Best plasterers in Fremantle, Melville & Cockburn
Table of Contents
Fremantle, Melville and Cockburn are the hardest part of Perth to plaster well. The housing stock runs from 1900s Fremantle cottages with solid limestone and lath walls, through post-war brick-and-tile in Bicton and Palmyra, to newer estates in Yangebup and Hamilton Hill — and each one fails differently. We assessed 18 businesses across this corridor and read 214 Google reviews to find the five plasterers with a real base here, a real track record, and the range to handle all of it.
Featured plasterers
Run a plastering or ceiling business in the Fremantle, Melville or Cockburn area? A Featured spot puts your business at the top of this page and in front of homeowners already searching for the work you do — no lead fees, no bidding against five other trades for the same job.
Get a Featured spot ▸Robin Chilcott Plastering Services
Forty-six reviews, not one of them below five stars. Robin Chilcott works out of Cleopatra Street in Palmyra and his own site, freoplastering.com.au, says plainly what most Perth plastering sites will not: he works in Fremantle and the surrounding suburbs, on small to medium jobs, as a tight-knit team. That is a narrower promise than “servicing all Perth metro”, and it is the reason this listing sits at the top of the page. The review themes are unusually specific for a plasterer — limestone walls, cornice repair, renovations, easy to deal with — and they line up with the housing stock around him. One customer describes him restoring internal limestone walls in an old Fremantle original; another had him make good after a kitchen renovation; a third, a professional painter of similar experience, reviewed him as a tradesperson he would work behind. Robin answers his reviews himself, by name, usually within days. If your job is a period Freo house, a feature wall float or a set of cornices that need matching rather than replacing, this is the first call in the corridor.
Find plasterers in the directory ▸Melville Ceilings – Perth Ceiling Repair
Google files Melville Ceilings under “ceiling supplier”, which is wrong and worth saying out loud, because it is the single most common miscategorisation in this trade. The business is a ceiling contractor based at 2/12 Zeta Crescent in O’Connor, and its own owner posts explain the trade-off homeowners actually face: a section of damage from a leak, an impact or old wiring work can usually be patched rather than replaced, provided you cut back to sound material, match the existing texture and blend the paint line. Forty-one reviews, all five stars, cluster on ceiling repair, ceiling installation, quick quoting and workmanship. One customer had Louis and his team complete make-safe repairs and a full ceiling replacement within days of the first call; another, mid-renovation and stuck, got a ceiling installed inside a week. One caveat, stated plainly: the business website, melvilleceilings.com.au, returned a server authorisation error every time we tried it while researching this page, so everything above comes from the Google listing and its reviews rather than from the site.
Find plasterers in the directory ▸Real Plastering
Real Plastering has the largest review count on this page — 48 — and holds 4.9 across all of it, which is harder than holding a perfect five over a dozen. It runs from Bundegi Grove in Yangebup with no website at all: the Google listing is the whole shopfront, and it still out-collects businesses with full marketing budgets. Reviewers name Nick and describe the kind of work that separates a plasterer from a patcher: covering exposed internal brickwork so a room reads as new, renovation plastering across whole houses, and finishing to a standard one customer calls old-school. The recurring words are punctual, clean, polite and fair rate — in that order and in that combination, which is the profile of an operator who runs a tidy site and quotes what he charges. The trade-off for the missing website is that there is no portfolio to browse before you call. Ask for photos of a recent job in your suburb; on this record you will get them.
Find plasterers in the directory ▸Italceilings
Italceilings is a one-man operation run by Andrea out of Southwell Crescent, Hamilton Hill, with a clean 5.0 across 23 reviews and no website to speak for it. The work described is the full ceiling range rather than repairs alone: new ceilings, eaves, cornice installation and straightforward ceiling repair. What stands out in the reviews is coordination — more than one customer mentions him fixing a ceiling and then managing the painting that followed, which is the practical difference between a trade who finishes a task and one who finishes a room. A sole operator is a genuine trade-off worth naming: you get the same pair of hands on site every day, and you wait longer when the diary is full. For a single-room ceiling, an eaves replacement or cornices through an older Hamilton Hill or Spearwood house, that wait is usually worth it.
Find plasterers in the directory ▸All-Ceil Ceilings
All-Ceil Ceilings works out of Bristol Avenue in Bicton and is listed under the correct category — plasterer — with 4.9 across 29 reviews. Nine of those reviews name ceiling repair specifically, which makes this the most repair-weighted record in the corridor after Melville Ceilings. Customers consistently name two people, Brian and Bailey, and describe the same sequence: turning up when they said they would, explaining what actually needed doing before starting, replacing the ceiling, and leaving the room clean. One review covers a spare bedroom ceiling replacement done start to finish in a day. There is no website, so the listing and its photos are all there is to go on before you call. On a record this consistent that is a small ask, and the clean-up mentions matter more than they sound: ceiling work is the messiest thing that happens inside a house, and most complaints in this trade are about dust rather than finish.
Find plasterers in the directory ▸Who else we assessed, and why they are not ranked
Eighteen businesses came up across the Fremantle, Melville and Cockburn searches. Thirteen did not make the five, and the reasons are worth publishing because they are the same reasons a homeowner should apply when reading any plasterer search result.
- Westside Ceilings, 5.0 from 4 reviews, Attadale — a real base on Burke Drive and a working website. It qualifies on every rule we apply; four reviews simply score below the five above it, and two of those are two years apart. Worth a quote.
- Bicton Plastering, 5.0 from 3 reviews, Canning Highway — genuine, addressed and well reviewed for a young listing, with customers naming the operator directly. Three reviews is the floor, not a track record.
- World of Plaster (WA), 4.7 from 3 reviews, Bibra Lake — a genuine solid-plastering and rendering contractor, not a supplier, specialising in internal float and white set. Only three reviews, so it sits outside the ranking rather than outside the trade.
- Myaree Wall & Ceiling Specialists, 4.3 from 6 reviews, Marmion Street — sits exactly on our 4.3 rating floor with a real address and website. It scores below the five on weighted rating.
- Top Teng Walls & Ceilings, 4.3 from 3 reviews — based in Canning Vale, not this corridor, and focused on commercial suspended ceilings.
- The Master Plasterers (Perth, Perth CBD, Floreat and Belmont listings) — one brand and one booking line behind multiple suburb listings. We count a brand once, and only where a listing carries a verifiable street address. None here did.
- Coastal Ceilings, 3.4 from 5 reviews, South Terrace — below the 4.3 rating floor.
- Tom The Plasterer, Fremantle Ceilings, Elite Plasterworks (one review each), plus A-Line Plastering, Accurate Plastering & Construction and A1 Walls and Ceilings (no reviews) — below the review floor. A single review is a friend or a first job, not evidence.
- Claremont Building Repairs — appeared as a paid placement at the top of the ceiling-repair results with no reviews and a property-maintenance category. Paid position is not a ranking signal.
What plastering actually costs in Perth (2026)
These are indicative Perth-metro ranges collected from published trade pricing, not quotes, and the spread is wide for a reason: access, ceiling height, whether the room has to be cleared, and whether the old material is asbestos-era all move the number before a trowel touches a wall. In this corridor there is a specific cost driver worth knowing about — older Fremantle and Palmyra houses often have lath, solid limestone or hard plaster behind the paint rather than plasterboard, and repairing those is skilled work priced closer to the top of the ranges below than the bottom.
| Job | Typical range | What drives the price |
|---|---|---|
| Plasterer labour | $52–$125/hr | Experience, job size, whether it is a call-out or a full day |
| Plasterboard supplied and fixed | $26–$68/m² | Sheet thickness, access, height, wet-area or fire-rated board |
| Ceiling replacement | $37–$89/m² | Roof space access, insulation, removal and disposal of the old |
| Cornice | $16–$63/lm | Profile, height, whether it is being matched to existing |
| Board supply only | +$8–$18/m² | Added when you buy materials separately from the labour |
Ceilings generally run twenty to thirty per cent above walls for the same area, because everything is done overhead and off a trestle. Two things reliably blow a plastering budget out: discovering the damage is a live roof leak rather than old staining, which stops the job until a roofer has been, and asking for a patch in a room that has never been repainted, where the repair will be invisible in texture and obvious in colour. Get the leak fixed first, and budget to paint the whole ceiling rather than the patch.
Do plasterers need a licence in WA? (the honest answer)
No. We checked this against the regulator rather than repeating what other sites say. Western Australia’s Building and Energy division registers and licenses builders, building surveyors, building engineers, electrical and gasfitting workers, owner-builders, painters and plumbers. Plasterers are not on that list. There is no plastering registration in this state, and there is no exam, no minimum experience and no insurance requirement attached to calling yourself one.
The contrast is worth sitting with: under the Home Building Contracts Act 1991 a painter needs registration to do work valued at $1,000 or more, while a plasterer rendering the entire facade of your house needs none. That does not mean WA plasterers are unregulated in what they promise — it means the protection sits in the contract rather than in a licence, so the contract is where you have to look.
For fixed-price residential work between $7,500 and $500,000, the contract must be in writing and signed by both parties, and you must be given the “Notice for the homeowner” before you sign. That applies whether or not the tradesperson is a registered builder. The deposit is capped at 6.5 per cent of the contract price in that band, and progress payments can only be claimed for work actually done or materials actually delivered to site.
Work that needs a building permit and is valued over $20,000 requires home indemnity insurance, which covers loss of deposit up to $40,000 and incomplete or defective work up to $200,000. Complaints go to Building and Energy within three years of the contract date, on 1300 489 099.
In practice, for the sort of jobs on this page, that means:
- Anyone can legally call themselves a plasterer in WA — so the review record, the address and the referral are doing the work a licence would do in another trade.
- Get it in writing even under $7,500 — scope, price, and what happens if the wall opens up worse than expected.
- Never pay a deposit above 6.5 per cent on a contract in the $7,500–$500,000 band, and never pay for materials not yet delivered.
- Check public liability cover before work starts — ask for the certificate of currency, not a verbal assurance.
- Keep the paperwork for three years — that is the complaint window with Building and Energy.
Don’t get ripped off: red flags
- A quote with no square metre rate — a lump sum with no measurement behind it cannot be compared to anything, and cannot be argued with when the job grows.
- “We service all Perth metro” — useful for the business, useless to you. An operator with a base in your corridor turns up for the fix-up visit; a call centre books whoever is free.
- Cash-only, deposit up front, starting tomorrow — urgency plus an untraceable payment is the oldest pattern in this trade, especially after storms.
- A patch quoted without mentioning paint — a repair that is perfect in texture will still show as a colour difference. Any plasterer who has done this work will raise it before you do.
- Sagging blamed on the ceiling alone — if water caused it, something above is leaking, and plastering over that is money burnt twice.
- No mention of dust control or clean-up — ceiling work coats a house in fine dust. Whether the quote covers protection and clean-up is the single biggest difference between two identical prices.
Before you hire: quick checklist
- Ask where they are based — a suburb and a street, not a service area.
- Ask what caused the damage — a plasterer who diagnoses before quoting saves you the second job.
- Get the rate and the measurement — square metres for walls and ceilings, lineal metres for cornice.
- Ask whether painting is included or coordinated — and if not, who you are meant to call and when.
- Confirm dust protection, rubbish removal and clean-up in writing — particularly for a full ceiling replacement.
- Ask for two recent local jobs — every operator on this page has work within a few suburbs of you.
Frequently asked
How much does it cost to repair a ceiling in Fremantle or Melville?
A small patch repair — a leak stain, an impact hole, a hole cut for old wiring — is usually a half-day job priced against the hourly range of roughly $52 to $125, so most sit in the low hundreds before painting. A full ceiling replacement is measured instead, at roughly $37 to $89 per square metre, which puts an average bedroom ceiling in the high hundreds to low thousands depending on access, insulation and disposal of the old material. Older Fremantle and Palmyra houses cost more than the same area in a Yangebup or Hamilton Hill build, because hard plaster and lath take longer to cut back and match than plasterboard does.
Can a ceiling be patched, or does the whole thing have to come down?
Most damage can be patched. The test is whether the surrounding material is still sound: if the board around the damage is dry, firm and well fixed to the joists, a competent plasterer cuts back to solid material, tapes and sets the join, matches the existing texture and blends the paint. Replacement is the honest answer when the board has been wet through, when the sheet has separated from its fixings across a wide area, or when a ceiling is sagging along its whole length rather than in one spot. A plasterer who reaches for full replacement without inspecting the roof space is guessing at your expense.
Is a sagging ceiling dangerous, or can it wait?
Treat it as urgent. A ceiling sheet that has separated from its fixings holds its own weight plus whatever insulation and dust sits on top, and it lets go without warning — usually at the point where it has been wettest. Keep people out of the room, do not poke at it to test it, and get it looked at within days rather than weeks. Several operators on this page do make-safe work, which means propping or removing the unsafe section immediately and doing the proper repair once the cause has been fixed.
What is the difference between a plasterer, a ceiling fixer and a renderer?
They overlap, and in WA nothing stops one business calling itself all three. Broadly: a ceiling fixer installs and repairs plasterboard ceilings and cornice; a solid plasterer works in cement and lime render, float and set, and the hard-wall systems on older brick homes; a renderer applies external coatings, including acrylic and texture systems. The corridor covered here has both kinds — ceiling specialists like All-Ceil and Melville Ceilings, and traditional wall plasterers like Robin Chilcott and World of Plaster. Ask which one a business actually does before you book, because the tools and the skill are genuinely different.
Why does my new patch look different from the rest of the ceiling?
Almost always paint, not plaster. A new repair absorbs paint differently from a surface that has been on the wall for a decade, and old ceiling paint has usually shifted colour, so a perfectly matched texture still reads as a lighter square under raking light. The fix is to paint corner to corner rather than patch to patch. If the difference is in the texture rather than the colour — a smooth square in a stippled ceiling, or a visible ridge along the join — that is a workmanship issue, and it is worth raising with the plasterer before you paint over it.
How were these rankings put together?
We searched the Fremantle, Melville and Cockburn area for plasterers and ceiling contractors, assessed 18 businesses and read 214 Google reviews. Each business is scored with a weighted formula that balances rating against volume, so a 5.0 from three reviews cannot outrank a 4.9 from forty-eight. To be ranked, a business needs at least a 4.3 rating, a meaningful number of reviews, and a verifiable street address in this corridor confirmed from the map coordinates rather than the business name. Suppliers, multi-suburb booking networks, wrong-trade listings and businesses that publish only a service area are excluded, and every exclusion is listed above rather than quietly dropped. We take no payment for a ranked position; Featured placement is sold separately and is always labelled.
Run a plastering business in Fremantle, Melville or Cockburn?
List your business free in the directory, or take a Featured spot at the top of this page.
Get featured ▸Claim your free listingRankings based on Google review data collected 30 August 2026. Ratings change, we re-check monthly. Blue Collar Business · Western Australia’s Trades & Home Services Directory.