Workplace Safety Colours in Australia: AS 1318 (Withdrawn) and AS 1319 Signs

Walk into ten Australian warehouses and you'll probably see the same thing. Yellow lines around forklift aisles. Red boxes in front of fire hoses. Green walkways. Yellow and black stripes on anything you might walk into.

Most people assume a standard makes them do it. The truth is a bit more interesting. The old standard that set those colours, AS 1318, was withdrawn in 2017. The colours stuck around anyway, because they work.

Here's what that means for your site, and how to get your colours right without guessing.

What was AS 1318?

AS 1318-1985 was called the SAA Industrial Safety Colour Code. It gave colours a fixed meaning at work. Red meant fire and danger. Yellow meant caution. Green meant safety and first aid. Blue was used for information and instructions. Yellow and black stripes marked physical hazards like low beams, ledges and machine guards.

Standards Australia withdrew AS 1318 in 2017. There is no direct replacement. So if a quote or a sign says "compliant with AS 1318", that's not quite right any more. The better way to say it is that the site follows the AS 1318 colour conventions.

Why people still use the AS 1318 colours

Because everyone already knows them. A new starter, a delivery driver or a contractor walks in and reads red, yellow and green the same way they did at their last job. That shared meaning is the whole point.

Changing to your own unusual colours just makes people think harder at the exact moment they should be reacting. So most sites keep the old meanings, and we usually recommend that too.

What AS 1319 covers

AS 1319-1994, Safety signs for the occupational environment, is still current. It deals with signs, not floor lines. It sets out the main sign types and how they look:

• Prohibition signs: a red circle with a slash. Something you must not do.
• Mandatory signs: a blue circle. Something you must do, like wear hearing protection.
• Restriction signs: a red circle without the slash, such as a speed limit.
• Hazard warning signs: a yellow triangle with a black border.
• Danger signs: the word DANGER in white on a red oval inside a black rectangle.
• Emergency information signs: white on green, such as first aid and exits.
• Fire signs: white on red, for fire equipment.

Floor symbols often borrow these designs, so a painted symbol on the floor reads the same as the sign on the wall. We cover that in more detail in our guide to hazard and safety floor symbols under AS 1319.

Floor marking colours: practice, not law

No Australian Standard or law says your forklift aisle must be yellow or your walkway must be green. What the law does say is that you must manage risks at work, and that includes keeping people and moving plant apart. Floor marking is one of the simplest ways to show where people and forklifts should be.

These are the colours we see most often on Australian sites:

• Yellow: forklift and traffic aisles, and general caution areas.
• Yellow and black stripes: physical hazards, such as columns, dock edges and racking ends.
• Red: keep-clear zones in front of fire hoses, extinguishers and electrical boards.
• Green: pedestrian walkways, first aid stations and safe assembly points.
• White: pallet bays, storage locations and general layout lines.
• Red and white stripes: areas that must stay clear at all times.

Some sites use yellow for walkways and white for aisles. That's fine. What causes trouble is mixing schemes, like green walkways in one building and yellow walkways in the next.

How to pick and document your site colour scheme

This is the part most sites skip, and it's the part that matters if there's ever an incident.

1. Walk the site. Watch how forklifts, trucks and people actually move. Note where they cross.
2. Give each colour one job. One colour for walkways, one for forklift aisles, one for keep-clear zones, and so on.
3. Check your signs. Make sure floor colours don't clash with the meaning of your AS 1319 signs.
4. Write it down. One page is enough. A simple legend with each colour and what it means.
5. Train people. Add the legend to inductions and put a copy on the noticeboard.
6. Use it everywhere. Same colours in every building, every shed and every new area.
7. Keep it fresh. Faded lines send a message too. Book a recoat before they disappear.

A written scheme also makes life easier for your safety team. When an auditor asks why the lines look the way they do, you have an answer on paper.

Common mistakes we see

• Using the same colour for walkways and forklift aisles.
• New areas marked in a different colour to the rest of the site.
• Keep-clear zones painted, then racking or pallets moved into them anyway.
• Lines so worn that people stop noticing them.
• Paint that suits light foot traffic used in heavy forklift lanes, so it wears through in months.

How we can help

We mark walkways, forklift aisles, keep-clear zones and safety symbols in warehouses and factories around Australia. We'll suggest a colour layout that matches how your site works, and we'll use a product that suits your traffic, so you're not repainting every year.

See our safety markings and warehouse line marking services, or send us your floor plan for a fixed-price quote.