Painters in Newcastle

For a stand-alone interior repaint, no. The Home Building Act 1989 excludes internal painting work from the definition of residential building work, and NSW's painting page states that since 2015 stand-alone contracts for internal paintwork no longer need a licence. The exclusion has a hinge, though: the Act adds internal painting back in where it is part only of the work to be done under a contract to do residential building work. So the same brush-work is unlicensed as its own job and licensable inside a renovation contract. If the painting is bundled with anything else, the threshold and the licence question return.

No. The Act writes its exclusion specifically around internal painting work, so exterior painting stays residential building work and meets the general threshold — the Regulation's clause 12 sets that at $5,000, measured on what the labour and the materials would reasonably cost at market. Two details are worth carrying into a quote. Materials count towards the figure, not just the hours. And the words including GST come from the government's own licensing guidance; the Regulation says nothing either way about GST, so the qualifier belongs to the guidance rather than to the instrument.

Not under the licensing rules. The Home Building Regulation 2014 lists painting and decorating as two separate trade categories, and its scope description for decorating covers work involved in the installation of painted or applied decorations such as murals, frescos or wallpaper. The internal-painting exclusion in the Act is written around painting work, not decorating, so a wallpaper job does not inherit it and is treated as ordinary residential building work under the $5,000 threshold. On the register these two surface as the labels Painter and Decorator, and a tradesperson may hold either, or both.

Ordinarily not for the painting itself. The Strata Schemes Management Act 2015 lets an owner carry out cosmetic work to common property in connection with their lot without the owners corporation's approval, and painting is on the statutory list, alongside things like hanging hooks, handrails and laying carpet. The list has limits that matter here: cosmetic work excludes anything that changes the external appearance of a lot, anything involving structural changes, and anything that would count as a minor renovation under section 110. So repainting a living room and changing the colour of a balcony wall are not the same decision, and the second one goes back through the owners corporation.

Two things beyond the name. First, the type of credential: only a contractor licence authorises its holder to contract to do the work, under section 21 of the Home Building Act 1989. A qualified supervisor certificate authorises its holder to do and supervise the work but not to contract or advertise for it, and a tradesperson certificate covers specialist work only, under supervision. Second, the category. The register displays the categories a licence covers, and painting and decorating are separate ones. The register also carries its own disclaimer that no warranty is given as to the accuracy of its content, and it holds no complaint or investigation history — a current record is a licensing fact, not a quality rating.