Dupaint is a licensed Sydney painting company that has painted strata buildings since 1998. We work with owners corporations, strata managers and building managers across Sydney on common property, facades, lobbies, stairwells, balconies, ceilings, car parks and roof lines, under NSW Painting and Decorating Contractors Licence 494827C and $20 million public liability cover.
Call 1300 433 986 for a free on-site inspection and written scope of works.
Credentials your committee can verify:
Every quote arrives with the paperwork attached, so your strata manager isn’t chasing documents before the committee can make a decision.
Strata painting is the painting and maintenance of common property within a strata scheme, the parts of a building owned collectively by the owners corporation rather than by an individual lot owner. In New South Wales that body is called an owners corporation; in Queensland the equivalent term is a body corporate, which is why you’ll see “body corporate painters” used interchangeably.
The difference from residential work isn’t the size of the building. It’s who decides, who pays, and who has to live with the disruption.
Common property usually includes: external walls and render, entry lobbies, corridors and halls, stairwells and stair nosings, the exterior face of doors and windows, balcony ceilings and soffits, balustrades and handrails, car park walls and bollards, letterbox surrounds, and shared roof and gutter structures.
Lot property is generally everything inside your front door, internal wall surfaces, ceilings within the lot, and the inward-facing side of the entry door. Boundaries vary between schemes, so the registered strata plan and the by-laws are the final word.
That distinction matters because it determines which fund the work is paid from. Painting common property is normally funded from the capital works fund and forecast in the 10-year capital works plan required under the Strata Schemes Management Act 2015 (NSW). Getting the scope right at quoting stage is what stops a project blowing past its budgeted allocation.
The building stock across Sydney’s strata schemes is unusually varied, and each type fails differently.
Coastal buildings in the Eastern Suburbs and on the Northern Beaches, Bondi, Dover Heights, Coogee, Manly, carry salt spray onto rendered facades and metal balustrades year-round. Rust bleeds through cheap coatings within two summers. These buildings need proper rust conversion and marine-grade systems, not another topcoat over the last one.
1960s and 1970s red-brick walk-ups across the Inner West and Lower North Shore have painted brick, exposed concrete stair nosings and steel-framed windows. The recurring issue is moisture behind previously painted brickwork, which lifts the film and takes the substrate with it. Buildings from this era may also carry lead-based paint, which changes how preparation is done.
Federation and Victorian terraces converted to strata in Glebe, Paddington and Balmain bring decorative mouldings, cast-iron lace and heritage colour obligations. Some sit inside heritage conservation areas where the colour scheme isn’t a free choice.
Newer high-density towers in Green Square, Zetland and Wolli Creek present a different problem, height. Access is by rope or elevated work platform, and painting has to be sequenced around balcony waterproofing membranes and glazing seals so you’re not coating a surface that’s about to be cut into.
Hills District townhouse complexes around Castle Hill, Kellyville, Bella Vista and Norwest tend to be large-footprint, low-rise and driveway-heavy. The challenge here is logistics, resident parking, staged access across 40 or 60 dwellings, and keeping driveways usable throughout.
Dupaint has painted all five types. The inspection is where we work out which one you’ve got and what it’s going to need.
Entry lobbies, corridors, halls, stairwells and internal ceilings take constant contact, trolleys, prams, furniture moves, bikes. We use washable low-sheen and semi-gloss systems on high-traffic surfaces so marks come off with a sponge instead of a touch-up. Colour selection is free, and Maz will bring physical samples to the committee rather than emailing a swatch PDF. Related work: ceiling painting and interior painting.
Rendered, brick, concrete, weatherboard, fibre cement and metal facades. Preparation is the part that decides how long the job lasts: high-pressure washing to remove chalking and airborne grime, treatment of mould and wood-decay fungus, rust conversion on steel, crack repair and re-rendering where the substrate has fractured, then a primer and topcoat system matched to the surface. See our exterior painting page for the coating systems we use.
Most of the anxiety around strata painting isn’t about the paint. It’s about not knowing what’s going to happen. Here’s the sequence.
1. Site inspection. Maz Nassimi attends the building personally, walks the common property with your strata manager or committee representative, and photographs the areas of concern. Typically 45 to 90 minutes depending on building size.
2. Written scope of works and quotation. You receive an itemised document, surfaces, preparation method, coating system and number of coats, access equipment, exclusions and programme. It’s written so a committee can compare it line-by-line against competing tenders, not as a single lump-sum figure.
3. Programming and resident notification. Once the works are approved, we agree a start date and a staging plan. Dupaint supplies notice templates your strata manager can circulate, and we install site signage so residents know which section is being worked on and when their balcony or corridor will be affected.
4. Preparation. Washing, sanding, scraping, rust treatment, crack and render repair, mould treatment, and priming of bare or repaired surfaces. Where lead paint is identified, containment and disposal follow the relevant NSW requirements. Preparation is usually 50 to 60 per cent of the labour on an older strata building.
5. Coating application. Premium Dulux, applied by brush, roller or spray as the surface requires. Crews arrive when they say they will, if the schedule changes, your strata manager hears it from us before residents ask.
6. Handover and warranty. A walk-through with your committee representative or strata manager, a defects list if anything needs attention, and a written 5-year workmanship warranty covering the completed works.
Strata painting is quoted per building, not per square metre off a price list, because the cost is driven by preparation and access rather than paint.
The four things that move the number most:
We also provide comparative quotes for tender processes where the committee is assessing several contractors. For general context on painting costs, see our Sydney house painting cost guide and commercial painting costs in Sydney.
Call Now for a Free Quote
