Most people find out their house has lead paint at the worst possible moment, halfway through a weekend of sanding, with dust through the hallway and a toddler in the next room. The frustrating part is that the first clue is usually sitting in the property listing. Age tells you most of what you need to know, and a few minutes of looking tells you the rest.
Melbourne has a lot of housing in the bracket that matters. The weatherboards of Frankston and Hastings, the Californian bungalows of the eastern suburbs, the Victorian and Edwardian terraces of Richmond and Fitzroy, and plenty of mid-century brick veneer in between. None of that is a problem in itself. It becomes a problem the moment somebody disturbs the paint.
Start with the year, because the dates are unusually clear
Australian paint standards changed in steps, and each step narrows the odds.
| Before 1965 | Domestic paint commonly contained up to 50 per cent lead |
| From 1965 | Recommended maximum dropped to 1 per cent |
| From 1992 | Reduced to 0.25 per cent |
| From 1997 | Reduced to 0.1 per cent |
| From 2021 | Reduced again to 0.009 per cent |
So a home built or last repainted before 1970 should be treated as likely to contain lead paint until testing says otherwise. A home from the 1970s or 1980s is far less likely but not exempt, because paint sold in that window could still legally carry up to 1 per cent lead, and because older stock gets repainted with whatever was in the shed. Anything after 1997 is realistically clear.
Where it actually is in a Melbourne house
Lead was used for durability and colour, so it turns up most on the surfaces that took the hardest wear.
- Window frames, sashes and sills, especially the friction points where sashes rub
- Door frames, doors, skirtings and architraves
- Weatherboards, eaves, fascia and barge boards
- Balustrades, verandah posts, front fences and old metal gates
- Kitchen and bathroom walls, where hard-wearing enamel was normal
Two extras catch people out. Soil along the drip line of an old house can hold decades of flaked paint, which matters if you have a vegetable patch or small children playing there. And ceiling dust in older Melbourne homes can carry lead from entirely separate sources, which is why disturbing a ceiling cavity deserves the same caution as sanding a wall.
What you can see, and what looking cannot tell you
There are real visual clues. Old lead paint often chalks, leaving a fine powder on your hand when you rub it. It can crack into a pattern like crazed reptile skin rather than peeling in clean sheets. And a chip broken off a skirting or window reveal often shows a cross section of eight or ten layers, with the oldest at the bottom.
What none of that proves is lead content. Modern paint chalks too, and plenty of lead paint looks perfectly ordinary under a fresh topcoat. Visual clues tell you to test. They are not a substitute for testing, and they certainly are not a reason to start scraping. The same caution applies when you are patching or sanding old plaster, which is worth reading alongside our guide to repairing cracks in plaster walls.
The three ways to actually test
Hardware store swab kits
Cheap, instant, and only useful in one direction. A clear positive is worth acting on. A negative proves very little, because the swab only reads the surface layer, and the lead is usually buried under later coats. If you use one, cut a small notch through every layer first. Treat the result as a prompt, not a verdict.
Paint chip sampling and laboratory analysis
A sample is taken through the full depth of the coating and analysed by a laboratory, ideally a NATA-accredited one. This is the definitive answer. It tells you the lead content by dry weight, which is the number that determines how the work has to be done.
XRF scanning
A handheld analyser reads lead content through the layers without cutting into the surface. It is fast, non-destructive and well suited to large or heritage properties where you need many readings across different elements.
What you must not do to old paint
This is the part that turns a manageable situation into a hazardous one. Dry sanding, machine sanding, power tool removal, abrasive blasting and high-pressure water jetting all convert solid paint into airborne dust that settles through the house and across the garden.
In Victoria this is not just advice. Under Part 4.3 of the Occupational Health and Safety Regulations, machine sanding or power tool removal of paint containing more than 1 per cent lead by dry weight is a lead process, and where it is classed as lead risk work, the employer has to notify WorkSafe and arrange health monitoring for the workers involved. The Australian and New Zealand Standard AS/NZS 4361.2 sets out how residential and commercial lead paint work should be assessed and controlled. A painter who cannot tell you which of those applies to your job has not thought about it.
Sound paint is not an emergency
Worth saying plainly, because this topic tips easily into alarm. Lead paint that is intact, not flaking, not chalking and sealed beneath sound modern coatings is generally not considered a hazard where it sits. The risk comes from deterioration and from disturbance.
That opens a sensible middle path. Depending on condition and location, the right answer may be careful stabilisation and encapsulation rather than full removal, which is often less disruptive and less expensive. Where removal is genuinely needed, it is done with containment, wet methods, controlled waste collection and disposal through the correct stream, which is exactly how lead paint removal should be scoped from the outset. You can see the approach on period properties in our Richmond project.
Before you book anyone to repaint
If your home predates 1970, settle the lead question before you accept a quote, not after work starts. A painter who inspects an older Melbourne home and says nothing about it is telling you something useful about how the job will be run. Our residential painting work starts with that conversation on any house of the right vintage.
Frequently asked questions
Our house was built in 1985. Are we in the clear?
Probably, but not certainly. Paint sold through the 1970s and 1980s could still contain up to 1 per cent lead, and homes from that era were often painted with leftovers or repainted over older materials. If you are only doing a light repaint over sound surfaces, it rarely matters. If you plan to strip anything back, test first.
Are the swab kits from the hardware store good enough?
They are good enough to confirm a problem and not good enough to rule one out. They read whatever is on the surface, so a fresh acrylic topcoat over 1950s enamel can easily return a negative. Take a positive seriously. Do not take a negative as permission to sand.
Does lead paint legally have to be removed from a home?
There is no blanket requirement for a homeowner to remove sound lead paint from their own house. The obligations bite around the work itself, how it is disturbed, how the dust is controlled and how the waste is disposed of. Leaving intact paint undisturbed and sealed is a legitimate option.
We are only repainting inside. Does the garden matter?
It can. Soil along the drip line of an older home often holds flakes shed from the exterior over many decades, and that is separate from whatever you do indoors. If children play there or you grow food in that strip, it is worth getting the soil checked independently of any painting work.
Would a standard pre-purchase building inspection have picked this up?
Usually not. A standard building and pest inspection is looking at structure, moisture and timber pests. Lead paint assessment is a separate specialist service, so a clean inspection report says nothing either way about lead.
Not sure what is under your paint? Find out before the sander comes out
The single most useful hour you can spend on an older Melbourne home is the one before any work begins. Once the dust is airborne, the cleanup costs far more than the testing would have.
Meggyco Painting Pty Ltd works on period and pre-1970 homes across metropolitan Melbourne, carries $10 million in public liability cover, and scopes lead-safe work properly rather than discovering it halfway through. If your place is that vintage, call (045) 071 2009 or send us the details at meggycopainting.com.au, and we will tell you what needs testing before we quote a brushstroke.
