Luxury Decorative Surfaces

Decorative surfaces, specified for the room

This covers the specialist surface work that does not fall neatly under painting or tiling: polished plasters, marble-effect panels, textured stone finishes and hand-worked wall surfaces used where a room needs one surface to carry the design.

Choosing between them is mostly a question of use rather than looks. A hallway that gets knocked needs a different specification from a formal sitting room. A wall behind a bath needs sealing that a media wall does not. The finish is selected for how the room is actually used, then the appearance is tuned within that.

All of these finishes are built up in layers on a prepared substrate, and all of them show the surface beneath if that preparation is skipped. Making the wall flat, sound and dry is the majority of the work; the decorative layers are the visible minority of it.

Samples are prepared and viewed in the room under its own lighting before anything is committed, because sheen and depth shift considerably between a showroom and a north-facing wall at home.

We work across London. Request a free site survey for an itemised, fixed-price quotation covering preparation and finish separately.

Common questions

Which of these surfaces suit a hallway or stairwell?

Ones that tolerate contact. Hallways get knocked, brushed past and cleaned more often than a formal room, so panelling or a durable decorative coating usually outperforms a delicate polished finish there. Where a polished finish is wanted in circulation space it is specified with a protective sealer.

Can different finishes be combined in one room?

Yes, and it usually works better than one finish everywhere. A single worked plane against plainer surrounding surfaces is what makes a feature read as deliberate. What matters is that the junction between the two is detailed properly rather than the finishes simply meeting.

Can a decorative surface be applied over an existing feature wall?

Often, depending on what is there. A sound painted surface is straightforward. Wallpaper, heavy texture or a coating that is no longer well bonded is removed first, because a thin applied finish inherits the soundness of whatever it goes over.