Warehouse Line Marking Guidelines: Forklift Lanes, Pedestrian Zones and the Floor Under Them

Search for warehouse line marking guidelines and you will find plenty of advice on colours and widths. Before any of that, it is worth being clear about what painted lines can and cannot do. Lines tell people where forklifts and pedestrians are supposed to be. They do not stop a forklift from entering a walkway. WorkSafe Victoria therefore treats marked aisles as one part of a wider traffic management plan.

What WorkSafe Victoria says

WorkSafe's safety alert on workers fatally injured by forklifts states plainly that pedestrians and forklifts do not mix. It says forklifts should be eliminated or replaced with other load-shifting equipment where reasonably practicable, and if that is not possible, risks must be reduced through engineering or administrative controls. Exclusion zone controls it lists include fixed barriers, inward-opening gates at pedestrian crossings, containment fences, and clearly marked aisles, travel paths and pedestrian crossings (WorkSafe Victoria).

The alert recommends a minimum three-metre distance between pedestrians and a forklift moving at walking pace with its load at axle height. For raised loads it adds three metres to the height of the load and mast, so a 4 m load and mast means a 7 m exclusion zone. Where fixed barriers are not reasonably practicable, pedestrians should stay outside that zone. The alert calls a documented traffic management plan the key to separating forklifts from pedestrians, including truck drivers, and says it should be developed with employees and health and safety representatives and reviewed after any incident or change in work practice.

In May 2024 WorkSafe released a forklift safety guidebook and began an inspection program in manufacturing, postal and warehousing. It said eight people had been killed in forklift-related incidents in Victorian workplaces since 2019, including three pedestrians, and that pedestrians accounted for 65 of the 157 accepted claims in the previous year where a forklift incident caused the injury (WorkSafe Victoria).

Neither page gives paint specifications, colours or line widths. If a client or auditor needs a particular layout, that comes from your traffic management plan and your WHS advisor, not from a floor contractor. What we can do is lay the marking out to your plan and make it last.

Where line marking fits

The marking is the visible end of the plan. A typical layout for a distribution shed includes:

• Forklift travel lanes, separated from pedestrian walkways.
• Marked pedestrian crossings at points where the two have to meet, ideally with a barrier or gate.
• Racking bays and storage zone outlines, so pallets are not left in an aisle.
• Loading dock and safety zone markings.
• Optional reflective or high-visibility marking where lighting is poor.

Our line marking and safety demarcation service covers all of these, applied to your layout specification using durable, traffic-rated line marking paint. It can be quoted on its own as a refresh of existing demarcation on a floor that is still sound, or bundled with a new floor coating.

The floor under the lines

Most people miss this part. Line marking sits on top of whatever the floor is, and forklifts turn on it all day. Steering tyres scrub the same path every shift, and the paint at corners and crossings goes first. If the slab underneath is dusty, patchy or flaking, paint will not bond for long, and you will be repainting.

That is why we usually recommend coating and marking together. The slab is shot blasted or diamond ground, cracks are injected and repaired, a primer and moisture barrier go down, then a high-build epoxy body coat and a clear topcoat. The lines go on last, to your layout, so the floor and the marking wear as one system. Where there is heavy impact from dropped loads or equipment, our industrial range adds broadcast quartz aggregate and thicker high-build systems. More detail is in our industrial floor coatings overview.

Getting a layout right

• Start from the traffic management plan, not the paint. Mark what the plan says.
• Walk the real routes at peak time. Forklifts take shortcuts, and the plan should account for them.
• Keep crossings few, and put barriers or gates at the ones you cannot avoid.
• Mark exclusion zones around dock doors and blind corners.
• Plan the work so the floor is clear: stage it zone by zone if you cannot close the building. Our guide to coating a warehouse without a shutdown covers how.
• Review the markings when the layout changes, and after any incident.

Timing in October

Many warehouses ramp up stock ahead of the pre-Christmas peak, which makes October a good time to fix faded lines and have crossings and zones clear before volumes rise. Cooler spring mornings can slow curing, so allow time before forklifts run over fresh work. If you are in Epping or Tullamarine, see our Epping commercial page or our wider commercial flooring overview, and we will walk the site, mark the plan and give you a written scope, a fixed price and a 7-year warranty.