Covent Garden Painters & Decorators
Exteriors and joinery
Exteriors and joinery cover the outer face of a Covent Garden building and the moulded timber that gives that face its lines. One service is masonry, windows, doors and metal. The other is profiles: glazing bars, fascias, brackets, and fitted wood inside as well as on the street. A timber window can appear in both conversations. This page shows which brief should carry it.
Discuss your projectServices for exteriors and joinery
Façades, windows & ironwork
A Covent Garden frontage is a collection of materials, not a single surface. Define the painted windows, doors, masonry and ironwork precisely, then agree how each element should be prepared and finished.
Read about façades, windows & ironwork 02Joinery & timber shopfronts
The painted edges are where a Covent Garden scheme becomes precise. From a shop window’s glazing bars to a cupboard door inside an apartment, the finish should make the existing proportions easy to read.
Read about joinery & timber shopfrontsFaçades, windows and ironwork
The exterior service is for elements in the weather. Record the sash, the frame, the sill and the glazing bars as parts of a working window, and say which faces are included. Brick that has never been coated is not the same task as brick that already has a paint film. Historic England’s redecoration notes are a reason to ask that question first. A film over masonry can change how moisture leaves the wall, and taking a film off can mark the fabric, so the brief should point at painted and unpainted areas on your own elevation rather than at a product for the whole front. Railings, basement grilles and old hoist fittings are metal, with their own corrosion and fixing points. The list entry for 3 Henrietta Street describes cast-iron railings at a house rebuilt from 1780 to 1781, in brown brick with later stucco dressings. Those railings are evidence for that listed house. They are a prompt to photograph the iron you actually have, not a template for every front around the Piazza. Reaching the work is a separate subject from the coating. Westminster asks for a temporary-structure licence when works encroach on or over the highway. Camden uses a building licence for scaffolds and related structures. Where a van may stop is another application again, with its own notice period, and neither council process is booked by a sentence on this page.
Sources: Historic England: historic paint and redecoration; Historic England: 3 Henrietta Street; Westminster: highway structures and safe access; Camden: building licences for scaffolds and structures
Joinery and timber shopfronts
The joinery service is the painted profile. On a commercial front that means the stall riser, pilasters, fascia, console brackets, door and window frame, kept as one elevation rather than as a flat patch of colour. The Seven Dials Trust’s study of traditional timber shopfronts describes late-eighteenth- and nineteenth-century painted fronts and the way glazing, pilasters, fascia and brackets belong to the elevation above. It is a conservation study. It is not an approval, and it is not an appointment of this business. The list entry for 52 Floral Street records a terrace house with a shop of about 1838 whose timber shopfront frame survives, including a console-bracketed fascia and upper sash windows. That entry is evidence for the named building only. Your frame may be later, altered, or a different material, which is why the photograph has to show the whole front. Inside a flat, the same service is the cupboard door, the architrave and the return of a shelf, where sheen on a moulding matters more than a card held in the hand. Recoating a front is not the same request as changing it. Camden’s design guidance draws a line between routine redecoration, which normally does not need planning permission, and a new or altered shopfront, which generally does. A colour change on a listed shopfront is controlled more tightly. New lettering, illumination or a projecting board is a further question under each council’s advertisement rules, including listed-building consent where a sign is proposed on a listed building.
Sources: Seven Dials Trust: traditional timber shopfronts; Historic England: 52 Floral Street; Camden: Design planning guidance, 2021; Westminster: adverts and signs; Camden: advertisements and signs
Where a window leaves the exterior service and becomes joinery
Use façades, windows and ironwork when the question is the material, the weather and the means of reaching it: masonry, the outer faces of windows and doors, and iron. Use joinery and timber shopfronts when the question is the profile and the finish on wood: a glazing bar, a fascia, a bracket, or a moulding inside the rooms. A sash that sticks, an open joint or a coating that has failed should be written so that decoration is not mistaken for a repair. If the brick pier and the shopfront frame are both in the enquiry, send both scopes and one note of how materials will reach the elevation. Westminster’s leaflet places Victorian warehouses and commercial buildings at Long Acre, Floral Street and Shelton Street, where a hoist opening, a tall casement and a timber shop frame can share one front. Camden’s Seven Dials statement also records surviving hoists and hoist doors at the warehouse it names on Shelton Street. Name each element. The rooms behind that front, when they are a home, belong with interior decorating. When they are a restaurant or an office that must keep working, they belong with the commercial service. A street-facing colour that still needs samples and a schedule someone else can follow can sit with colour and finish planning, which does not itself coat the frame. On Drury Lane, Peabody’s history of the Wild Street estate records six-storey blocks opened in 1881. Height is a reason to describe the floor and the access you have, including any common stair, rather than to assume a ladder will do.
Sources: Westminster: Covent Garden conservation area leaflet; Camden: Seven Dials conservation area statement; Peabody: Wild Street estate history
What to send for the elevation and for the timber
For the exterior service, send the full address, photographs of each material, and a note of which faces of each window are in scope. Say whether the masonry is already painted. Mention any listing you have already checked, and do not treat a neighbour’s list entry as if it were yours. For joinery, send a photograph of the whole front or the whole fitted run, not only a close crop of one moulding, and mark the hardware and glazing you want left as they are. If the lettering will change, say so in a separate line from the paint colour. For either service, say which council you believe the building sits in and what you have already looked up. Westminster and Camden both route conservation-area and Article 4 questions through the address. A WC2E, WC2H or WC2B postcode does not choose the borough. Include any landlord or estate rule about colour. Scaffold, skip and parking permissions remain council processes. Westminster’s suspension guidance and Camden’s suspension guidance set out their own notice periods, and a space is not guaranteed by either page. Westminster also requires a skip licence when a skip is placed on the street. Camden requires a licence for a skip on the public road. None of those steps is completed by an enquiry on this website. Prices and durations are agreed against the scope, not copied from a street.
Sources: Westminster: conservation-area checks; Camden: conservation-area checks; Westminster: parking-bay suspensions; Camden: parking-bay suspensions; Westminster: skip and parking permissions; Camden: skip licences
Start with the space
What needs
a new finish?
Tell us whether the work is for a home, a business or a shared building. Include the Covent Garden address, the surfaces involved and the times when access could be available.
Your decorating enquiry
Describe the existing finish, the change you want and any restrictions on working in the space.