Exterior house painting in Australia

Your exterior is several surfaces, and each one is a different job

The first thing to know about painting the outside of a house is that there's no single job called 'exterior painting'. There's the brickwork, the weatherboard or rendered walls, and then the fences and the deck. To a painter those are different surfaces, each with its own prep, its own product and its own line on the quote. A coat that grips primed timber beautifully can peel off bare render, and the paint that suits a steel fence isn't the one for a hardwood deck.

That's why 'what's the best exterior paint?' is the wrong first question. The surface asks the question, and the surface decides the answer. Water-based acrylic does most outdoor work because it stays flexible and holds up to the sun; oil-based gives a harder gloss but gets brittle and weathers poorly outside.1Dulux TradeView source Which one, and what prep underneath it, follows from what you're painting.

So the rest of this page is a map. Each surface below gets a short orientation (what makes it its own job and what to watch for) and a link to the full guide that walks it through. After the surfaces comes how the cost adds up, and the one thing that decides how long any of it lasts. Find your surface. Then go as deep as you need.

Brick: a one-way decision, so get the surface right first

Painting brick is the surface decision people agonise over most, and for good reason. It's largely a one-way street: once a brick wall is painted, it stays painted, because stripping paint back off masonry is difficult and rarely worth it. So the real question isn't whether you can paint brick (you can), but whether you want to commit that wall to being a painted, repainted-for-life surface.

Brick is also porous in a way timber and steel aren't, which changes how the surface has to be prepared and which products will actually bond. New masonry has its own waiting rules before any paint goes near it, and old brick can throw up issues like efflorescence that need dealing with first. Those are exactly the details that decide whether the finish holds, and the full brick guide walks through each of them.

Read the full guide to painting brick for how to weigh the decision and what the surface prep involves.

Weatherboard and render: timber and cement want different prep

Most Australian houses are clad in one of two things: timber weatherboards or a cement render, and they behave nothing alike. Timber moves with the weather, swelling and shrinking, so it wants a flexible coating and its bare spots sealed before the topcoats. Render is a cement-based surface with its own rules, including how long new render has to cure before it can take paint.

Get the prep matched to the cladding and the finish lasts; treat both the same and one of them will let go early. Which prep, which primer and how long to wait are surface-specific, so they live in the full guide rather than here.

Read the full guide to painting weatherboard and render for the prep each cladding needs.

Fences and decks: a separate outdoor surface, and often a stain not a paint

Fences and decks are their own job, separate from the house walls. On SureQuote they're a distinct, priced line of work. They also bring a choice the walls don't: paint or stain. A solid paint gives colour and a film over the timber; a penetrating stain soaks in and lets the grain show, and it wears differently. And a Colorbond or steel fence is a different surface again from a hardwood deck.

Which finish suits your fence or deck, and how to prep timber versus metal, is the kind of detail that changes the result, so it's covered in full on its own page rather than settled here.

Read the full guide to painting fences and decks for the paint-or-stain call and how to brief a painter.

What an exterior job costs comes down to four drivers, and prep is the biggest

Once you know the surfaces, the price makes more sense, because an exterior quote is built from four things and the paint itself is the smallest of them. The biggest is prep: washing, scraping back flaking paint, filling and getting the surface sound before any finish goes on. Prep is heavier on a weathered or older wall than on a sound one, and it's labour, so it moves the number the most.

The other three stack on top. Coats matter: two proper topcoats over the right primer cost more than one thin pass, and they're what gives even colour and wear. Access and height matter too. A single-storey weatherboard is one thing; a rendered two-storey that needs scaffolding is another, with the safety gear and time that brings. And surface condition matters: a clean recoat is a different job to one where worn old layers have to come back to bare.

Your real number depends on your surfaces and their state, so the most useful thing is a range built from your own home rather than a headline figure. Use the live estimate below for a fair-price range for your place, then see the full breakdown on the cost guide.

What will your exterior paint job cost?

How long it lasts is set by the weather and the prep, not a calendar

There's no fixed number of years for an exterior finish, however much people want one. How long it holds depends on the product, how well the surface was prepped, how the home is looked after, and where you live. A coastal or high-sun home works its paint far harder than a sheltered inland one, so the same job in two places can age very differently.

The clearest proof comes from the makers themselves. A premium exterior system like Dulux Weathershield is guaranteed not to peel, flake or blister 'for as long as you live in your home', but only when it's 'applied and maintained in accordance with the product instructions, to a suitable and sound substrate'.2DuluxView source Read that the other way and it tells you the whole game: the durability rides on the prep and the upkeep, not on the colour you pick. So repaint when the surface tells you it's time (chalky, fading, lifting at the edges) rather than on a date.

One more thing before any scraping starts on an older home. Houses built before 1970 often used high-lead paint on the outside, and paint made before 1965 could hold as much as 50 per cent lead.3DCCEEWView source Lead is a health hazard, and you can't tell by looking, so the safe move on an older home is to have the old paint checked by a licensed professional before anyone sands or scrapes it. That's a job for the regulator's guidance and a qualified hand, not a DIY weekend.