Lead paint in older Perth homes: how to tell, and what to do
2 August 2026 · 4 min read
Homes painted before 1970 very likely contain lead. Sanding it is genuinely dangerous. Here is how to identify it and what safe removal actually involves.
If your home was built or last repainted before about 1970, assume it contains lead paint until tested. This is not a scare — it is the standard working assumption for anyone in the trade, and it changes how the job has to be done.
Why it matters
Lead is a cumulative neurotoxin. It is most dangerous to young children and to pregnant women, and the exposure route that matters in a repaint is not the intact paint on the wall — it is the dust created when that paint is disturbed.
Sanding a lead-painted surface produces a fine dust that settles across the whole house, stays in carpet and soft furnishings, and is easily ingested. Dry sanding lead paint with an orbital sander is one of the most effective ways to contaminate a home.
Intact lead paint is generally safe. Disturbed lead paint is not.
If the surface is sound and undamaged, the safest thing is often to leave it undisturbed and coat over it. The danger is created by sanding, scraping, heat-stripping and demolition — that is, by preparation.
How to tell if you have it
**Age is the strongest indicator.** Australian domestic paint contained high lead levels until the 1960s, with a progressive reduction through the 1970s and much stricter limits from the 1990s. A federation or interwar Perth home that has never been fully stripped almost certainly has lead somewhere in the layers.
**Where it hides.** Even in a house that has been repainted many times, the original lead layer is still there underneath — on window frames, door frames, skirtings, weatherboards and eaves. Trim and joinery are the highest-risk elements because they were traditionally finished in enamel, and enamels carried the highest lead loads.
**Testing.** Home test swabs are available and are reasonable as a first screen, but they test only the surface layer. A surface swab on a wall repainted in 2005 will come back negative while a lead layer sits four coats down. Laboratory analysis of a paint chip taken through all layers is the reliable method.