Covent Garden Painters & Decorators
Interior decorating
Interior decorating on this site means two services for the rooms inside a Covent Garden building: painting ceilings and walls in a home, and hanging a wallcovering where pattern and the wall beneath it matter. They often meet in the same flat. This page sets the boundary so a brief can name each surface once.
Discuss your projectServices for interior decorating
Apartment & townhouse interiors
Give the rooms above a Covent Garden street their own atmosphere. A quiet bedroom, a generous warehouse living space and a narrow townhouse stair each need a different balance of colour, texture and finish.
Read about apartment & townhouse interiors 02Wallpaper & wallcoverings
A wallcovering can give a compact Covent Garden dining room depth or make a small apartment entrance feel deliberate. Its success depends on the wall beneath it and on where the pattern starts and finishes.
Read about wallpaper & wallcoveringsWhat apartment and townhouse painting takes on
Apartment and townhouse interiors are the ceilings, the walls and the way a household keeps using the home. A quiet bedroom, a living space in a converted warehouse and the stair of a narrow house do not ask the same thing of a colour, because the light and the route through wet paint are different. The brief should separate backgrounds before a coating is discussed: plaster that has been painted for years, a newer lining, a ceiling that has already been coated, and brick you want to keep visible. Westminster’s Covent Garden leaflet records homes beside offices, restaurants and shops, and it places Victorian warehouses at Long Acre, Floral Street and Shelton Street next to the older streets around the Piazza. A room in one of those warehouses is still an interior. A brick pier you want left bare is a background to name, not a wall to coat by default. The same leaflet describes the narrow plots south of Maiden Lane. In a house on one of those plots the stair can matter as much as any single room, and it belongs in this service when you want it painted. The service does not hang a patterned covering, and it does not coat the street face of a window or a shopfront. Doors, skirtings and the inner faces of shutters can be talked about at the same visit. They stay with joinery unless your room list says they are included.
Sources: Westminster: Covent Garden conservation area leaflet
What wallpaper hanging takes on, and what it hands back
Wallpaper and wallcoverings are for pattern, seams and the condition of the wall that has to carry them. The hanging brief wants the whole elevation: doors, radiators, sockets and fitted seating, plus the view you care about, whether that is the entrance of a small flat or the wall a restaurant table faces. Preparation belongs in that brief. Sound painted plaster, a porous patch and a wall that still holds an old covering are different starts, and a lining paper is a decision about that wall rather than an extra assumed on every job. Painted wood around the paper stays with joinery or with interior painting unless you have included it. Where a covering stops at a skirting, a cornice or a cabinet, say who paints the edge and who hangs up to it. In a flat above a shop the papered room is still a private room, even when the stair is shared. Camden’s Seven Dials statement records warehouse buildings with shops and cafés at street level and rooms overhead, including around Neal’s Yard and the warehouse streets it describes. Those upper rooms are where this pair of services applies. The timber front on the pavement is neither of them. If the dining room itself is a business that must keep serving, the phasing of that room also belongs with the commercial service, while the covering itself stays here.
How the two services meet in one Covent Garden flat
The usual overlap is a lined wall inside a room that is also being painted. A lining and a painted ceiling can be different services even when one decorator would carry both out. Write two scopes: the walls that receive a covering, and the ceilings, returns and any other surfaces that receive paint. Say whether the paper is already chosen and whether the paint colours already sit on a schedule. Colour and finish planning is a third service, used when samples, sheen and a written schedule are what you need before anyone coats a wall. It is not required for every repaint, and it does not replace either service on this page. If the same address has a timber frontage, or a dining room that trades, those surfaces belong with exteriors and joinery or with commercial decorating. Name them in the same message rather than folding them into a note that only says the flat needs refreshing. The Bedfordbury record of a 1987 excavation followed the demolition of two housing blocks, which is a reason to describe the rooms that stand now. An earlier interior is not something this page can see from the street. Peabody’s note on the Wild Street estate, dated to 1881 with six-storey blocks and 1960s modernisation of the flats that remained, makes the same point from Drury Lane: height and a later interior are facts to confirm at the address, not assumptions to decorate from.
Sources: Museum of London report: the Bedfordbury Peabody site; Peabody: Wild Street estate history
What to send so the two scopes stay distinct
For interior painting, send the full address, the floor, the rooms in scope, and photographs of ceilings, walls and any brick or repair you want left alone. Note how the household uses the place through the week, including home working and sleeping, and what the building allows for deliveries and hours. For wallpaper, send the product information if you have it, photographs of the existing finish, and a note of the doors, radiators and the line where the covering should stop. Say who will move fittings. For either service, say whether a landlord or managing agent must approve a colour, and attach any finish schedule the lease already imposes. Westminster and Camden both expect an address check before a conservation area or an Article 4 direction is treated as settled. That check matters when the work might be read as a change to a listed interior. It does not, by itself, mean that every internal repaint needs an application. Nothing on this page states a price or a duration. Both depend on the surfaces and the programme you agree after the rooms have been seen. If you are unsure which of the two names fits, send the photographs and say which walls are for paper and which are for paint. The group is here so that split is easy to write.
Sources: Westminster: conservation-area checks; Camden: conservation-area checks
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.