What Is Strata Painting? Who Approves It, Who Pays, and What It Covers
If you own an apartment or a unit, sooner or later a notice arrives about repainting the building — and with it a set of terms that mean little until you need them. Strata painting is not a different kind of painting so much as a different kind of client: the work is done on common property, for an owners corporation, under rules about who decides and who pays. Here is how it fits together in Victoria.
What strata painting actually is
Strata painting is the repainting of a strata-titled building's common property — the parts every lot owner collectively owns. That typically means the external facade and render, common hallways, stairwells and foyers, balcony balustrades and soffits, fences, carpark walls and shared doors and trim. The inside of your own lot is yours to paint whenever you like; the building's shell and shared areas belong to everyone, so repainting them is an owners corporation decision.
The boundary between lot and common property is set by the plan of subdivision, and it matters: balcony interiors, window frames and front doors sit on different sides of the line in different buildings. A good strata painting quote is explicit about which surfaces are in scope and why.
Who approves a repaint
In Victoria, the owners corporation makes the decision. Smaller repaint and maintenance jobs can generally be approved by the committee within its spending limits, while a major facade repaint — often the largest maintenance item a building faces — usually goes to a general meeting for a vote. Like-for-like repainting is maintenance; changing the building's colour scheme can need a wider level of agreement, since it changes the appearance of everyone's asset. Our article on getting a repaint approved at your AGM walks through that process step by step.
Who pays
Repaints are funded by the owners collectively, in proportion to lot liability. Well-run buildings plan ahead through the capital works fund (formerly the maintenance fund), which accumulates levies over years precisely for cyclical work like painting. Where the fund falls short, the owners corporation can raise a special levy. The trade-offs between the two are covered in our article on the capital works fund versus a special levy.
What a strata painting service covers
Painting an occupied multi-unit building is a logistics job as much as a painting job. A proper strata painting service brings the things a residential quote never has to think about: documented insurance and safe work method statements, height access by scaffold, boom or rope, notices and scheduling that keep driveways, entries and balconies usable, and a single point of contact for the manager and committee. Surface preparation is the other half — on Melbourne buildings that usually means render crack repair and remedial preparation before any coating, which is why our quotes separate repair works from painting works instead of hiding one inside the other.
How often buildings repaint
Most Melbourne buildings run a facade repaint cycle of roughly 7 to 12 years depending on exposure, orientation and how good the last preparation was. Interiors — corridors and foyers — tend to run shorter cycles because scuffing, not weather, drives them. A multi-year maintenance program smooths this into the budget rather than letting it arrive as a shock.
The short version
Strata painting is common-property painting, decided by the owners corporation, funded through levies, and delivered by contractors set up for occupied buildings. If your building is approaching a repaint, the sequence is simple: confirm what is common property, get like-for-like quotes with repairs itemised, put the resolution to the owners, and fund it from the capital works fund where you can. We quote to that structure because it is what committees and managers actually need to take to a vote.