least A3 sized and look at it morning, midday and evening before committing. Sample pots cost a fraction of a wasted coat. It is a decision worth making before the first coat.

Whites are where most regret happens, because there are dozens of them and the undertone decides everything. A white with a warm base sits comfortably against timber floors and brick, while a cool white can look grey and flat in a room that does not get direct sun. Ask to see the undertone described rather than choosing on the name alone. Holding two candidates side by side on the wall makes the undertone obvious in a way a catalogue never does.

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 than a pale one. Factor that into the quote rather than treating it as a surprise. Ask whether the quote assumes two coats or three on the colours you have chosen.

Ceiling colour is worth a moment rather than defaulting to flat white. A ceiling in the same white as the walls but a different sheen creates a softer transition than a stark contrast, and on the high Victorian ceilings common through inner Adelaide that choice changes how tall the room feels. It costs nothing to decide deliberately rather than by default. A low sheen ceiling in a soft white is the safe default in most Adelaide homes.

Consider how the colour ages as well as how it looks new. South Australian light is hard on strong colours, and a saturated feature wall that looks striking in year one can look tired by year four, particularly on a wall that gets afternoon sun through a western window. Keeping strong colours to walls out of direct afternoon sun is the simple answer. Repainting one feature wall later is far cheaper than repainting a whole room.

Painting an Occupied Home

Most interior repaints happen in houses people are living in, and managing that well is a large part of what separates a good experience from a stressful one. The cost difference is real. An empty house can be painted room to room without interruption. An occupied one requires furniture moved to the centre and covered each morning and pushed back each evening, work sequenced so the household keeps a functioning bedroom and bathroom, and tools and materials packed away rather than left out.

A common approach is to work in zones. Bedrooms first while the household uses the living areas, then living areas once the bedrooms are back in service. That takes longer than a clear run but keeps the house habitable throughout. You can reduce the cost meaningfully by doing the clearing yourself. Emptying wardrobes and bookshelves, taking down curtains and blinds, removing wall hangings and mirrors, and moving small furniture out of rooms entirely is time you can spend for free and the painter otherwise charges for.

Discuss the practical details before work starts rather than on the first morning. Which rooms are done in which order, what time the crew arrives and leaves, where they may store materials, whether they need access to a bathroom and a tap, what happens with pets, and whether anyone in the household works from home or sleeps during the day. For rentals the calculation is different, since a vacant period between tenants is the ideal window and painting during it is both cheaper and faster. Coordinating it with the end of lease clean in the same vacancy makes practical sense, and smaller touch up work suits properties that need attention rather than a full repaint.

What Your Walls Are Made Of

This matters more in South Australia than in newer parts of the country, because a lot of Adelaide housing predates plasterboard entirely. Modern homes have plasterboard on timber or steel studs. It is easy to patch, takes fixings readily, sands flat and accepts paint predictably. Most painting advice assumes this construction.

Older Adelaide homes frequently have solid plaster applied directly to masonry. Walls are hard, hollow sounding in places, and cannot be patched with the same approach. Where solid plaster has lost its bond to the wall behind it, sometimes called drummy plaster, filling the surface achieves nothing because the substrate itself is loose and it will eventually come away in a sheet. Tapping around with a knuckle finds it quickly.

A great many South Australian post-war and public housing era homes also have solid plastered masonry internal walls rather than stud walls, which surprises owners who try to hang something heavy and find no stud to hit. Lath and plaster appears in ceilings and some walls of pre-war homes. It is fragile, it can be brought down by pressure a plasterboard ceiling would shrug off, and it should be treated carefully by anyone working on it. Decorative plasterwork is common in Adelaide's Victorian and Federation housing, with run cornices, ceiling roses, arches and moulded detail. A century of repainting progressively fills the crispness out of that work, and heavy handed application makes it worse. Ornate plastering specialists handle repair and matching, and heritage painting covers the wider question of how to treat a period interior.

Cracks, Damp and Winter Mould

Three interior problems come up repeatedly in South Australian homes and all three need addressing before paint before the fact. Cracking driven by reactive clay soils appears in predictable places: above door and window openings, at the junction between cornice and wall, along ceiling sheet joints and in room corners. A rigid filler in a crack that moves seasonally will reopen, usually within a year, so flexible fillers and paintable flexible sealants are the right choice at cornice junctions and above openings. Cracks with a step across them, cracks that are widening, or cracking alongside doors that have started to bind indicate structural movement and should be assessed rather than filled.

Filling in late summer places the filler at close to maximum crack width, which is a small timing decision that makes the repair last longer. Salt damp presents inside as tide marks and bubbling paint at skirting height in ground floor rooms of older masonry homes. The cause is below the floor rather than on the wall surface and repainting will not hold. Salt damp treatment comes first and the wall then needs time to dry. Winter mould is the third and it is more common in Adelaide than people expect. Cold nights, closed up houses and unflued heating produce condensation on the coldest surfaces, which are south facing external walls, window reveals, the corners of unheated bedrooms, and bathroom ceilings.

Painting over mould does not kill it and it grows back through the coating. The sequence is treatment, then addressing the moisture source, then paint. The moisture source is usually ventilation, and an exhaust fan that vents into the roof space instead of outside is a very common culprit. Ceiling mould removal handles the treatment and condensation control addresses the cause. Mould resistant coatings support both without replacing either.

Doors, Skirtings and Architraves

Trim is where an interior repaint gets expensive per square metre, and it is the most commonly excluded item in a quote. The reason is simple. Trim is all brush work. A wall is rolled quickly, while a skirting board is cut in along its top edge, painted on its face, and cut in again at the floor, and every architrave has two edges and a mitred corner. A room with four doors, four sets of architraves and continuous skirting has far more linear cutting in than the wall area suggests.

Enamel adds time as well as labour. Trim is usually finished in enamel for washability, and enamel needs longer between coats than wall paint, so a room with trim included may need an extra day even though the actual painting time is short. Waterborne enamels have largely replaced solvent based products for interior trim in occupied homes, because a traditional oil based enamel can make a house unpleasant for days and yellows over time. Modern waterborne enamels now perform well enough that the old trade off has mostly disappeared.

Expect $180 to $400 per room for skirtings and architraves, and $120 to $280 per door painted both sides. Where trim is in reasonable condition and the walls are the problem, leaving it out is a legitimate way to reduce the quote. Damaged or poorly fitted trim should be dealt with first, since paint highlights a bad joint rather than hiding it. Skirting and architrave specialists handle replacement, and it is far cheaper to paint new trim than to repair and paint old trim that is past it.

High Ceilings in Older Adelaide Homes

This is a genuine South Australian cost factor and it is rarely explained to homeowners before they see the quote. Victorian and Edwardian houses through North Adelaide, Norwood, Unley, Prospect, Goodwood and Semaphore commonly have ceilings between 3.2 and 3.9 metres, against 2.4 metres in a modern home. That extra height is not a small increment. It adds roughly a third to half again to the wall area of every room, and it takes every surface above head height out of comfortable reach.

The practical effect is that platforms or trestles are needed rather than a step ladder, setup and repositioning happen constantly, and cutting in at the cornice is done at arm's length from a platform rather than from the floor. These houses also tend to have more of everything else. Deeper skirtings, wider architraves, picture rails, ornate cornices, ceiling roses and taller doors all add brush work. The result is that a room in a Norwood villa can cost two to three times what an identically sized room in a Munno Para house costs, and both quotes are fair. When comparing prices with a friend, check you are comparing similar houses. Stairwells in two storey homes and entry voids in newer estate homes create the same problem for a different reason, which is that there is nowhere level to stand and the access solution takes longer to set up than the painting takes to do.

Odour, Ventilation and Moving Back In

Modern interior paints are far lower in odour than they used to be, but the questions people ask about this are reasonable and deserve straight answers. Waterborne acrylic wall paints have low odour and dissipate within hours in a ventilated room. Waterborne enamels are similar. Solvent based enamels and oil based products are the strong smelling ones and are increasingly rare in occupied interiors for exactly that reason.

Low volatile organic compound products are widely available across mainstream ranges and are the sensible default in homes with children, elderly residents, or anyone with asthma or chemical sensitivity. Ask for them specifically if that applies to your household, since a painter will not necessarily assume it. Ventilation matters more than product choice for how quickly a room becomes comfortable. Open windows on both sides of the house to get air moving through rather than opening one window and closing the door. Adelaide's dry conditions help considerably here, and a room painted in the morning is usually fine to occupy that evening.

Bedrooms are the exception worth planning around. Sleeping in a freshly painted room the same night is generally not recommended, particularly for children, and shifting sleeping arrangements for a night is a simple precaution. Health guidance on indoor air quality is published by SA Health. Paint continues to cure for some time after it feels dry. Walls can be gently washed after a few weeks rather than immediately, and furniture pushed back against a wall too soon can mark or stick to it, so leaving a gap for a few days is worth the inconvenience.

What You Can Do Before the Painters Arrive

Preparation you handle yourself reduces the bill directly, because every hour a painter spends moving your belongings is an hour charged at painting rates. None of it requires skill, and most of it takes an evening. Ask the painter what they want done before the day, since most have a short list they will happily share. An hour of your time reliably saves more than an hour of theirs.

Clear the walls completely, including picture hooks, wall plugs, mirrors and anything screwed into the plaster. Leaving hooks in place means the painter either works around them, which looks poor, or removes them and fills the holes, which is chargeable time. Keep the hooks in a labelled bag so rehanging afterwards is straightforward. Photograph each wall first if the arrangement matters to you. Most painters will confirm it without being pressed.

Move what you can to the centre of each room and take small items out entirely. Painters will move heavy furniture and cover it, but a room full of ornaments, books and lamps slows everything and raises the risk of something being damaged. Anything fragile or irreplaceable should leave the room entirely rather than be covered. Painters are careful, but a covered bookshelf is still a bookshelf in a work zone.

Take down curtains and blinds where the trim is being painted, since brackets and tracks have to come off anyway. Photographing how they were mounted before removing them makes reinstallation considerably easier afterwards. Leave the hardware off until the trim has fully cured, which is longer than it is dry to touch. Rehanging too early marks fresh enamel.

Point out every defect you already know about rather than assuming it will be found. A hairline crack you have watched for years, a patch where a leak once came through or a section of wall that was filled badly by somebody else all change the preparation, and the painter would rather know on day one. It also protects you, since a defect raised at the start is scoped and priced rather than discovered and charged as a variation. Walk the house with the painter at quoting stage rather than emailing a list.

Decide colours before work starts, not during it. A colour change mid-job means either living with a compromise or paying for a repaint, and sample pots on the actual wall in the actual light beat a chip in a showroom every time. Look at the sample at different times of day, since Adelaide light changes the reading considerably between morning and late afternoon. Test on the wall that gets the least natural light as well as the most.

Sequencing With Other Trades

On a renovation, the order trades work in affects both cost and finish, and painting sits in a specific place in that order. Painting generally comes after plastering, carpentry, electrical rough in and any wall repairs, and before floor coverings and final electrical fitoff. Doing it in that order means the painter is working in an empty shell without having to protect a finished floor. Painting after floor sanding but before carpet is the usual sequence, since sanders raise dust and carpet layers do not.

Timber floors are the common exception and the question comes up constantly. The usual sequence is to sand and coat floors after the walls are painted but before the final trim coat, or to sand first and apply the floor finish last. Either works, and the decision belongs to whoever is coordinating the job, but it should be a decision rather than an accident. Floor sanding generates significant dust and doing it after painting means fine dust settles into anything not fully cured.

Carpet goes down after painting, always. There is no version of this that works the other way. Wallpaper removal belongs well before painting rather than immediately before, because stripping wallpaper frequently damages the wall surface underneath and the repairs need time. Wallpaper removal is often a bigger job than expected, particularly where paper has been painted over. In a new build the painting sequence is different again and usually runs to the builder's program. New home painting involves sealing new plasterboard properly, which matters because an unsealed board and jointing compound absorb unevenly and joints ghost through under raking light in a way that is difficult to correct afterwards.

What Drives the Price

Occupancy, colour change, ceiling height, trim and preparation, in roughly that order. Occupancy can add half a day per room across a furnished house. Clearing rooms yourself is the single most effective saving available on an interior job. Colour change adds coats, and a blocking primer plus two coats instead of two coats is a 50 per cent increase in application time before anything else is counted.

Ceiling height changes access on every surface above head height, and in Adelaide's older suburbs that is a sizeable multiplier rather than a minor adjustment. Trim is all brush work and the amount varies enormously between houses. Count the doors before assuming two quotes should match. Preparation varies with the age and condition of the walls. Sound plasterboard needs a wipe down. Solid plaster with cracking at the cornice, previous poor patching and holes from removed fixtures needs considerably more.

Product choice affects the total less than expected and the outcome more. The difference between a mid range and premium wall paint across a house is modest, and premium products cover better, wash better and last longer in high traffic areas. Ask which line the quote assumes, because the difference between a builder grade and a premium wall paint on a whole house is a few hundred dollars and several years of washability. It is one of the few upgrades worth taking.

Interior Painting Costs Across Adelaide

Adelaide pricing tracks house age and ceiling height more than suburb, and the gap between an older inner suburban home and a newer outer suburban one is sizeable. A 1920s villa in Prospect and a 1990s house in Golden Grove can differ by half again for the same room count. That difference is structural rather than postcode driven, so a quote should reflect the house rather than the area. Ask the painter to measure rather than estimate from room count, because that is where the real difference shows up.

The two bedroom rows in that table are the same job in two different houses. Ceiling height and trim account for the entire difference, which is why quoting an interior repaint over the phone rarely works. Knowing which of the two your house resembles tells you which row to budget against. Ask the painter to measure rather than estimate from room count.

Regional South Australia

Interior work travels better than exterior work, because it is not weather dependent and a crew can complete a whole house in one uninterrupted visit. Regional rates therefore sit closer to metropolitan ones than they do on outside work. Booking several rooms at once is what makes a country job worth the trip. Travel is still charged, but it is spread across more work.

That travel tolerance changes the economics in the country. A crew willing to stay a few nights can complete a whole house efficiently, which makes a full interior repaint better value regionally than a series of single rooms. Mount Gambier and the Limestone Coast see more interior mould and condensation work than the rest of the state, driven by higher rainfall and winter humidity. Treating ventilation rather than repainting the same ceiling every few years is the better use of money there.

Holiday properties on the Fleurieu, Yorke Peninsula and Kangaroo Island run on their own calendar, with interior work concentrated outside peak season. Booking in that window is easier and usually cheaper. Lead times run longer beyond the metropolitan fringe, and considerably longer in the far west and north. Planning a season ahead is more effective than negotiating on rate.

What to Look Out For

Insist on a site inspection. Ceiling height, wall construction, trim quantity and the state of the walls cannot be assessed from a description, and a price given over the phone will either be padded or become a variation. Check that the quote lists every element. Walls, ceilings, cornices, doors, frames, architraves, skirtings and window frames should each be named as in or out. This is where quotes that look different turn out to be identical, and where quotes that look identical turn out to be different.

State the colour change upfront. Going from dark to pale changes the coat count and therefore the price, and a painter who quotes without knowing this will raise it as a variation once they start. Deal with causes before symptoms. Cracks that keep returning, bubbling paint at skirting height, mould in a bathroom and stains on a ceiling all have underlying causes, and painting over any of them is money spent on concealment.

Raise the age of the house. Lead paint on anything pre-1970 is disturbed by sanding skirtings and window sills, which is routine interior preparation, and it needs the right method. Australian Standards covering lead paint management are published by Standards Australia and workplace requirements by SafeWork SA. Lead paint specialists handle confirmed cases.

Confirm protection and clean up in writing. On an interior job in an occupied home this affects your experience more than almost anything else, and public liability cover should be verifiable with a certificate not just described. Licensing is administered by Consumer and Business Services and consumer guarantees by the ACCC. Finally, agree the working hours and the order of rooms before the first morning. It prevents most of the friction that arises when people are living in a house being painted.

What to Look for in a Quote in SA

An interior painting quote you can compare states the rooms, the elements within each room, the preparation, the products and the program. Specifically: which rooms are included, which elements in each room, what preparation is covered including washing, filling, sanding and spot priming, the product and sheen for walls, ceilings and trim separately, the number of coats and whether a primer or undercoat is included, who moves furniture, what protection is provided, the start date and expected duration, and payment terms. When you enquire, give enough detail to get an accurate answer. The number of rooms and roughly their sizes, the approximate ceiling height, the age of the house, whether it will be empty or occupied, the current colour and the intended colour, whether trim and ceilings are included, and any visible cracking, staining, mould or damage. Photographs of each room and close ups of any problem area save several rounds of back and forth.

Get three quotes on the same scope. Where a painter recommends something different, such as including the ceilings you left out or treating mould before painting, ask them to explain rather than treating it as an upsell, because it is usually the most useful information in the conversation. Keep the leftover paint labelled with the room, colour code, product and sheen, and store it somewhere that does not bake through an Adelaide summer. It makes touch ups a fifteen minute job instead of a colour matching exercise, and it tells the next painter exactly what is already on the wall.