Preparation is most of the job
The difference between a room that still looks right in ten years and one that starts flaking in two comes down almost entirely to what happens before the first coat goes on. Filling, sanding, caulking the gaps, sealing chalky old surfaces and priming bare patches are not extras to be trimmed out of a quote. They are the job. On a typical room, more than half the time on site is spent before any colour appears.
Cornish houses make this more pointed than it is elsewhere. Solid granite walls, lime plaster, and decades of emulsion layered over distemper all behave differently under a brush, and a paint chosen for a new plasterboard box will not stay put on any of them. Older walls are rarely flat and often damp at low level, so we look at what the wall is doing before deciding how to treat it, rather than painting over the problem.
Where paper is coming off first, we strip it back to the plaster, wash off the old paste, and make good before anything else. One customer's review describes a four-bedroom house stripped, prepared and painted throughout, and that order of work is the reason the finish held.
Working in a home that is still lived in
Most interior work happens in houses people are still living in, with pets, children, home offices and normal life carrying on around it. That shapes how a job is run. Dust sheets go down and furniture is moved to the middle of the room and covered before anything starts. Tools are cleared and the room is left usable at the end of each day. We agree up front which rooms will be out of action and for how long, and we stick to it.
Low-odour water-based paints have made this far easier than it used to be, especially for woodwork, which once meant an oil-based smell hanging around for days. They dry faster, stay whiter, and mean a bedroom painted on a Monday can be slept in on Monday night.
If other trades are in the house, we work around them. Plasterers, electricians and kitchen fitters all leave marks, and the sensible order is usually for the decorator to be the last one through the door.
What we take on
Single rooms, whole floors, and whole houses. Walls and ceilings in emulsion, woodwork in satin or eggshell, doors, skirting, architraves, staircases and banisters. Feature walls, either painted or papered. Ceilings that have gone yellow, stained or cracked. Hallways and stairwells, which are awkward to reach and get more wear than any other part of the house.
We also sand and revarnish timber floors where a floor has gone scruffy rather than being worn out, which can bring an old oak or pine floor back without replacing it. Ask, and we will say whether yours is a candidate.
Some customers do the ground floor one year and the first floor the next, which is a sensible way to spread the cost and the disruption, and we are happy to plan a house that way.
Colour and materials
Trade paint is not the same product as the retail tin of the same name. The difference shows up in how well a colour covers, how many coats a wall actually needs, and how it stands up to being wiped down in a kitchen or a hallway. We will tell you what we recommend for each surface and why, and we are happy to work with a colour you have already fallen for.
Cornish light is bright, cool and changeable, and it makes colours look different from how they looked on a card in the shop. Sample on the wall that gets the most light, look at it morning and evening, and if you are still unsure, try the colour visualiser on this site to narrow the choice before buying samples.
How the price is worked out
Interior decorating is priced on time and materials, and the time is mostly preparation. The things that move the price are the state of the surfaces, how much woodwork there is, ceiling height, whether paper is coming off, how many colours are involved, and how much furniture has to be moved. A plain bedroom in good condition is a very different job from a Victorian hallway with three storeys of stairwell and stripped pine to seal.
We come and look before quoting, because a photo hides most of what matters. The quote sets out the work it covers, and if we find something behind the paper that changes the job, we tell you before carrying on rather than adding it to the bill at the end.