Read the ratio before you read the quotes
Published Australian industry figures put a typical residential install at roughly 40% materials, 30% base preparation, 30% labour. Sit with that for a moment, because three conclusions fall straight out of it.
First, more than half your money buys things you will never see: excavation, road base, screenings, compaction plant, edging, infill and the hours of the people doing it. Second, stepping up a quality tier only moves the materials component, so the upgrade costs less in total than the product price difference implies, while the lifespan difference between tiers is large. Supplier tier guides run 5 to 8 years for budget, 10 to 15 for mid range and 15 to 20 and above for premium; CHOICE has said a well-maintained premium lawn can reach up to 25 years. Third, and least comfortable, a quote that is dramatically cheaper than the others is almost never cheaper on the grass. It is cheaper in the 30% that is buried.
Cost also does not scale neatly with area. Getting a crew and a plate compactor to site, ordering minimum material quantities, setting out and carting spoil away are largely fixed, so a 20 square metre courtyard carries a higher effective rate than a 90 square metre backyard. That is general trade pricing rather than a Perth-specific published figure, but it is why comparing your courtyard quote against a friend's full-yard quote tells you very little.
Indicative rates for laying artificial grass, by tier
| Tier | Supply only ($/m²) | Supplied & installed ($/m²) | Typical lifespan |
|---|---|---|---|
| Budget | $25–40 | $75–95 | 5–8 years |
| Mid | $40–60 | $95–130 | 10–15 years |
| Premium | $60–100+ | $130–160+ | 15–20+ years |
Compiled from published 2025–26 Australian supplier and industry pricing (Premier Grass, EasyTurf, All Seasons and others). Supply-only figures are the product alone; supplied-and-installed includes base build and labour. Most standard residential lawns land in the $90–130/m² installed band. Indicative planning ranges, not a quote.
Stage by stage, and what each stage is actually for
Cap the reticulation
In Perth this comes before the digging, and it is the stage most likely to be missing from a thin quote. Pop-up heads and solenoids inside the covered area are capped, garden bed zones stay live, and the controller station that used to run the lawn is reprogrammed or decommissioned. Mention it if a garden bore feeds the system, because the isolation and plumbing differ. It is a small cost and a large omission.
Excavate
Roughly 75mm of lawn, roots and ground comes out, about 100mm where vehicles will drive over it. The volume that leaves is the volume that has to be carried to a truck, so access does real work on the price here. A rear lane or a driveway to the backyard makes this a machine job. A 900mm side gate, two steps and a wheelbarrow run makes it a labour job, and the quote should say which one it is rather than quietly absorbing the difference.
Build and compact the base
Road base or crushed rock goes in, gets wetted and plate-compacted, then is screeded with crusher dust and screeded again. Australian installation guides call for at least two compaction passes and say to compact it as hard as it will go. This layer is the thing that holds your lawn's shape for the next fifteen years, and it is the layer manufacturer warranties generally do not cover, since warranties typically address UV fade and fibre loss rather than base failure. The part most likely to fail first is the part nobody insures.
Set the falls
Levels are worked to kerbs, paths and borders, with a deliberate fall to somewhere water can actually leave. On free-draining Bassendean or Spearwood sand, this is comparatively forgiving. On sand-over-clay ground, or in the Bassendean phases the WA Government's mapping describes as poorly drained, it is the difference between a lawn and a puddle. More on that below.
Lay, join, pin
Rolls go down with a consistent grain direction, which matters more than people expect because the pile reads as a different colour when it lies opposite ways. Joins are made by trimming back two stitch lines, laying synthetic joining tape and keeping fibres out of the adhesive. Cutting is done with a Stanley knife and a great many fresh blades. On soil, pegs go in at roughly 30 to 40cm intervals with edge restraint around the perimeter. On concrete or pavers the whole method changes to adhesive plus a foam underlay of around 5mm, which is a separate discussion in the on-concrete guide.
Infill and dress
Silica or kiln-dried sand at roughly 10 to 15 kg/m² is power-broomed through the pile. It weighs the turf down, keeps the fibres standing upright and helps the surface feel like a lawn rather than a carpet. Pet areas typically add or substitute zeolite for ammonia odour control, which is a separate product at a separate price: see pet turf in Perth.
The Perth ground: two jobs wearing the same name
The received wisdom is that Perth is sand and sand is easy. Half of that is true half of the time, and the other half is why quotes across the metro area vary more than the product does.
Across the Swan Coastal Plain, the WA Government's soil landscape mapping shows deep dune sand. A synthetic lawn in Success goes down on ground mapped 100% Bassendean System; Ballajura comes in at about 94%, and Hammond Park splits roughly 42% Spearwood and 58% Bassendean. Digging is quick. But two things complicate it. Loose sand still needs a compacted structural layer or the surface settles into hollows under traffic. And several Bassendean phases carry clay or a "weak iron-organic hardpan" beneath, with the B4 unit described outright as "Broad poorly drained sandplain" and B3 as "Closed depressions... poorly to very poorly drained". Roughly a third of Success maps to those two units. Free draining at the top does not guarantee free draining all the way down.
Move east and the profile becomes duplex, which is the harder case: a thin layer of sand or sandy loam sitting directly on clay. Water travels fast through the top and stops dead at the interface. High Wycombe is dominated by that pattern, with Pinjarra units described as sand over "mottled yellow clay" and "gravelly mottled clay". This is where falls and a real outlet earn their place in the quote.
Then there is the foothills, which is not the coastal plain at all. Kalamunda is 59.2% Dwellingup 2 phase, gravelly sands "overlying lateritic duricrust", 21.4% Murray Valleys system and 17.5% Yarragil 1, with Helena country nearby carrying "areas of rock outcrop". Excavating laterite gravel is slower than excavating sand, slopes bring falls and sometimes edging or retaining into the picture, and hitting hard material partway down is a genuine possibility. Byford is the most variable ground in our coverage, 38 mapped units including 6.5% recorded as disturbed urban land, which is the mapping's way of saying somebody has already been through it with machinery.
Two honest limits on all of the above. These percentages describe the entire suburb polygon, roads and parks included, not any individual yard. And the mapping is regional in scale. Use it to understand why two quotes disagree; let the first spade decide what your block is. What it should tell you is that a price given over the phone from a photograph is a guess, and a good installer will tell you what they expect to hit, what they will do if it is worse, and how the price moves if it is.
What laying it costs you afterwards
Almost nothing in money, and a modest amount in attention. Brush the pile monthly or so, alternating direction, so fibres stay upright. Clear leaves and debris weekly so drainage paths do not block. Treat moss or weeds around edges roughly annually with a water-based systemic product. Hose the surface on hot days if you want it cooler underfoot.
What genuinely disappears is the Perth lawn calendar: the two rostered sprinkler days a week set by the last digit of your street number, the once-a-day-before-9am-or-after-6pm rule, the Sprinkler Switch-off from 1 June to 31 August, the $100 fines, and the exemption application with its 42-day or 35-day countdown every time you lay fresh lawn. That calendar is set out in full in the sprinkler roster guide, and it is the real reason this question comes up more often in Perth than elsewhere.
One more thing not to budget for: there is no rebate. No Australian council, water utility or state government pays anything toward replacing a lawn with synthetic turf, and in WA the only garden-related rebate on offer requires you to keep an existing irrigation system.
Questions about laying artificial grass in Perth
What does it cost to lay artificial grass per square metre in Perth?
Supplied and laid, indicative rates run about $75 to $95 per square metre for budget product, $95 to $130 for mid range, and $130 to $160 and above for premium. Those come from published 2025-26 Australian supplier and industry pricing rather than from a survey of Perth jobs, so they are a budgeting range. The only number that binds anyone is the one on a written quote after somebody has stood in your yard.
Why is the supply-only price so much lower than the laid price?
Because most of what you are buying is not grass. Budget turf is roughly $25 to $40 per square metre as a product and $75 to $95 laid. Industry figures split a typical residential job at about 40% materials, 30% base preparation and 30% labour, so more than half the money goes on excavation, road base, screenings, compaction plant, edging, infill and hours. One useful consequence: moving up a quality tier only changes the materials share, so upgrading the turf costs less than the product price gap suggests.
How deep does the excavation go?
Australian installation guides work to roughly 75mm for a standard lawn, and around 100mm where vehicles will run over the surface. Depth is a scope item, not a detail: it determines how much spoil leaves the site and how much base material comes in, which is why a quote that does not name a figure has not really priced the job.
How many compaction passes should the base get?
At least two, per Australian installation guidance, with the base wetted and plate-compacted, screeded with crusher dust, and screeded again. Under-compaction is the single most common defect in DIY work and it does not announce itself on day one. It shows up twelve to eighteen months later as hollows where people walk and water sitting where it should not.
Does a small courtyard cost less overall but more per metre?
Yes, and that catches people out when they compare notes with a neighbour. Crew mobilisation, compactor hire, minimum material orders and spoil removal barely shrink with the area, so spreading them over 20 square metres lifts the effective rate. This is general trade pricing logic rather than a published Perth figure. The upside is that on a small area a premium product costs very little more in total dollars.
Should the quote include getting rid of the old lawn?
It should, and check that it says so. Excavating the existing lawn plus roughly 75mm of ground is standard scope, and the resulting spoil has to be carted off. On a block where the only route out is a side gate and a wheelbarrow, that is genuine labour rather than a rounding error. Ask whether tipping fees are inside the number.
Is there an Australian Standard for how turf must be laid?
No, and this is worth being firm about because it gets misused. There is no Australian Standard and no WA government document specifying excavation depth, base depth, compaction or drainage for artificial turf. AS 2870 is a residential footings and slabs standard and has nothing to say about landscaping. Real standards do exist for adjacent things: AS 4685 and AS 4422 cover playground impact attenuation, per product via test certificate, and SAPIA publishes a voluntary industry code of practice for sports surfaces. None of that is a residential landscape turf standard.
What should I have in writing before I sign?
Excavation depth in millimetres, base material and number of compaction passes, where water is meant to go and how it gets there, edge restraint type and spacing, infill rate in kilograms per square metre, whether a weed membrane is included, the reticulation capping scope including the controller station, spoil removal and tipping, and the turf specified by pile height, backing type and warranty term rather than by product name. Everything on that list disappears from view the moment the grass goes down.
How long before I can use it?
No Australian installer publishes standard timeframes and we are not going to make one up. What we can say is where the hours go: excavation, base and compaction dominate a residential job, and the lay itself is comparatively quick. Ask for a firm timeframe with the written quote, and ask what happens if the ground turns out to be worse than expected, because that is the variable most likely to move it.
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