Hiring a painter: what separates a good job from a quick coat

What professional painting actually involves

The visible part — cutting in and rolling — is maybe half the job. The rest is preparation: filling cracks and holes, sanding, spot-priming stains, caulking gaps along trims, and protecting everything that isn't being painted. On older walls, prep can take longer than painting. That's normal, and it's precisely the work you can't see in finished photos but will see in raking afternoon light for years if it's skipped.

Painters handle walls, ceilings, doors, trims and sometimes exteriors. Where they hand over: significant plaster damage is a plasterer's job first, and wallpaper stripping or hanging is its own specialty that some painters do and some don't. If your walls need real repair, get that scoped explicitly rather than assuming the painter will absorb it.

How painting is priced

Interior painting is typically priced per square metre of wall or per room. A single bedroom sits in the hundreds; repainting the walls of a whole three-bedroom home runs into the middle thousands; adding ceilings, doors and trims throughout pushes toward five figures. Treat these as indicative bands — the calculator on this page gives a closer read for your own areas.

When quotes for the same rooms differ widely, the gap is nearly always in prep and coats. One painter has priced two careful coats over properly prepared walls; another has priced one-and-a-touch-up over a quick sand. Ask every quoter to state the number of coats and describe the prep — that single question makes quotes comparable.

Choosing a painter worth the money

Painting is unlicensed in most of Australia (Queensland licenses it above certain job values), so the registers won't help you much here. Your protection is evidence: recent local jobs you can see or at least see photos of, reviews that mention tidiness and schedule, and a written quote that specifies surfaces, prep, coats and the actual paint product line.

Good painters are fussy people. They'll talk about sheen levels for different rooms unprompted, recommend mould-resistant paint for wet areas, and flag dark-to-light colour changes as needing an extra coat. Vague enthusiasm plus a low number is the combination to be wary of.

Mistakes to avoid

Painting disputes are rarely about colour. They're about scope assumptions that were never written down.

• Accepting a quote that doesn't state the number of coats — this is where cheap quotes hide
• Not clarifying whether ceilings, doors, trims and window frames are included
• Skipping the prep discussion on older walls, then being surprised when imperfections show through
• Choosing colour from a tiny swatch — test pots on the actual wall in morning and evening light
• Booking the painter before plaster repairs are done, forcing rushed patching
• Paying in full before a walk-around in good light with touch-ups agreed