By 
Almost every list of diy garden screening ideas assumes you can build whatever you like on your own land. In Australia the useful questions are narrower: how much height you have left above the fence, whose fence it is, and whether the thing you are about to buy is legally a screen at all.
Because there is a number for that. In Victoria, a privacy screen has to be no more than 25 per cent transparent and most of the lattice and trellis sold in Australian hardware stores for exactly this job is far more open than that.
The height you actually have left
Standard garden screens range from 1.2 to 2.4 metres in height. Standard garden screen sizes range from 1.2 to 2.4 metres high, and standard garden screens typically range from 1.2 to 2.4 metres high the brief says it five ways because every Australian supplier sells the same range, and it is accurate. What it does not say is where the legal ceiling sits.
The cleanest statement of it is Queensland’s. A Queensland council fact sheet puts it plainly: “A fence, screen or retaining wall or the combination of these is not to be more than 2 m in height from natural ground height.” Brisbane City Council says the same, and specifies that the height includes the combination of screens, fences and retaining walls.
Read that against a standard 1.8m Colorbond fence and the arithmetic is unkind. You have 200mm, not a metre. Anything taller is a structure that needs approval.
New South Wales answers it through planning rather than fencing law, and the exempt-development standard for a privacy screen is worth knowing before you start: the screen must not be attached to a boundary fence, must sit at least 900mm from each lot boundary, and is capped at 2.5m high and 5m long with openings no wider than 30mm and no more than 30% open area. So in NSW the lattice topper bolted to the neighbour’s fence is outside the exempt pathway by definition.
That is the whole DIY problem in one paragraph. The separation you want is the metre above the fence, and that metre is where the regulations start.
Whose fence is it?
Every state has a dividing fences act, and the answer to “can I attach a screen to it” is genuinely different depending on where you live.
South Australia is the only jurisdiction with a plain yes: both neighbours may attach screens or trellises to a fence, provided they do not damage it. Queensland’s guidance is the opposite instinct “you should not attach anything to a dividing fence that could damage it” and because “fencing work” in the Queensland Act expressly includes modification, adding height is fencing work. Victoria gets to the same place by a different route: the person who wants the extra height pays the difference.
The practical version: your neighbour’s obligation stops at a sufficient dividing fence. Anything above that is yours to pay for and yours to ask about. And if your screen damages the fence or blows into it the rule is not the usual 50/50. Whoever causes the damage “must restore the dividing fence to a reasonable standard.”
So: ask first, put it in writing, and where you can, build a freestanding screen on your own posts just inside the boundary rather than hanging weight on a shared structure. It costs a bit more and it removes the entire argument.
The 25 per cent rule
If you are screening because a new house or deck next door has put prying eyes over your fence, Victoria has the only Australian specification that tells you what a privacy screen actually is.
Under the overlooking standard, a habitable room window, balcony, terrace, deck or patio must avoid direct views into a neighbour’s secluded private open space within 9 metres, measured within a 45 degree angle from the plane of the window. Where screening is required it must be at least 1.7 metres above floor level and no more than 25 per cent transparent, defined as perforated panels or trellis with a maximum of 25% openings, and it must be permanent, fixed and durable. (The standards were renumbered in 2025, so you will see both A15/B22 and A4-4/B4-4.)
The exemption that is the whole problem
There is an exemption, and it is exactly the article’s problem: the standard does not apply where there is already a visual barrier at least 1.8 metres high and the floor level is less than 0.8 metres above ground level. In other words, an ordinary fence does the job right up until somebody builds a deck 800mm off the ground, at which point the full test bites.
Two things follow for a DIY screener anywhere in Australia. First, “25% open” is a useful target even outside Victoria, because it is the point at which a screen genuinely blocks a view rather than softening it. Second, most garden lattice fails it badly. Check the open area before you buy, and look at the angle people are actually viewing from a screen that works from the neighbour’s deck may be useless from their upstairs window.
Merbau, and where it comes from
Merbau timber is a popular choice for garden screening the brief says this four times, and it deserves a longer answer than “yes”.
Merbau is not Australian. It is Intsia, imported from Papua New Guinea, Indonesia, Malaysia and the Solomons, and Australia’s own timber authority, WoodSolutions, warns on its own merbau page that it “may be sourced from forests legally converted to other land uses or where there are inadequate controls.” Australia’s illegal logging laws changed on 3 March 2025, with new Rules replacing the 2012 Regulation, and importers are required by law to assess and mitigate the risk that a product includes illegally logged timber. Ask your supplier where theirs came from. A yard that cannot tell you is telling you something.
Durability and tannin
There are two more practical problems with it.
Durability. Merbau is only Class 3 in ground five to fifteen years. Australian-grown spotted gum and blackbutt are Class 2 (15–25 years), and grey ironbark is Class 1 (more than 25). Blackbutt and ironbark are not lyctid-susceptible; merbau sapwood is. Merbau is popular mainly because it is the cheapest hardwood on the rack around $6 a lineal metre against $7–$10 for Australian hardwoods which is a fair reason to choose it, just not the reason usually given.
Tannin. Merbau bleeds, and Australian suppliers say so: it “bleeds, which can stain surrounding structures”, and natural leaching takes months. The fix is pre-washing before installation, “repeated over several days until the water runs clear.” If your screen sits above pale paving, do this or accept the rust-coloured stains.
The other materials, honestly
DIY screens can be made from wood, plastic, or metal materials. Each has an Australian catch.
Metal screens are durable and require low maintenance half true. Steel and aluminium slat screens are the current default and a Stratco panel at 2400 × 1800 runs about $499, roughly $115/m². But the warranties are conditional: one major Australian maker’s 12-year warranty drops to six in extreme corrosivity, requires cleaning to AS 3715, and makes documentation of that cleaning mandatory. Within a kilometre of the ocean you need 316 stainless fixings, and mixing metals is how you get galvanic corrosion eating the screen you just paid for.
Plastic garden screens are budget-friendly and weatherproof the first half is right. A Sydney PVC extruder’s own warning is that Australian “heat and high UV index mean that regular PVC profiles may become discoloured, brittle, and unreliable over time.” Budget, yes. Weatherproof here, not for long.
Breeze blocks, bamboo and upcycled panels
Breeze block screening creates stylish and sturdy outdoor barriers and breeze block screening creates stylish outdoor textures. The revival is real, and so is the cost: blocks run $15–$45 each, which at around eleven per square metre is $165–$500/m² in materials alone before anyone lays them. Neither major Australian supplier publishes a maximum unreinforced height or a footing schedule both send you to an engineer, which is the honest answer for a freestanding masonry wall.
Bamboo canes can be used to create DIY privacy screens and bamboo canes about 2 metres long are suitable for screens both true; 1.8m canes sell here for about $0.70 to $1.95 each. Bamboo or reed screens are lightweight and quick-to-install panels that add texture, at roughly $44 to $110 a roll. If you are planting bamboo rather than buying it cut, plant a clumping species, not a running one.
Trellis with vines involves installing lattice panels and training climbing plants for privacy, the cheapest screen there is, and the slowest. Star jasmine on a timber lattice will transform a bare fence in two seasons, and you maintain it with one hard prune a year.
Repurposed windows can be used to create screens that diffuse light and obscure sightlines and upcycled shutter screens can be mounted on fence posts for charm and adjustable light. Lovely, with two Australian warnings. Paint on anything pre-1970 may contain lead pre-1950 paints ran as much as 50% lead so wet-sand, never dry-sand or burn it, and follow the national lead guidance. And old window glass is not safety glass; a pane at head height in a garden where children play is a bad spot for it.
Shade sails or outdoor curtains are fabric screens that block views while adding colour, and they are the one item here with a health number attached. Australia’s radiation protection agency rates shade fabric by UV blocking: 80–90.9% is “effective”, 91–94.9% “very effective”, 95%+ “most effective” and 97% or better is what all-day protection needs. Worth knowing that “there is as much scattered solar UVR from the sky as there is from the direct sun”, which is the best argument there is for a vertical screen beside an overhead sail rather than instead of one. Two WA councils allow up to 20m² and 2.4m without a permit; attach a sail to a building and you need one regardless of size.
Plants, and the claim that doesn’t hold
Hedges are a classic way to add garden privacy and hedges can provide natural screening and enhance garden aesthetics. Both fair, and a hedge is the only screen that gets better every year.
Hedges can provide natural privacy and noise reduction in gardens is where it comes apart. Australian acoustic research is specific: 10 to 20 metres of trees gives typically 2 to 3 dB(A), more than 50 metres gives about 5 dB, and 120 metres of eucalypts gives a maximum of around 7 dB(A). The mechanism is trunk scattering, not foliage 39 metres of burnt bushland still gave about 4 dB. A domestic hedge is half a metre to a metre and a half deep. The noise reduction is a fraction of a decibel, and 3 dB is barely perceptible. Plant a hedge for privacy, for the birds and for nature; do not plant one to quieten a road.
Pleached trees provide high-level privacy without ground space usage genuinely useful where you need screening above a fence and have no room for a hedge, and genuinely expensive: Australian nurseries price them from about $120 to $1,460 a tree.
Container plant screens involve clustering tall plants around seating areas to create barriers. Works, with the Australian caveat that a pot in a Sydney or Perth summer is a watering commitment. Buy bigger planters than you think you need.
Check the weed list first
Before you plant anything for screening, check your state’s weed list. Murraya is among the most invasive plants in south-east Queensland. Pittosporum undulatum is a Victorian environmental weed outside its home range despite being native. Sweet viburnum is spreading into rainforest understorey in Brisbane. The Gardening Responsibly scheme is the quick check.
Posts, footings and wind
Windbreaks made with natural materials can soften boundaries and reduce wind, and the horticultural point behind that is real: a permeable windbreak filters wind, while a solid screen does not reduce wind so much as fight it. A 2.4m solid panel is a sail, and what fails is almost always the footing.
Australian guidance for a solid wall runs from a 200mm-diameter, 450mm-deep footing at 900mm high to 700mm deep at 2100mm, in 20 MPa concrete. And the variable that matters most is not height but wind classification: one Australian manufacturer’s table halves post spacing from 3000mm to 1500mm between wind ratings W28 and W41. On a hill, a ridge, an escarpment or in a cyclonic area, get engineering advice.
Two more before you dig. Check for sewer Sydney Water applies a 45-degree zone of influence and wants fence posts 600mm clear of a pipe, and Queensland triggers build-over assessment within 3 metres. And if you are on bushfire-prone land, NSW exempt development requires fences to be non-combustible or hardwood.
The one that gets people fined
If any of this is happening near a swimming pool, stop and measure. Australia’s pool barrier standard requires a non-climbable zone of 900mm on the outside of the fence and 300mm on the inside, and the Queensland regulator’s must-remove list names “garden features such as rockeries or raised garden beds, garden edging… climbable security screens.”
A planter, a trellis, a stack of stones, a shrub or a screen inside that arc makes a compliant pool fence non-compliant. Queensland issues on-the-spot fines up to roughly $28,000. Fifteen toddlers under four drowned in Australia in 2023/24, and backyard pools account for about 40% of infant drownings. This is the one rule in this article worth being pedantic about.
Where to start
- Measure what you have, with nothing more exotic than the tools already in the shed. Fence height plus screen height against your state’s cap in Queensland, 2 metres total.
- Decide freestanding or attached. Freestanding on your own posts, 900mm off the boundary in NSW, avoids the whole neighbour question.
- Pick the openness. Aim for 25% open or less if the point is privacy, not decoration.
- Pick the material for the exposure salt, sun, and how long you want it to last.
- Dig the footing properly, and check for sewer and pool zones first.
- Then paint it, plant it, or grow something up it.
Everything else on the standard list is a variation, and the other types are worth a look once the constraints are settled. Metal screens, timber, breeze blocks, hedges and fabric all work; decorative panels can create visual interest while screening outdoor spaces and slatted garden screening allows natural light while providing privacy, which is the real reason slats beat solid panels for most of an outdoor space. Vertical gardens can be integrated into decorative screening, and decorative screening can enhance outdoor visual appeal. A screen is a versatile great way to hide the bins, the shed or the air conditioner, to protect a verandah or balcony from the elements, and to give a patio a sense of ground level enclosure.
Just get the boring parts right first. A bold screen in the wrong spot, the wrong width, or the wrong shape or one course too high costs more money to take down than it did to build, and the version that survives is the one built to suit your yard, your budget and your council. Explore the options by exposure and height first, then by looks. Add the flowers, the shrubs, the light and the spice afterwards. That is the ideal order, and it is what keeps a screening project a pleasant weekend with friends and family rather than a letter from the council.
