What licence does a painting business need in Australia?

Do I need a licence to run a painting business in Australia?

It depends which state the job is in and how big that job is. There is no single national licence covering every painter in Australia; each state sets its own threshold and its own regulator, so a painter working across state lines, or picking up a job as a subbie interstate, has to check that state's own rule rather than go on what applies at home.

In New South Wales, Painting work from NSW Fair Trading says a contractor licence is needed for residential building or trade work, including painting, once the labour and materials for that job (including GST) pass a stated value. Below that value, a one-off repaint or touch-up on a house does not need a NSW painting contractor licence. The same page says stand-alone contracts for internal paintwork have not needed a licence since twenty fifteen, unless that interior work is bundled into other home building work, such as a full renovation.

Queensland and Victoria run different systems again. In Queensland, the ABLIS listing for painting and decorating ties the licence to the Queensland Building and Construction Commission Act 1991 and the Queensland Building and Construction Commission Regulation 2018, administered by the QBCC. In Victoria, Consumer Affairs Victoria's registration checklist says a practitioner needs to be registered with the Building Practitioners board once domestic building work passes a stated cost, needs a building permit, or combines more than one trade, such as plastering and painting together, that passes that cost as a combined job.

Does the rule change for small interior jobs, strata work or touch-ups?

Yes, several states separate small or stand-alone painting from the bigger jobs that trigger a licence, and that split matters for how a painter quotes a strata touch-up against a full exterior repaint.

NSW's exemption for stand-alone internal paintwork, named above, means a painter doing interior touch-ups, a feature wall job or a colour consultation on their own, with no other building work attached, may sit outside the NSW licence requirement for that contract. Queensland draws its own line by scope of work rather than by inside or outside: Painting and decorating from the QBCC describes the scope as applying paint or another substance for protective, decorative or technical purposes, and includes colour matching, applying texture coatings, applying wallpaper, preparing surfaces, and applying cement render up to a stated thickness.

Decorating is its own category in NSW. Decorating work describes decorating as the work involved in installing painted or applied decorations such as murals, frescos or wallpaper, handled separately from standard painting contractor work.

None of this changes what a painter actually does on site, cutting in around trims, running coats on an exterior, prepping a wall before the primer goes on. It changes which contracts need a licence attached to the quote and the invoice.

What licence type does a painter need, and who needs it?

Several states split the one trade into more than one licence type, because a sole painter, a painting company and a crew on a commercial or new build site are not treated the same way.

In Queensland, the ABLIS painting and decorating listing lists contractor, company, nominee supervisor and site supervisor licence types, each allowing a different role: performing and contracting for the work, contracting as a company, or supervising it on someone else's licence. A painter running their own crew across several sites at once, a common setup once the business takes on commercial or strata contracts, may need more than one of these depending on how the business is structured. For a company or partnership licence in NSW, the ABLIS contractor licence listing ties eligibility to the Home Building Act 1989 and the Home Building Regulation 2014.

Employees are treated differently from the licensed business itself. Understand when you are breaking the law from the QBCC gives the example of a licensed painter who employs painters to paint a house; those employees do not themselves need a separate QBCC licence to carry out the painting work, because the licence sits with the business, not every person holding a brush.

To get a licence to carry out painting work in NSW, Painting work says a painter must complete a listed qualification, such as a Certificate III in Painting and Decorating, alongside meeting the other eligibility rules on that page.

What happens if a painter works a job without the right licence?

The licence sits with the job type and value, not with how good the painter is on the tools, so a painter who is excellent on an exterior or a spray job can still be working outside the rules if the licence has not kept up with the business.

In Victoria, My practitioner is unregistered explains that some painting work does not need registration if it is the only task being carried out, regardless of the cost, but once painting is combined with other building work, that exemption can disappear and registration applies. A painter moving between a stand-alone exterior repaint and a bigger job that bundles painting with other trades, say after storm damage or on a renovation, can cross that line without realising it.

This is general information, not legal, tax or employment advice. Check your own situation with the body named here or a qualified adviser.

None of the sources checked for this article cover New Zealand, so this page cannot say how licensing works there without guessing. A painting business based anywhere in New Zealand should check directly with the relevant licensing body for its own situation, because the rules named above apply only to the Australian states named. Greg coaches painters online, working from the business's own data wherever it sits, so where the business is based does not change how that coaching runs.

How do you keep this current without it eating billable hours?

You keep it current by treating licence and qualification records as part of the job data, not as paperwork to chase once a year. A quote that crosses a licence threshold, a crew working a commercial site that needs a supervisor on the licence, a subbie whose own qualification has lapsed, all of that sits inside the job and pay data the business already has.

This is where AI agents earn their place in a painting business. An AI agent is software that does a job the way you would do it yourself, using your own prices, your own wording and your own rules, rather than a generic template. An AI agent can be set to flag a quote approaching a state's licence threshold before it goes out, or hold a subcontractor's paperwork against what that job actually needs, so the office is not finding the gap after the invoice has already gone out.

That is the data first approach: start from what the business's own jobs and crew records already show, rather than from memory of what the licence used to require. A painter juggling a strata job, a new build for a builder and a run of exterior repaints at once does not have time to re-check every rule by hand, and AI agents taking on that checking means the painter's own time goes back onto the tools and the quote, not the filing.

Where can you check the current rules?

• Painting work - NSW Fair Trading's page on when a painting contractor licence is needed, the change for stand-alone internal paintwork, and the qualifications required.
• Painting and decorating licence (ABLIS, QLD) - the Queensland licence types and the Acts and Regulations behind them.
• Contractor Licence - Building - Company/Partnership (ABLIS, NSW) - NSW eligibility rules for a company or partnership licence.
• Decorating work - NSW's separate category for decorating work such as murals, frescos and wallpaper.
• Painting and decorating - the QBCC's scope of work for a Queensland painting and decorating licence.
• Understand when you are breaking the law - QBCC examples of when a licence is and is not needed, including employees working under a licensed painter.
• Becoming a registered building practitioner - checklist - Consumer Affairs Victoria's thresholds for registration with the Building Practitioners board.
• My practitioner is unregistered - Building Victoria's explanation of when single-task work, including painting, can sit outside registration.

How does Data First Coaching approach this?

Data First Coaching, built by Greg Allan, starts from the painting business's own job and quote data rather than a general rule of thumb about licences. Through the Trade Business Intelligence, it looks at which contracts sit close to a state's threshold, which jobs combine painting with other trades, and whether the business's own records would hold up if a regulator or a customer asked. Often the real issue is not the licence itself but how quoting and job records are kept day to day. The how, the systems that catch this before a job goes out, is worked through inside the Academy, with members, because the Trade Business Intelligence is powered by every member who joins it.