Painting a rental property in WA: what is worth spending

A rental repaint has a different objective from an owner-occupier one. You are not optimising for how it looks on day one; you are optimising for how it looks after three tenancies and what it costs to turn over between them.

Specify for durability, not for fashion

**Washable finishes throughout.** A low sheen on walls rather than a matt. Matt looks better and cannot be cleaned, and in a rental it will be marked within a year with no way to fix it short of repainting.

**Semi-gloss on all trim and doors.** Takes knocks, wipes clean.

**Mould-inhibiting paint in wet areas.** Bathrooms and laundries in a rental get less ventilation attention than in an owner-occupied home.

**Skip the feature walls.** They narrow the tenant pool, they date, and they double the touch-up complexity.

Choose colours you can touch up

This is the single most valuable decision in a rental specification.

**Use a standard, current, widely stocked colour.** Not a custom mix, not a discontinued line. You want to walk into any trade counter in three years and buy the same colour off the shelf.

**Use the same colour throughout.** One wall colour, one ceiling colour, one trim colour for the whole property. Turnover touch-ups become trivial, and you can keep a single tin.

**Write it down and keep it.** Brand, product line, colour name, code, sheen level, and which surface. Put it in the property file. This information is lost constantly and it costs money every time.

Fair wear and tear

Under the *Residential Tenancies Act 1987* (WA), tenants are responsible for damage but not for fair wear and tear. Understanding the line prevents disputes at the end of a tenancy.

**Generally fair wear and tear:** minor scuffing in traffic areas, small marks around light switches and door handles, gradual fading, minor nail holes from picture hooks where hanging was permitted, and general deterioration over a long tenancy.

**Generally damage:** large holes, crayon or marker, unauthorised painting, damage from smoking, and mould resulting from a tenant failing to ventilate where extraction was working and available.

The practical test is whether it resulted from ordinary use over the length of the tenancy. A four-year tenancy will leave more marks than a one-year one, and that is expected.

**Depreciation matters.** You cannot generally claim the full cost of repainting a wall that was already several years into its life. Bond claims for painting are frequently reduced on this basis.

The condition report is the whole ballgame

Photograph every wall at the start of every tenancy, in good light, and attach it to the property condition report. Date-stamped photographs are what decide these disputes. A description in words is not.

Do the same at the end, from the same positions.

What is worth spending on

Timing the repaint

Between tenancies is obvious, but a full repaint is not needed every time. A good specification with touch-ups will typically get through two or three tenancies before the whole property needs doing.

The trigger is usually the walls looking tired as a whole rather than any individual mark — at which point the touch-ups start showing more than the marks did.

Tax

Repainting an existing rental is generally a deductible repair in the year incurred, while painting as part of an initial renovation before first renting, or as part of a substantial improvement, is generally capital. The distinction matters and it is worth a conversation with your accountant before a large job rather than after.