How much does a painter cost in New Zealand?

New Zealand painters charge roughly $40 to $70 an hour, but interior and exterior repaints are almost always quoted by area rather than by time. A typical job comes in around $2,500, from about $600 for a room or two to $8,000 and up for a full exterior.

Updated September 2026

TYPICAL HOURLY RATE

$40 to $70 an hour

Hourly is what you pay for small or awkward work — a patch, a door, a piece of trim. Whole rooms and whole houses are priced per square metre of surface, with preparation quoted separately because preparation is where the hours go.

A TYPICAL JOB

$2,500

Most land between $600 and $8,000

The bottom of the range is a couple of interior rooms, two coats, on sound walls. The top is a whole weatherboard exterior with real preparation and scaffolding.

Both figures are national and GST inclusive. Neither is a quote: what you pay depends on your job, and the only way to know it is to have someone price that job.

WHAT CHANGES THE PRICE

Why two quotes for the same job differ

Preparation, which is most of the job

Washing, scraping, sanding, filling, priming and masking take longer than the painting on any surface that has been outside. Two quotes that differ wildly usually differ here and nowhere else.

The state of the existing paint

Sound paint takes two coats. Flaking, chalking or previously enamelled surfaces need stripping or a bonding primer first, and older coatings may need testing and controlled removal before anything else can happen.

Height and access

Anything above single storey needs scaffolding or an elevated platform, which is a hire line in the quote as well as slower work. A tight side boundary can force scaffolding on a house that otherwise would not need it.

Colour changes and coverage

Going dark over light, or light over dark, is a third coat. So are some strong reds and yellows. Staying near the existing colour is genuinely cheaper.

HOW TO PAY LESS

Three things that actually reduce the bill

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Do your own preparation only if you will do it properly. Moving furniture, clearing the site and washing down are worth discounting; badly sanded walls cost more to fix than to have done.

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Paint the whole exterior at once rather than a wall at a time. Setup, scaffolding and access are charged once, and they are a large fraction of a small job.

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Ask what paint, how many coats and what preparation the price includes. That is the only way two exterior quotes can be compared at all.

COMMON QUESTIONS ABOUT COST

Is painting quoted by the hour or by the square metre?

Small jobs by the hour, whole rooms and houses by the square metre of surface — walls, ceilings and exterior cladding are usually rated differently, and preparation is often a separate rate again. Ask for the quote in that form and it becomes comparable; ask for a single number and it does not.

How long should an exterior repaint last?

On a properly prepared and coated exterior in New Zealand conditions, in the order of seven to ten years, less on the weather side and on anything facing the sea. That is why preparation is worth paying for: a cheap repaint that fails in three years is the more expensive one.

Does the price include the paint?

Usually yes, and usually with a margin on it. Ask which product and how many coats, because a quote using a lower-grade paint can look competitive and cover less. If you supply the paint yourself you take on the responsibility if it is the wrong product for the surface.

Should I repaint in winter?

Exteriors need dry surfaces and temperatures above the paint’s minimum, so winter work is slower and more weather-dependent — but interiors are unaffected, and painters are often more available and more competitive out of season.

WHERE THESE NUMBERS COME FROM

The hourly rate is the range NovaPay uses across the site for this trade, and the typical job figure is the mid-market New Zealand price its assistant works from when it helps somebody set a budget. Both are the same numbers the product uses when you are inside it, published here rather than kept behind a sign-in.

What they are not: a survey, an average of anyone’s invoices, or what businesses on NovaPay charge. There is no dataset here large enough to claim any of those, so this page does not claim them. It also publishes no per-job price list, because a list like that would be exactly that claim in a more convincing format.

Treat the figures as an order of magnitude for planning. The real number for your job is a quote from somebody who has understood it.

GET A REAL NUMBER

Find out what yours costs

Describe the job once. NovaPay asks local painters on your behalf and brings the quotes back to one place, priced for your job rather than as a rate card. Free for customers, and every quote waits for your OK.

Tell us the job

More about hiring painters on NovaPay

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