Tilers in Brisbane

Kitchen tiling: a splashback and a kitchen floor are two different quotes

The two tiled surfaces in a Brisbane kitchen are priced in opposite ways, and reading them as one number is how quotes get misjudged. A splashback is small, bounded and full of cutting, so tilers quote it as a job: A$400–1,500 supplied and laid in Greater Brisbane, with plain subway or standard-format tile at the bottom of that and mosaic sheets, natural stone or a patterned set-out at the top. A kitchen floor is an open run, so it is priced the way the rest of the floor is — A$45–100/m² for lay labour, with tile supply separate. One of those numbers includes your tile and the other does not, which is why a per-square-metre rate can look lower than a splashback covering three square metres and still cost more once the tile is bought.

Three things move a kitchen quote further than tile choice does. Tile format is the first: mosaic sheets and small formats multiply the edges to set out and the grout lines to finish, while large formats have to go down on a substrate flat enough that a big tile cannot rock. Substrate is the second — a wall that comes up sound behind the old tiles is a different job from one that needs re-sheeting before anything can be fixed to it. Existing tile removal is the third, and it is the one most often left out, because it happens before the part of the job you are picturing: stripping an old splashback off plasterboard frequently takes the paper face of the sheet with it, so a quote written on the assumption of a clean strip-out moves once the wall is open. Ask for removal and wall preparation as their own lines rather than folded into the tiling rate, so a variation later is a line you can check.

Where Brisbane kitchens differ from the ones national price guides describe is what sits under and behind them. In the slab-on-ground homes across the outer growth suburbs the kitchen floor is usually not a room at all — it runs continuously into the dining and living area on one level, so "the kitchen floor" in a quote can be several times the area you had in mind, and the flatness a large-format tile needs has to hold across that whole span. In a pre-war Queenslander the kitchen sits on a timber-framed floor that moves with the seasons, so the tiler prices a sheet substrate and preparation before any tile is laid. There is also a code requirement that catches people out on splashbacks: where a sink is within 75 mm of a wall, that wall must be water resistant to not less than 150 mm above the sink for the length of it, the junction where the sink is fixed to the wall must be waterproof, and tap and spout penetrations through that surface must be waterproof (NCC 2022 Housing Provisions cl 10.2.5). A splashback is not only decoration.

Bathroom tiling and waterproofing: two licence classes, and the invoice line that proves it

Waterproofing is its own licence class in Queensland. The Queensland Building and Construction Commission Regulation 2018 sets the classes out in schedule 2: wall and floor tiling is part 59, waterproofing is part 60, and part 60's scope of work is "Apply, install and repair waterproofing, including surface preparation and apply or install material or systems for preventing moisture penetration." A separate class does not mean your tiler needs a second licence, and that is where the two facts get run together. Part 59's own scope of work lists four things, and the third of them is "Apply waterproofing for wall and floor tiling" (sch 2 pt 59 s 2(3)). A licensed tiler waterproofing the wet area they are about to tile is working inside their own class; a contractor who waterproofs and does not tile holds the part 60 class instead. QBCC publishes both scopes on its own licence pages, and they read the same as the regulation.

What you are checking, then, is not how many licences someone holds but whether the person applying the membrane is licensed at all for a job this size. Work valued at A$3,300 or less sits outside "building work" under schedule 1 section 2 of the same regulation, and the value it means is the whole contract — materials, labour and GST — not the labour line on its own. A full bathroom retile including waterproofing runs A$3,000–7,000 in Greater Brisbane for labour, with tiles on top, so it is over the threshold before a tile has been chosen. The waterproofing within it is typically A$500–1,200 per bathroom.

On the invoice, waterproofing belongs on its own line rather than as a word inside a lump sum, and that line should name who applied it, their QBCC licence number and class, the membrane system used, the areas treated and the date it went down. That last set is worth insisting on because the National Construction Code says what has to be covered, in numbers. Under the 2022 Housing Provisions the walls of a shower area must be waterproof to not less than 1800 mm above the floor substrate; the floor of the shower area, including any hob or step-down, must be waterproof; wall junctions and joints within the shower area must be waterproof for not less than 40 mm either side; and every penetration within the shower area must be waterproof (cl 10.2.2). Where a floor waste is installed, the continuous fall of the floor plane to it must be at least 1:80 and no more than 1:50 (cl 10.2.12). An invoice that says only "waterproofing — included" records none of that, and a membrane is the one part of the job you cannot inspect afterwards without breaking the tiling.

One point of currency, because it decides which rules a quote is written against: Queensland's adoption date for NCC 2025 is 1 May 2027, later than the 1 May 2026 date taken up in Victoria, Tasmania, Western Australia and the ACT. The 2022 provisions cited here are the Queensland edition for work quoted and built now, and a bathroom quoted after that date should be read against the newer one.

Floor tiling in Brisbane: what your slab, or your Queenslander, changes

On a slab-on-ground house the floor you are tiling is already a substrate. The National Construction Code's list of floor substrates deemed water resistant in a wet area names concrete complying with AS 3600 and concrete slabs complying with AS 2870 (NCC 2022 Housing Provisions cl 10.2.9), so in a slab home the tiler's preparation is about flatness, falls and movement rather than about building something to tile onto. That is why lay labour on a sound slab sits toward the bottom of the A$45–100/m² band, and why the levelling a dished or out-of-level slab needs should appear as its own line rather than being absorbed into the rate.

A pre-war Queenslander is a different job, and the difference is written into the code rather than being a matter of preference. Outside the shower area, a floor of concrete or fibre-cement sheet has to be water resistant — but a timber floor, including particleboard, plywood and other timber-based flooring, has to be waterproof for the whole room (cl 10.2.3). And the sheet route onto the deemed-to-satisfy list is compressed fibre-cement sheeting manufactured to AS/NZS 2908.2 and supported on a structural floor (cl 10.2.9). In practice a bathroom or kitchen on a timber-framed floor gets a sheet underlay fixed down before any tile is laid, and that is preparation priced on top of the lay rate. A quote for a timber-floored house showing the same per-square-metre figure as a slab house, and nothing else, has left something out.

Large-format tile pushes either kind of floor toward the top of the A$45–100/m² band, for a mechanical reason: a large tile cannot bridge a dip, so the substrate has to be levelled to a tolerance a small-format tile would have forgiven, and the sheets themselves are heavy and slow to place. Small mosaics and patterned set-outs reach the top of the same band from the opposite direction, on cutting and grout lines. Whichever end you land on, read the rate for what it says: floor and wall tiling here are quoted as lay labour with tile supply separate, because you choose and buy the tile and the tiler's labour does not change with what you paid for it. Before comparing two lay-only quotes, confirm that both measured the same area, both state a wastage allowance, and both say who orders and takes delivery of the tile.