NSW Tag Colour Guide by Year & Meaning

Quick Summary

Test & tag colours follow the RGBY system—red (summer), green (autumn), blue (winter), yellow (spring)—repeating every year. Colour coding is mandatory only for construction, demolition, and mining sites under AS/NZS 3012; elsewhere it’s optional. What matters legally is the tester’s name, test date, and retest date on the tag itself.

Introduction

You’re walking through your warehouse or office fit-out, and you notice the extension leads and power boards all have little tags dangling off them—some red, some yellow, some blue. Nobody’s explained what they mean, and Google isn’t making it any easier: half the articles quote a colour system that hasn’t applied in NSW for years, and the other half contradict each other on whether you’re even required to follow one. If you’re the person responsible for keeping your workplace compliant, that’s a frustrating place to be starting from.

Once you understand the logic behind the colours, they’re very simple to read. This guide breaks down what each colour represents, when it changes, and, more importantly, what you should be checking on a tag before you trust it.

Is the Colour of the Tag a Legal Requirement in NSW?

For most NSW businesses, no. Colour coding is a convenience, not a rule. AS/NZS 3760:2022, the standard that governs electrical equipment inspection and testing, states that a compliant tag “may be colour coded to identify the period in which the test was performed”, the operative word being may. So, colour-coded tags are optional unless a specific site, principal contractor, or industry standard says otherwise.

The exception is construction, demolition, and mining sites. Under AS/NZS 3012, portable equipment on these sites has to be tested every three months, and the colour-coded system exists to make that interval visible at a glance to anyone walking the site:

• a supervisor,
• a subcontractor, or
• a SafeWork inspector.

If you run an office, retail store, café, warehouse, or gym, though, the colour on your tags is a scheduling tool your provider has chosen to use.

RGBY Colour-Coding System

For sites where colour coding does apply—and for the many other businesses that use it anyway because it’s a handy visual shortcut—the system is called RGBY, standing for red, green, blue, and yellow. Each colour represents one calendar quarter, and the sequence repeats every single year in the same order:

The colours don’t change from year to year. Red in December 2026 means the same thing as red in December 2027. What changes is which quarter you’re currently in, and therefore which colour you should expect to see on equipment tested during it. If you spot a green tag hanging on a power tool in September, the item was tested back in autumn.

If you manage testing yourself, book your inspections for the first few weeks of a new colour period rather than the last few. Test in late November and your item gets barely a week of yellow before the calendar flips to red. Test in early September, and you get the full three months out of that tag.

Two Different Systems In NSW

If you’ve worked on older NSW sites, you may have encountered a different, state-specific monthly colour system that predates the current national approach. NSW has since aligned with the same quarterly RGBY sequence used across Victoria, Queensland, South Australia, Western Australia, and Tasmania, largely to reduce confusion for contractors and equipment moving between states. Some sites and older signage haven’t caught up yet, which is why you’ll occasionally still see references to the retired system. If a colour on a tag seems inconsistent with the RGBY chart above, that’s usually why.

What Belongs on a Tag

A tag can be perfectly on-brand for the season and still tell you nothing useful, because colour isn’t what makes a tag sufficient. The information printed on it is.

Under AS/NZS 3760:2022, a compliant tag has to be

• durable,
• legible,
• non-reusable, and
• non-metallic

And it needs to show, as a minimum:

• Who performed the test (the name of the person and the entity behind them)
• The test date
• The retest date (when the next inspection is due)
• A reference to AS/NZS 3760

So, the real question to ask when you’re looking at a tag isn’t “What does this colour mean?” It’s “Does this tag tell me when this item was last checked, and when it’s due again?” A red tag with a smudged date and no name attached isn’t worth much, regardless of what quarter it represents.

How Often Your Equipment Needs Testing

Colour tells you when something was last tested. It doesn’t tell you whether that testing frequency is right for your business. AS/NZS 3760:2022 sets different intervals depending on how hard your equipment gets used:

Comparing your retest interval to a friend’s café down the road, or another business in a different sector, rarely tells you much. The standard is built around how the equipment is used, not the industry label on your ABN.

• If your office runs on laptop chargers and monitor cables that never leave the desk, you’re at the lower-frequency end.
• If you’re running a warehouse with power tools, extension leads snaking across concrete, and equipment that gets knocked around daily, you’re testing far more often.

Next Steps

You don’t need to memorise the RGBY calendar or become fluent in AS/NZS 3760 clause numbers to run a compliant workplace. What’s worth doing is a quick glance next time you’re near a power board or extension lead:

• is there a tag at all,
• does it name a date, and
• does that date suggest the item is still within its window?

If you’re seeing tags with no visible date, no name, or a retest date that’s passed, that’s a conversation to have with whoever’s handling your testing, regardless of what colour the tag is.

Conclusion

At Success Works, we test and tag equipment across Sydney offices, retail sites, and warehouses, and every tag we leave behind carries the full set of details AS/NZS 3760:2022 requires, plus a digital report and a reminder before your next retest falls due.

Our technicians are women who have faced barriers to employment and been given proper training and a pathway into skilled work, so choosing us gets your equipment sorted and puts your safety budget behind something that changes lives across your city.

If you’d like your tags checked, your schedule sorted, or a straight answer on how often your specific setup needs testing, book a site visit and we’ll take it from there.