Wash and recoat, or strip it back? Choosing the right level of prep

If the existing paint is firmly stuck and just dirty, faded or lightly chalking, wash it and put two coats on. That is the right answer and it is the cheapest one. If the paint is flaking, blistering or lifting across a noticeable share of a wall, spot repairs will telegraph through the new coat and that wall needs taking back.

Most houses are a mixture of the two, which is why the question is properly asked one elevation at a time rather than once for the whole building.

How do you tell which one you have?

Three tests, none of which need a professional.

The scrape test. Take a stiff scraper to the worst-looking area and push. Sound paint resists and you feel it stop. Failed paint comes away in flakes and keeps coming, and the bare patch you end up with is always larger than the damage you could see.

The tape test. Cut a small cross-hatch into the paint with a sharp blade, press packing tape firmly over it, and pull it off sharply. Paint coming away with the tape means adhesion has already gone at that point, whatever it looks like.

The chalk test. Wipe a dark cloth firmly across the wall. A heavy powdery deposit is chalking, meaning UV has broken down the binder. Light chalking washes off and you can recoat over it. Heavy chalking needs washing and usually a sealer, because otherwise the new paint is bonding to powder.

Do all three on the worst elevation and on the best one. The difference between those two results is the single most useful piece of information you will get.

What do the levels of preparation involve?

Level	What it involves	Suits	What you get
Wash and recoat	house wash, spot-prime a few small areas, two topcoats	sound film that is faded or dirty, isolated failures only	the full life of the new system
Wash, scrape and feather	wash, extensive scraping, sanding edges flush, filling, spot-priming, two topcoats	patchy failure over part of a wall with sound paint between	full life, provided the paint left in place is genuinely sound
Strip to bare substrate	mechanical, chemical or infrared removal of everything, full prime, two topcoats	widespread failure, heavy build-up, several failed layers	longest life and the only option that resets the surface

The middle option is where most Wellington repaints land, and it is also where quotes diverge most. Two painters looking at the same wall can honestly disagree about whether a patch is sound, and that disagreement is worth thousands.

Why judge each elevation separately?

Because they do not weather at the same rate, and it is not close. South and west walls take the southerly, the wind-driven rain and the salt if you are anywhere near the coast. North and east walls get sun and comparatively little water.

The result on a typical Wellington house is one wall failing while the other three have years left. Stripping the whole house because of the south wall wastes money. Washing and recoating the whole house because the north wall looks fine puts good paint over failing paint on the one elevation that actually needed the work.

A quote that specifies one preparation standard for the entire building has not been thought about. Ask which elevation is worst and what is being done differently there.

What does the prep level do to the price?

It is the largest variable in an exterior quote. Our published range is $6,000 to $20,000 or more for exterior work as at 2026, with a typical three-bedroom house of around 150 square metres of floor area landing at $9,000 to $13,500 or more, at a rate of $60 to $90 per square metre. Paint itself is a small part of it: 20 to 30 litres for a typical house at $200 to $600 in total, with quality exterior paint running $100 to $200 per 10 litres.

So the spread between $9,000 and $20,000 is almost entirely labour at around $50 an hour, access, and how much preparation the house needs. Scaffolding on a steep or two-storey Wellington section adds $1,500 to $4,000 or more depending on complexity and how long it has to stay up.

Put plainly: the paint is cheap and the preparation is the job. A quote thousands below the others has removed preparation, not found a cheaper way to do it.

When is stripping the wrong answer?

More often than people expect.

• When paint is failing because of a water problem. A leaking gutter, a failed flashing or a blocked downpipe will destroy new paint exactly as fast as it destroyed the old paint. Fix the water first or do not bother.
• When the substrate is the real issue. Rotten weatherboards, split boards, corroded fixings and unsealed end grain need carpentry, not stripping.
• When only one elevation has gone. Strip that one, wash and recoat the rest, and accept a small difference in surface texture that nobody but you will ever notice.

The wider question of when a surface has to come back to bare and when you can coat straight over it is covered in more depth in paint stripping versus painting over. This piece is the step before that one: grading each wall so you know how much of the house the question even applies to.

What about lead paint?

This changes the calculation on any Wellington house built in the 1980s or earlier, which covers a very large share of the housing stock here. WorkSafe's guidance is to presume a building of that age has been painted with lead-based paint, so have it tested before anything comes off. Stripping is precisely the activity that releases it, as dust from sanding or as fume from a heat gun run too hot.

In practice that means no dry power sanding, wet scraping wherever possible, ground sheets to catch debris so it does not end up in soil where children play or vegetables grow, proper respiratory protection rather than a paper dust mask, and disposal of the waste rather than sweeping it into the garden. It also means a full strip on an older house costs more than the same job on a modern one, because containment and clean-up are real work.

If your house is from the 1980s or earlier and someone quotes a full strip using an orbital sander with no containment, get another quote.

When is a wash and recoat genuinely enough?

When the film passes the scrape and tape tests, when chalking is light, when the colour is the only thing you dislike, and when the house has been maintained. Washing down a coastal Wellington house regularly is the cheapest single thing you can do to keep it in that condition, because it takes the salt off before the salt gets to work.

There is no virtue in over-preparing a sound wall. It costs money, it puts more dust and disruption through an older house than necessary, and it does not make the new paint last any longer. Match the preparation to the condition of each wall.

If you want an assessment that says which elevations need what rather than a single number for the whole house, that is how we quote exterior work. Ask for a quote and we will walk the house with you.