From the room upstairs to the shop below.

Three groups, then the service that names the surface

The cards above are groups, not extra services. Interior decorating puts apartment and townhouse painting with wallpaper, because both belong to the rooms. Exteriors and joinery puts façades, windows and ironwork with timber shopfronts and other moulded wood, because both are judged on an elevation or on a profile. Planning and premises puts colour and finish planning with shops, restaurants and offices, because one writes a schedule and the other phases a premises that stays in use. Open a group when you are still choosing between two close names. Open the service when you already know the surface. Every service is also listed under the cards, and a flat over a shop can still need two of them in a single enquiry.

Match the enquiry to the surface in front of you

The six services on this page are ways of describing work, and the right one is the one that names your surfaces. Apartment and townhouse interiors are for ceilings, walls and the occupation of a home. Façades, windows and ironwork are for outside elements, where weather, access and the existing material change the specification. Joinery and timber shopfronts are for moulded wood, whether that is a glazing bar on a fascia or a cupboard door upstairs. Wallpaper and wallcoverings are for pattern, seams and the wall that has to carry them. Colour and finish planning is for samples, sheen and a schedule someone else can follow. Shops, restaurants and offices are for premises that must keep trading or working while decoration happens. Many addresses need more than one of these descriptions. A flat with lining paper and painted doors belongs in both the wallcovering service and the interior service. A café with a timber front and a dining room belongs in both the joinery service and the commercial service. A single word such as refresh or repaint does not tell anyone which of those tasks you mean, or which ones you are leaving out.

When the flat upstairs and the shop below share one brief

Westminster’s leaflet for the Covent Garden conservation area notes homes, offices, restaurants and shops together, and it places Victorian warehouses at Long Acre, Floral Street and Shelton Street beside the older streets around the Piazza. That mix is why a single enquiry often crosses two services. The rooms over a shop are still an interior, with plaster, joinery and a household or an office to keep functioning. The frontage below is still joinery or exterior work, with its own materials and, frequently, a different person entitled to instruct it. Write both scopes, and write one access note that explains the door, the stair and whether tins may cross the commercial unit. Say which decisions are already made and which wait on a landlord, a managing agent or the council. Colour planning can sit over both scopes if samples must be read against brick downstairs and against a furnished room upstairs. The service pages will not merge those responsibilities for you. They give you a place to put each surface so a later quotation can follow the same split. Bring the property address, because the leaflet is historic context for the neighbourhood and not a finding about your particular building.

Sources: Westminster: Covent Garden conservation area leaflet

What these service pages leave for the address to decide

A service page can organise a conversation. It cannot settle the specification of a particular building. Preparation, products, access equipment and included components belong in an agreed quotation, read against the condition someone has actually seen. Permissions are a further step. Westminster publishes an address-based route for checking conservation areas and Article 4 directions. Camden publishes conservation mapping, appraisals and planning guidance, and that material is not a claim that every repaint needs an application. Use the full address for either council. A WC2E, WC2H or WC2B postcode only helps you find the building. Landlord standards, lease clauses and house rules for contractors are different again, and they travel with the enquiry as documents rather than as assumptions. Prices, durations and availability are not stated on these pages, because they depend on the scope and the programme you agree. If your project touches more than one service, say so in the same message and point to the surfaces. The pages are here so that message can be specific. They are not a catalogue of completed commissions, and they do not authorise work at the address you have in mind.

Sources: Westminster: conservation-area checks; Camden: conservation-area checks