Painter Hourly Rate Australia: What to Charge in 2026

Executive Summary

What a painter should charge per hour, and how to work it out

Capital-city painters typically charge $70 to $110 an hour, with the average across all Australian quotes closer to $63 an hour
Your charge-out rate is not your wage: the award minimum for an employed painter is $29.45 an hour, and a business rate has to cover insurance, vehicle, tools, super and a profit margin on top of that
How to build your own rate from realistic billable hours, closer to 1,750 a year than the 1,976 a 38-hour week suggests
GST starts at $75,000 turnover and adds 10%, and a contractor licence kicks in above $5,000 of work in NSW, $3,300 in Queensland and $1,000 in WA
What the whole job is worth, not just the hour: roughly $1,000 to $9,000 for an interior repaint and $3,500 to $35,000 for an exterior

A painter's hourly rate is what a painter or painting business charges a customer per hour of work, typically $70 to $110 an hour in the capital cities and closer to $63 an hour averaged across all quotes nationally, and it sits well above what an employee painter earns as a wage because it also has to cover the business's overheads, insurance, vehicle and tools, and a profit margin on top.

Get that number wrong and you either quietly work for free on every job or lose good customers to a painter who can explain their price. Getting it right only pays if people can find you, and a free Google listing audit will show you where you rank for painting searches in your suburbs. First, the numbers.

A few numbers worth knowing before you set your price:

Averaged across real quotes, the typical Australian painter charges about $62.95 an hour, with the lowest quoted rates starting near $25 an hour 2.

In the capital cities the rate runs higher, roughly $70 to $110 an hour, with Sydney at the top of that range and Adelaide and Melbourne a little lower 3.

By contrast, a painter employed under the national building and construction award sits on a minimum of $29.45 an hour 5. That gap between what a worker earns and what a business charges is the whole point of this guide.

Why Isn't a Painter's Rate the Same as the Wage?

This is the mistake that sinks new painting businesses. A painter leaves the boss who has been paying them about $30 an hour, adds "a bit on top", quotes $45, and cannot work out why there is nothing left at the end of the year.

The wage and the charge-out rate are two different numbers doing two different jobs, and only one of them has a business hanging off it.

The award wage is what an employer must legally pay an employed painter. Under the Building and Construction General On-site Award 2020, a painter is classified as a level 3 (CW/ECW 3) worker, and from 1 July 2026 that minimum is $1,119.10 a week, or $29.45 an hour. A casual gets a 25% loading on top, which works out at about $36.81 an hour 5. Award allowances such as the industry allowance and the painter's tool allowance sit above that again, which is why the award figures you see quoted around the traps differ. Either way it is a floor for a worker, not a price for a business. Check your own figure on the Fair Work Ombudsman's Pay and Conditions Tool, because award rates lift most years.

The charge-out rate is what a business bills a customer. Out of that one number you have to pay yourself a wage and then cover everything the boss used to cover: public liability insurance, vehicle and fuel, tools and consumables, super, sick days and holidays, quoting time you never get paid for, phone, software, and the tax office. Whatever is left after all of that is your margin. Strip the margin and there is no business, just a job with extra paperwork.

Action: Never quote off your old hourly wage. Work out what the business has to cover across a full year first, then divide back down to an hour.

What Does Your Rate Actually Have to Cover?

Before you can build a rate, it helps to see the full stack of costs sitting behind every hour you bill. For a painter that stack looks different to a sparky's or a chippy's.

Access gear. Ladders, trestles, planks and hired scaffold for anything above single storey. Exterior work on a two-storey job can put scaffold hire on the invoice before a single litre of paint is opened.
Spray and prep kit. Airless sprayers, compressors, sanders and dust extraction, plus the servicing and replacement when they wear out.
Consumables that vanish. Masking tape, plastic, drop sheets, filler, sugar soap, sandpaper, brushes and rollers. None of it lasts more than a few jobs and all of it comes out of your hour.
Paint carried on account. You usually buy the paint before the customer pays for it, so your trade account is working capital, not just a discount.
Insurance and cover. Public liability at minimum, plus income protection, because a painter who falls off a plank has no income at all.
The invisible hours. Colour consults and re-approvals, site visits to measure, quoting, chasing tint mixes, invoicing and touch-up callbacks. None of it appears on a bill and all of it eats the week.
Super, sick days and holidays. Nobody pays these for you any more. The days you do bill have to carry the days you do not.

Action: Add these up for last year before you touch your rate. Most painters find the real overhead number is a third higher than the one in their head.

How Do I Work Out My Own Charge-Out Rate?

There is a simple formula the trade software people use, and it beats guessing. Your charge-out rate is your annual overheads plus the salary you want to pay yourself, divided by the hours you can actually bill, with a margin added on top 4.

The part most people get wrong is the billable hours. A 38-hour week across 52 weeks looks like about 1,976 hours a year on paper. You will never bill all of them. Quoting, driving between jobs, chasing materials, admin, callbacks and leave all eat into it, so a realistic figure lands closer to 1,750 billable hours a year 4.

Here is the worked example, using round numbers:

Decide your salary. Say you want to pay yourself $90,000 a year.
Add your annual overheads. Say $55,000 for insurance, vehicle, tools, phone, software and the rest.
Add them together: $145,000 is what the business must earn just to stand still.
Divide by realistic billable hours: $145,000 ÷ 1,750 = about $82.86 an hour. That is break-even, not profit.
Add 20% on top for profit: about $99.43 an hour. That is a rate that actually builds a business.

Your numbers will differ. A solo painter with a paid-off ute and a home office has lower overheads than a two-van crew with a workshop. The point is that a real rate is built from your costs, not copied off a competitor or guessed from your old payslip.

Action: Add up last year's real overheads and the salary you want, divide by about 1,750 hours, then add your margin. Compare the result to what you have been quoting.

What Do Painters Charge in Different Cities?

Rates vary a fair bit by location, mostly because overheads and the cost of living move with the postcode. Capital-city quote data puts the hourly ranges around here 3:

City	Typical painter rate (per hour)
Sydney	$74 to $110
Brisbane	$84 to $88
Melbourne	$79 to $87
Perth	$82 to $87
Adelaide	$70 to $85

Regional and country areas generally sit lower than the capital-city figures. That is not a rule you can put an exact percentage on, but the logic is straightforward: lower rent, lower cost of living and often less competition on wages mean lower overheads, so the rate that keeps a regional painter profitable is usually below what a Sydney painter needs to charge for the same work.

Do not read a city table as permission to race everyone to the bottom of it. A painter with a full book of five-star reviews and a portfolio of clean work charges at the top of their local range and still stays busy, because the customer is buying the finish, not the cheapest hour.

Action: Find your city's range, then decide whether your reviews, finish and reliability justify sitting at the top of it. Usually they do.

What Is the Whole Job Worth, Not Just the Hour?

Most painting work is not sold by the hour. The customer wants a number for the job, so the hourly rate is the thing you price with, not the thing you quote. It still pays to know what the finished jobs are worth so you can sanity-check your own quote before you send it.

Australian quote data puts the average painting job at around $2,750, with an average day rate of about $498 and an average of $45.13 per square metre, dropping as low as $6 per square metre on the cheapest quotes 2.

Whole-house work runs a lot wider than that. Interior repaints land roughly between $1,000 and $9,000, exteriors between $3,500 and $35,000, with the median job around $12,100 and a single-bedroom place near the bottom of the range 3.

That exterior spread is not padding. It is the difference between a rolled single-storey rendered wall and a two-storey weatherboard that needs scaffold, scraping, priming and two top coats.

Action: Before you send a job price, divide it by the hours you honestly think it will take. If the answer is under your charge-out rate, the quote is wrong, not the rate.

Does GST Change the Rate?

Once your business turns over $75,000 or more in a 12-month period, or you expect to cross that figure within the next 12 months, you must register for GST, and you have to do it within 21 days of becoming aware you will pass the threshold 1.

After you register, you add 10% GST to your prices. The trap is quoting a number and then bolting GST on afterwards, which turns an $88 hourly rate into a $96.80 surprise the customer never agreed to. Quote and advertise GST-inclusive so the price the customer hears is the price they pay, and put your ABN and GST status on the invoice.

Action: If you are near $75,000 turnover, register before you cross it, and switch every quote to a GST-inclusive number so nobody gets a shock at invoice time.

Do You Need a Licence to Charge for Painting?

Licensing for painting is set state by state, so there is no single national rule, and the threshold that matters most is the value of the job.

In New South Wales, a contractor licence from Building Commission NSW is required for any painting work valued at more than $5,000 in labour and materials including GST. Standalone internal paintwork under that value has been licence-exempt since 2015 6. So a small internal touch-up can be done without a licence, but most whole-house repaints will tip over $5,000 and need one.

In Queensland, the QBCC issues a painting and decorating licence, and the general rule is that you need a QBCC licence to carry out building work valued at more than $3,300, counting labour, materials and GST 7. That threshold is low enough that most paying work crosses it.

In Western Australia, the bar is lower again. A painter contracting for or supervising painting work valued at over $1,000 has to be registered under the Building Services (Registration) Act 2011 8.

In Victoria the rule is shaped differently. There is a registration class limited to painting and decorating, and the trigger is the contract rather than the licence: domestic building work costing more than $10,000 must be done under a major domestic building contract, and you cannot enter one unless you are registered as a building practitioner. Work valued at $20,000 or more also needs domestic building insurance 10. Note the regulator's name has changed: the old Victorian Building Authority is now the Building and Plumbing Commission.

South Australia runs its own system through Consumer and Business Services, and we could not open their published threshold to confirm it. Check it with CBS directly rather than assuming the NSW $5,000 line travels.

Action: Confirm the threshold with your own state's regulator before you quote a big job. Doing licensable work unlicensed risks heavy fines and can cost you the right to chase the customer for payment.

What Else Changes What You Can Charge?

A single hourly figure never tells the whole story. Two jobs in the same street can be worth very different money, and these are the things that move a painter's rate within their local range:

Interior versus exterior. Exterior work usually earns more per hour because of height, weather, access and heavier prep. A second-storey weatherboard repaint is not the same job as rolling a bedroom.
Substrate. Rendered brick, fibre cement, weatherboard, Colorbond and bare plaster all take different prep, different primers and different numbers of coats. Quote the surface, not the square metres.
Lead paint. Lead paint was used in most Australian homes built before 1970 9. On those jobs the safe methods are wet sanding and wet scraping, never an open-flame torch, and containment and waste disposal add real hours. Price a pre-1970 repaint like the different job it is.
Prep and condition. Old flaking paint, water damage and gap-filling all add hours. Good painters price the prep, not just the top coat.
Season and weather. Exterior work is weather-bound in a way most trades are not. A Brisbane wet season or a Melbourne winter kills drying windows and blows out your day rate, so exterior jobs booked into the wrong months either need a weather buffer in the price or should be pushed to a month that will actually let you finish.
Experience and finish. A painter known for crisp cut-in lines and no callbacks charges more than a first-year sole trader, and customers pay it.
Job size and type. A regular commercial or real-estate client that feeds you steady work may get a sharper rate than a one-off job, because the volume is worth it.

None of these are excuses to discount your way to a full diary. They are reasons to walk the job before you price it, instead of quoting a flat rate off the top of your head.

Charging Properly Starts With Being Found

Here is the part that decides whether your rate holds. Notice where the rate figures in this guide came from: quotes submitted on hipages-style lead platforms and Airtasker. That is a market where three painters are looking at the same job at the same time, and the only thing separating them on screen is the number. If those platforms are your whole pipeline, you will always feel pressure to drop your hour.

Paying hipages, Airtasker or ServiceSeeking for a lead is renting the customer. Owning the pipeline looks different: a complete Google Business Profile, steady reviews, and a website with a page for each job you do. Painting is a trade people judge with their eyes, so the painter whose finished work is visible before the quote arrives is the one who gets to hold their price. The full plan is in SEO for painters.

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Frequently Asked Questions

What should a painter charge per hour in Australia?

Capital-city painters typically charge $70 to $110 an hour. Averaged across all Australian quotes, including regional work, the figure is closer to $63 an hour, with the cheapest quotes starting near $25. Where you land depends on your city, experience, overheads and the type of work, not on a single national number.

Why is a painter's hourly rate higher than the award wage?

Because the wage and the charge-out rate are different things. The award minimum for an employed painter is $29.45 an hour, or about $36.81 for a casual once the 25% loading is added, and that is what a worker takes home. A business's charge-out rate has to pay that wage and then cover insurance, vehicle, tools, super, unpaid quoting time, tax and a profit margin. Quoting off your old wage is the fastest way to work for free.

How much do painters charge in Sydney and Melbourne?

Sydney painters typically charge around $74 to $110 an hour, and Melbourne painters around $79 to $87. Brisbane, Perth and Adelaide sit in a similar band. Regional areas generally run lower because overheads and the cost of living are lower.

Do painters have to charge GST?

Only once the business turns over $75,000 or more in a 12-month period, or expects to. At that point you must register for GST within 21 days and add 10% to your prices. Quote GST-inclusive so the customer is not surprised at invoice time.

Do you need a licence to work as a painter in Australia?

It depends on your state and the size of the job. In NSW, painting work valued at more than $5,000 in labour and materials needs a contractor licence, while standalone internal work under that value has been exempt since 2015. In Queensland the QBCC threshold for building work is more than $3,300, and in Western Australia painting work over $1,000 requires registration. Victoria and South Australia set their own thresholds, so check with your own regulator before quoting a big job.

What does a whole house repaint cost in Australia?

Interior repaints commonly land between $1,000 and $9,000, and exteriors between $3,500 and $35,000, with the median job around $12,100. Averaged across all painting jobs the figure is nearer $2,750, because that average includes a lot of single rooms and touch-ups. Per square metre the average quote is about $45, dropping to $6 on the cheapest work.

How do I work out my own charge-out rate as a painter?

Add the salary you want to pay yourself to your annual overheads, then divide by the hours you can realistically bill, around 1,750 a year rather than a theoretical 1,976, and add a margin on top. For example, $90,000 salary plus $55,000 overheads over 1,750 hours is about $83 an hour before margin, and near $99 with a 20% margin.

References:

This is the painter-specific pricing guide. To get found by the customers who pay a proper rate, see SEO for painters. Want it built for you? See websites and marketing for painters.

Published by Made 4 Tradies. Built by online experts who understand tradies. Serving Sydney, the Central Coast, Newcastle, and the Hunter.

What Should a Painter Charge Per Hour in Australia? (2026)