Deck & Fence Painting and Staining in Melbourne

Outdoor timber has a short memory

A deck takes more punishment per square metre than any other surface on your property. Direct UV, foot traffic, rain, pot plants and furniture all work on it, and untreated or lapsed timber goes grey, splinters and cups within a couple of seasons.

Fences are less trafficked but more exposed, and they are often the largest single visible surface from the street. A tired, patchy fence undoes the impression of a well-kept home before a visitor reaches the gate.

Stain, oil or paint — what is right for your timber

This is the decision that matters most, and it depends on the timber, the exposure and the maintenance you are realistically willing to do.

• Decking oil — penetrates and enriches the grain, easiest to re-coat, needs redoing every 12–24 months
• Timber stain — more pigment, better UV protection, longer intervals, still shows the grain
• Solid stain — near-opaque colour with timber texture retained, good on tired older decks
• Exterior paint — maximum colour choice and coverage on fences and pergolas, but on a deck it will wear at traffic points and needs full removal to change later

Preparation and restoration

Every deck job starts with a full clean and, where the timber has greyed, a timber cleaner or brightener to strip the oxidised surface layer and restore the natural colour underneath. Nails and screws are punched or reset, loose boards refixed, and badly split boards replaced.

The deck is then sanded — a full machine sand on a badly weathered deck, a lighter cut on a maintained one — to open the grain so the coating can penetrate rather than sit on top. Coating an unsanded, greyed deck is why so many DIY oil jobs peel off in patches within a season.

Fences are washed, mould-treated, scraped where old coatings are failing, and any rotten palings or posts flagged for replacement before coating.

Maintenance you can plan for

We tell you at handover exactly what the re-coat cycle looks like for the system we have applied, so you can budget for it. Oiled decks want an annual or biennial refresh. Stained decks stretch further. A maintained deck costs a fraction of a restored one — the expensive job is always the one that got left for five years.