I am writing something that needs to verify the practical readability of qr codes which has been painted over.
First thing that comes to mind is to apply Gaussian blur on the image and check if it is readable. Then I could get a “readability score” by doing binary search between blur strengths range [0, n].
I also may do the same with noise, not sure if I should.
Would appreciate if somebody with more knowledge of QR codes help me


I doubt Gaussian blur is an accurate model of real-world situations.
At the end of the day if you are worried about the codes being painted over print a few out and paint over them. Then scan with a variety of scanners.
If I had to come up with some more digital tests I would guess that a few of these are more representative of real-world situations:
Ideally combine them in a bunch of scenarios then try to scan with a variety of scanner implementations.