Bunnings Artificial Grass Against a Professional Install

The price comparison people expect, and the one they get

The assumption behind a DIY project is usually that retail is cheaper than trade. On turf, it mostly is not.

As listed at 15 August 2026, Bunnings' landscape range ran from roughly $17.83 per square metre for 9mm Coolaroo, through 25mm pet-oriented product at about $42-44, up to around $51.50 per square metre for 40mm Tuff Turf Balm Tuff. All supply only. Set that against trade supply-only pricing, where budget product runs about $25-40 per square metre and mid-tier about $40-60. Bunnings' premium sits toward the top of that range, not under it. The very cheapest retail options undercut trade budget product, but 9mm turf is a different article from a 35mm landscape lawn and comparing them by price alone is comparing a doormat to a lawn.

So the saving from doing it yourself is not in the grass. It is in labour and margin, which the published industry split puts at roughly 30 per cent base preparation and 30 per cent labour against 40 per cent materials. You are proposing to supply 60 per cent of a job yourself.

What the other 60 per cent involves

Written out as a shopping and hire list rather than a paragraph, because that is how it hits your budget:

• Excavating roughly 75mm across the area, or about 100mm where a vehicle runs.
• Getting that spoil off the property. On a block with side-gate-only access, this is the hidden hours.
• Buying and getting road base or crushed rock in, plus crusher dust for screeding.
• Hiring a plate compactor and doing at least two passes properly.
• Screeding twice to level, which is a skill rather than an errand.
• Setting falls and, on impeded ground, building a drainage exit.
• Joining tape and adhesive: $41.94 for a 150mm by 10m tape roll and $23.18 per litre of adhesive at 15 August 2026.
• Anchor nails, $38.00 per 100 pack at the same date, at roughly 30-40cm spacing.
• Infill sand at 10-15 kilograms per square metre, and a power broom to work it in.

Roll width also decides how much of that joining work you do. Bunnings landscape rolls are 1.8m wide for the Tuff Turf and DIY Turf lineal ranges and 1.83m for Coolaroo, with prepacked rolls in 1m and 1.8m widths. Across a 6m wide yard that is a minimum of three seams, and seams are where amateur installs are most visibly amateur.

The Illawarra complication

Everywhere in Australia, base preparation is where DIY installs fail. Here, the ground makes that likelier. The NSW soil landscape reports for this region describe subsoils with "Low permeability" through the Gwynneville, Shellharbour and Kiama units, "Locally impeded drainage" on the Berkeley unit under a fifth of Figtree, and, on the Illawarra Escarpment unit that covers half of Thirroul, the observation that "Potential movements may be set off by poor drainage".

And then there is Unanderra, 47.3 per cent mapped as artificial fill, where the unit report asks for "a survey at a suitable scale as well as geotechnical analysis" because of the variability of the material. That is a difficult site for a professional with an excavator. It is a very difficult weekend for one person with a mattock.

None of this makes DIY impossible. It does mean the failure mode is not cosmetic: it is a base you would have to lift the lawn to fix. There is more on the mechanics in the guide to reactive clay and impeded drainage.

When retail turf is genuinely the right answer

We are not against DIY, and there is a clear category where it makes sense. Look for jobs where somebody else already built the base:

• A small concrete courtyard with a sound slab and an existing fall. No excavation, no compaction, few joins. See laying turf over concrete for the method.
• A rental, where you want something better than bare dirt without capital works.
• A dog run, shed floor, market stall, verandah or display that you expect to change.
• Anything small enough that a mistake costs a Saturday rather than a re-do.

Conversely, if the job involves excavation, drainage, more than a couple of joins, or a slope, the arithmetic changes. A budget professional install at roughly $75-95 per square metre buys product at trade pricing, plant, compaction, screeding, spoil removal and someone who has cut two hundred seams before. Full tier ranges are on the Illawarra cost page, and the job sequence is broken down in the stage-by-stage laying guide.

A note on quality, retail or trade

Cheap turf is not automatically bad turf, and expensive turf is not automatically good. Judge whatever is in front of you the same way regardless of where it is sold: fold the backing, hold it to the light for drainage perforations, twist the pile and watch it recover, feel the blade for a spine, drag a nail across the tuft rows to read the density, and look at the colour outside rather than under fluorescent lights. The method is set out in full in how to judge a turf sample yourself.

The same goes for claims. Warranties commonly run 8 to 15 years and typically cover ultraviolet fade and fibre loss rather than base failure. Which, on a DIY install, means the layer you are personally responsible for is the layer nothing covers. If you would rather not carry that risk, our Illawarra turf quotes home page explains how a referral works.

Related

• What a professional install includes, stage by stage
• Tier pricing and what drives an Illawarra quote
• Why pet jobs are a poor DIY candidate
• Strata rules that catch DIY courtyard jobs
• Unanderra, and the hardest ground in the region
• Figtree quotes

Bunnings pricing and service terms as listed at 15 August 2026. Retail prices and service availability change, so check current listings before budgeting.