Painter and decorator salary in Australia

What a qualified painter earns

The government's Your Career profile puts full-time painting trades workers at around $1,000 a week. That sits a fair bit under the all-jobs median of roughly $1,230 a week. Over a year that works out near the low-to-mid $50,000s for a straight full-time wage.

Treat that as a guide, not gospel. Your Career and Jobs and Skills Australia update these numbers over time, and they are a broad median across the whole trade, drawn from full-time workers before tax. They do not count overtime, allowances, or what you can pull running your own gear. Your actual pay swings on where you work, who you work for, and how much you are on the tools.

What pushes the pay up

• •Experience: first-year qualified rates are the bottom. Pay climbs as you get faster, cleaner, and trusted to run jobs on your own.
• •State and market: a painter flat out in a busy city or a mining state usually earns more than one in a quiet regional town where work dries up.
• •Overtime and site allowances: on commercial and industrial sites, penalty rates, travel, and site allowances stack on top of the base and add up quick.
• •Specialisation: protective coatings, spray finishing, heritage and decorative work, or industrial abseiling pay better than standard brush-and-roll domestic work.
• •Mining, resources and FIFO: shutdowns and remote resource work pay strong money for the hours, but you cop long swings away from home.
• •Going out on your own: subbies and business owners who quote well and keep the calendar full can clear a lot more than a wage, though you carry the tools, insurance, ute, and slow weeks yourself.

What you earn as an apprentice

While you are training you earn an apprentice wage, not the full qualified rate. Painters usually sit under the Building and Construction General On-site Award, and the award sets your minimum by year of apprenticeship. It starts low and steps up each year as you move through the trade.

Your rate also shifts if you are adult-aged when you start, and whether you are on an award or a registered agreement. Do not go off a mate's number from a few years back. Punch your details into the Fair Work Pay Calculator to see the current minimum for your year and situation.

How it stacks up against other trades

Straight up, painting sits toward the lower end of the trade pay ladder on the government figures. Electricians, plumbers, and a lot of the metal and mechanical trades tend to show higher medians.

That is not the whole story though. Painting has a shorter, cheaper run into being qualified, low tool costs, and it is easy to start your own business off the back of a ute. The ceiling is more about how you run the work than the trade itself.

How to earn more over a career

• •Get quick and get quality: the painters who earn well finish clean jobs fast and get repeat calls and referrals.
• •Add tickets and skills: spray, protective coatings, EWP and scaffold tickets, and a white card open up better-paid commercial and industrial work.
• •Chase the better sites: commercial, industrial, and resource work with allowances and overtime beats cash-in-hand domestic touch-ups.
• •Build a name and go subbie: reliable subbies who quote sharp and turn up get first pick of the good builders.
• •Run it like a business: your own ABN, good quoting, a couple of hands under you, and a full calendar is where the real money is in this trade.