Ask three Melbourne painters to quote the same house, and you will get three different numbers, sometimes with a gap wide enough to make you distrust all of them. That gap rarely means someone is overcharging. More often they have quoted three different jobs. One allowed two days for preparation. One allowed none. One looked up at the eaves and priced for what the other two walked past.
Painting is one of the few trades where the visible product, the paint itself, is a small fraction of what you are paying for. Once you know where the money goes, a quote is far easier to read and much harder to hide a shortcut inside.
Preparation is the real variable
On most repaints, preparation takes longer than painting. Washing down, scraping anything flaking, filling, sanding, spot priming, caulking, replacing putty, masking and protecting floors and gardens. None of it shows in the finished job. All of it decides whether the finish holds for three years or twelve.
This is the biggest reason two quotes for one house look so far apart. A well-maintained home with sound surfaces might need a day of prep. The same house with sun-damaged north-facing boards, cracked putty and thirty years of build-up on the eaves might need four. The painting stage is nearly identical. Everything before it is not.
So this is the first thing to check on a quote. One that spells out the preparation tells you something real. One that names a paint brand and a total tells you almost nothing.
What you are painting matters more than how much of it there is
Square metres are a starting point, not an answer. The surface decides the method, and the method decides the hours.
- Weatherboard is slow work. Every board has a face, an edge and a shadow line, and older boards usually need scraping and spot priming first.
- Rendered surfaces coat quickly but must be checked first for hairline cracking and any sign of moisture behind. Coating over a render problem seals it in rather than fixing it.
- Face brick that has never been painted needs a different primer system, and it is effectively a one-way decision.
- Interior plaster is the fastest surface in the trade, until you count the cutting in. A room with high ceilings, decorative cornice and six doors takes far longer than a plain room of the same floor area.
Detail is what costs money. A large simple surface is cheap per square metre. A fiddly, detailed one is not, which is why an ornate Edwardian frontage and a flat modern facade of the same width sit in different brackets. You can see the range across our exterior house painting work.
Access, height and how the site works
A single-storey house on a flat block with clear side access is the cheapest scenario there is. Everything else adds time. Second storeys, steep blocks, setbacks too narrow for a trestle, roofs that cannot be walked on, and anywhere scaffold becomes necessary under Victorian work at height rules. None of that is padding, and a cheap quote on a two-storey home is worth a question about how the painter plans to reach the top.
Colour change, coats and coverage
Repainting a similar shade over a sound finish is straightforward. Going several shades lighter over a dark colour often needs an extra coat to bury what is underneath. Strong reds and deep yellows have lower natural opacity and behave the same way, whatever they cost. Bare or unpainted surfaces need a full system, meaning the right primer or undercoat plus the finish coats.
The paint specification itself
Better exterior paint costs more per litre and less per year, a trade worth making in Melbourne, where a north or west-facing wall takes a beating all summer, and a south-facing wall stays damp through winter. Cheaper products often need an extra coat, and that labour costs more than the money saved on the tin.
Older homes and the lead question
If your home was built or last painted before 1970, the existing paint may contain lead, and that changes the job. Sanding, scraping, heat stripping or water blasting releases dust into your home and garden, so the work needs proper containment, dust control and disposal through the correct waste stream, in line with the Australian Standard for lead paint management.
It adds cost, and it is not optional. It is also a useful signal, since a painter who does not raise it on a pre 1970 house has either not looked or intends to sand it off and hope. If your place is that era, read how lead paint removal is properly handled before you accept any quote on it.
How to compare quotes without guessing
Put the quotes side by side and check whether each tells you:
- What preparation is included, described specifically rather than as the word prep alone
- How many coats, and what primer or undercoat sits beneath them
- Which surfaces are in scope, including eaves, fascia, gutters, downpipes, garage doors, window frames and fences
- How access to height will be managed
- What happens if rot, rust or lead is found once work starts
- Public liability cover, and who is actually on site doing the work
Once you have that, the cheapest quote is often not the cheapest job. It is just the one with the least in it.
Why we will not put a price list on this page
Any figure published on a website is a guess about a house nobody has looked at. It goes stale, ignores the condition of your surfaces, and sets an expectation that gets walked back the moment someone inspects. Showing you the work is more useful. Our completed projects across Berwick, Frankston, Pakenham, Richmond and beyond say more about scope and standard than a number could, as do the interior house painting jobs, where most of the value sits in work no after photo can show.
Frequently asked questions
Why did one quote come in at half the price of another for the same house?
Almost always because the scope is different, not because one painter is generous. Compare the preparation, the number of coats, whether the eaves and fascia are included, and how height access is being handled. Once those line up, the remaining gap is usually small.
Does a higher quote guarantee better work?
No. Price on its own proves nothing. What it should come with is detail, and detail is checkable. A well-priced quote explains what is being done and why, names the surfaces, and does not leave the preparation stage as a single vague line.
We want to go from a dark charcoal to an off white. Will that cost more?
Usually yes, because burying a dark base often takes an extra coat and sometimes a tinted undercoat to get there evenly. It is worth raising at the quoting stage rather than after, since a painter who has not been told about the colour change may not have allowed for it.
Our house is from the 1950s. Should we expect it to cost more than a newer home?
Generally yes, and mostly for reasons that have nothing to do with size. Older homes tend to have more surface detail, more accumulated coats to deal with, more timber that needs repair, and a real possibility of lead in the existing paint. The painting is not harder. The preparation is.
Can we reduce the cost by doing some of the preparation ourselves?
Sometimes, for straightforward interior work such as clearing rooms and taking down fittings, this genuinely saves time. It is a different matter on exteriors and on any older home, where sanding back the wrong surface can create a health issue and a bigger bill. Ask before you start rather than after.
Ready to find out what your place actually needs?
The most useful thing you can do before spending money is stop asking what a job like yours should cost, and start finding out what a painter would flag on your house specifically. That takes an inspection, not a calculator.
Meggyco Painting Pty Ltd works across metropolitan Melbourne on residential and commercial projects, carries $10 million in public liability cover, and will tell you what we find on your walls even when it is not the answer you were hoping for. Call us on (045) 071 2009, or send through the details of your property at meggycopainting.com.au, and we will come and look at it properly.
