Covent Garden Painters & Decorators
Planning and premises
Planning and premises groups two services that are easy to mix up because both come before anyone assumes a brush is the next step. Colour and finish planning produces samples, sheen and a schedule. Shops, restaurants and offices are the decoration of premises that have customers or staff and an opening time. A home can need the schedule and never need the commercial service. A café can already have its colours and still need a phased repaint.
Discuss your projectServices for planning and premises
Colour & finish planning
Start with what stays. In a Covent Garden room, brick, oak, stone, upholstery and the lighting are more useful colour references than an isolated paint name. Build a scheme that belongs to those materials.
Read about colour & finish planning 02Shops, restaurants & offices
A commercial repaint in Covent Garden has to work with the premises as well as the palette. Define the customer-facing surfaces, the rooms behind them and the period in which each part can be released for decoration.
Read about shops, restaurants & officesWhat colour and finish planning produces
Colour and finish planning does not, by itself, paint the room or hang the paper. It settles the relationships you want: the surface that fills most of the view, the ceiling and the joinery tried against it, and the sheen that will change how one pigment reads on irregular plaster and on a door. Samples belong in the property, in daylight and under the lights used after dark. In a restaurant that means the lighting used when the room is serving. In an office it means the desk and the screens. The record at the end should name the room or the elevation, the component, the manufacturer, the colour, the finish and any sample you have approved, and it should mark choices that are still open. Westminster’s shopfront guidance treats material, colour, architectural style and the wider street as connected decisions, so a public frontage is compared with the whole elevation and with its neighbours, not with a card on its own. Historic England’s redecoration advice asks owners to take account of local controls and of colours a terrace already uses as a set. That is a check against your address. It is not a palette this website issues. Use this service when the open question is the sample and the written schedule. Hand the schedule to interior painting, wallpaper, joinery or the commercial service when the open question becomes the surface and the sequence of work.
Sources: Westminster: shopfronts, blinds and signs guidance; Historic England: historic paint and redecoration
What shops, restaurants and offices take on
The commercial service is for premises that must keep trading or working while decoration happens. It asks which customer-facing surfaces are in scope, which rooms behind them are in scope, and the stretch of time in which each part can be released. For a shop, the entrance door, the display surround, the fascia and the first internal wall read as one sequence, and the tenant’s area may stop at a door that residents also use. For a restaurant, dining areas, fixed seating, counters and the route staff still need are marked before anything is protected. For an office, reception, meeting rooms, desks and staff rooms are separate zones, and the occupier confirms what happens to equipment, papers and access credentials. Protection of stock, and a path that stays open, is part of the brief rather than a courtesy added on the day. Camden’s design guidance notes that its shopfront advice covers premises that are not only shops, which is a useful reminder that a restaurant or an office front can raise the same design questions as a retail fascia. Routine recoating is still not the same request as a new shopfront. The commercial service follows the scope you agree. It does not obtain advertisement consent for a new sign, and it does not invent colours you have not supplied or pointed to in a schedule. Westminster’s shopfront design toolkit, published as a practical route rather than as the detailed planning guidance, is one place a frontage proposal can be taken. It is not an approval.
Sources: Camden: Design planning guidance, 2021; Westminster: shopfront design toolkit
Where the schedule ends and the premises service begins
Send colour and finish planning when the undecided thing is the sample, the sheen or the document someone else will follow. Send shops, restaurants and offices when the undecided thing is how a trading or working interior is phased, protected and handed back. If you need both, say which decisions are already made. A schedule from the colour service can be attached to a commercial enquiry. The commercial service will not choose the colours for you, and the colour service will not set the night a dining room can close. Interior painting remains the right name when the rooms are a home, including a home over a shop. Joinery remains the right name for the timber front itself. The commercial service can include that front in one programme only when you have named it and named the person entitled to instruct it. Westminster’s Covent Garden leaflet describes homes, offices, restaurants and shops together in this neighbourhood, which is why one enquiry often needs two of these labels, written as two scopes, with one note of the door and the stair. Camden’s Seven Dials statement adds the same stack in another form: shops and cafés below, offices or residential rooms above. The flat and the café do not become one service because they share a staircase. Write the private rooms to interior decorating, the covering to wallpaper if there is one, the timber to joinery, and the trading zones to this commercial service.
Sources: Westminster: Covent Garden conservation area leaflet; Camden: Seven Dials conservation area statement
What to send, including hours and who may decide
For colour planning, send photographs of what will stay: brick, timber, stone, upholstery, and the daylight from the window that will sit beside the sample. Say whether a landlord scheme already fixes an exterior colour. For a commercial enquiry, send a simple plan or a list of zones, the hours each zone can be released, and the name of the person who can approve access and the scope. Attach any landlord finish schedule and any rule about bringing materials through a customer entrance. Westminster’s out-of-hours page sets ordinary construction hours at 08:00 to 18:00 on weekdays and 08:00 to 13:00 on Saturdays, and it directs work outside those hours to an approval route. Camden’s noisy-works page gives the same weekday and Saturday limits and asks for authorisation beyond them, including Sundays and bank holidays. Those are the councils’ published positions. A lease, a planning condition or a house rule can be tighter, and all three should be read against the address rather than assumed from a WC2 postcode. If you are asking for an evening or a weekend, include the reason and whatever you already know about the hours the building will allow. Include the managing agent’s instructions when you have them. Nothing here states a price or a duration. Both follow from the zones, the products and the access you agree. If the only open question is a sample board in a flat, you do not need the commercial service. If the colours are already chosen and the problem is the Tuesday the restaurant can spare, you do not need a full consultation unless you want the schedule rewritten.
Sources: Westminster: out-of-hours working approval; Camden: noisy building works; Westminster: 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.