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Decorating · four free tests before you ring anybody · preparation priced separately
The card is a lie. Your own wall in your own light is the only test.
Every colour on a card was printed with ink under a factory lamp, and it will be a different colour on your wall at four o'clock in November. So this page opens with four tests you can run yourself for the price of two sample pots — and then explains what you're actually paying a decorator for, which is almost none of the colour and almost all of the preparation.
4Tests to run before hiring anybody
2 daysMinimum to live with a sample
90%Of a good job that happens before colour
3Times of day to look at it
Four numbers and not one of them is about paint. Put your own here — and keep the two-day one, because it is the single piece of advice on this page that saves people money.
Four tests you can run before you ring anybody
Two sample pots and a sheet of lining paper. It takes ten minutes of work and two days of waiting, and it prevents almost every expensive colour mistake there is.
Four tests you can run before you ring anybody
Paint it big
A4 is far too small to judge. Two coats on lining paper, at least A2, or straight on the wall in a square you can see from the doorway. Small patches read lighter and more saturated than the same colour over a whole wall.
Two walls, not one
The wall the light falls on and the wall it doesn't. Nearly every room has both, and a colour that is lovely on one can be grim on the other — which is a fact about the room rather than about the paint.
Look at three times of day
Morning, mid-afternoon, and after dark with the lamps on. The evening one decides more than people expect, because that is when most of us are actually in the room.
Wait two days
Not two hours. The eye adjusts, and the colour you loved on day one is often the one you're tired of by day three. Two days costs nothing and it is the whole test.
Move the test piece around the room while you wait — next to the curtains, behind the sofa, by the door. A colour is a relationship with everything else in there.
Why the card is a lie
A card is printed ink, not paint — Different material, different finish, and a completely different way of throwing light back at you. It was always a rough indication and it was never sold as anything else
The chip is too small to be honest — Colour looks lighter and more saturated in a small patch. Every one of them goes darker and quieter across four square metres, without exception
The shop's light isn't your light — A showroom is lit to sell paint. Your sitting room in February is lit by a grey sky and one window, and no card was ever photographed in that
Your existing walls are colouring the test — Whatever is on there now bounces onto whatever you're testing. Test on white lining paper as well as on the wall and compare the two — they will differ
Sheen changes the colour — The same shade in matt, eggshell and gloss reads as three different colours, because they scatter light differently. Test in the finish you will actually use
What a sample pot still won't tell you — How it sits with your furniture and your curtains. That's why the test piece moves around the room instead of staying in one corner
The chip is too small to be honest — Colour looks lighter and more saturated in a small patch. Every one of them goes darker and quieter across four square metres, without exception
The shop's light isn't your light — A showroom is lit to sell paint. Your sitting room in February is lit by a grey sky and one window, and no card was ever photographed in that
Your existing walls are colouring the test — Whatever is on there now bounces onto whatever you're testing. Test on white lining paper as well as on the wall and compare the two — they will differ
Sheen changes the colour — The same shade in matt, eggshell and gloss reads as three different colours, because they scatter light differently. Test in the finish you will actually use
What a sample pot still won't tell you — How it sits with your furniture and your curtains. That's why the test piece moves around the room instead of staying in one corner
White isn't a colour, it's forty
The most-requested and least-understood decision in decorating, and the one people redo.
Every white has an undertone — Yellow, pink, green, grey or blue. You cannot see it on its own and you can see it instantly against another white — put three side by side and the undertone appears in about a second
The undertone is what makes a room feel cold or dirty — Not the brightness. A room that feels clinical usually has a blue-grey white in it, and a room that feels grubby usually has a yellow one going off against cool daylight
Which way the room faces should decide it — Cool daylight and a cool white together is where "clinical" comes from. A room that gets warm afternoon light can carry a much cooler white than it seems like it should
The ceiling is a wall you can see — Painting it the standard trade white when the walls are a chosen white is the commonest reason a finished room looks slightly wrong and nobody can say why
Woodwork in a different white is the same mistake — Skirting, architrave and doors in brilliant white against a chosen wall colour will read as blue. Take the woodwork from the same family and it disappears, which is what woodwork should do
Brilliant white is a difficult, specific colour — It is not a neutral or a default. It's the brightest thing that will ever be in the room, and everything else has to live next to it
The undertone is what makes a room feel cold or dirty — Not the brightness. A room that feels clinical usually has a blue-grey white in it, and a room that feels grubby usually has a yellow one going off against cool daylight
Which way the room faces should decide it — Cool daylight and a cool white together is where "clinical" comes from. A room that gets warm afternoon light can carry a much cooler white than it seems like it should
The ceiling is a wall you can see — Painting it the standard trade white when the walls are a chosen white is the commonest reason a finished room looks slightly wrong and nobody can say why
Woodwork in a different white is the same mistake — Skirting, architrave and doors in brilliant white against a chosen wall colour will read as blue. Take the woodwork from the same family and it disappears, which is what woodwork should do
Brilliant white is a difficult, specific colour — It is not a neutral or a default. It's the brightest thing that will ever be in the room, and everything else has to live next to it
What you're actually paying for
Ninety per cent of it happens before any colour — Filling, sanding, caulking, masking and priming. It's the part you can't see afterwards and the only part that decides how the room looks in year three
A cheap quote is cheap in the preparation — Nowhere else. Paint costs what paint costs and an hour costs what an hour costs. If a price is a third lower, ask which of those five things is coming out
"Two coats" is a minimum, not a specification — Dark over light needs three and sometimes four. A two-coat quote on a red wall is a quote for a patchy red wall, and everybody involved knows it at the time
Paint is bought at trade and passed on at trade — You see the receipt and there's no mark-up. Buy it yourself if you'd rather — it changes nothing except who carries it up the stairs
Sanding dust is the real disruption — More than the paint smell, and it gets everywhere. Extraction on the sanders and sheeting on the doorways makes it much better and never perfect
Cutting in is done by hand, not with tape — Tape lifts, bleeds and takes twice as long. A straight line by hand is the actual skill in this trade and it is the thing worth paying for
A cheap quote is cheap in the preparation — Nowhere else. Paint costs what paint costs and an hour costs what an hour costs. If a price is a third lower, ask which of those five things is coming out
"Two coats" is a minimum, not a specification — Dark over light needs three and sometimes four. A two-coat quote on a red wall is a quote for a patchy red wall, and everybody involved knows it at the time
Paint is bought at trade and passed on at trade — You see the receipt and there's no mark-up. Buy it yourself if you'd rather — it changes nothing except who carries it up the stairs
Sanding dust is the real disruption — More than the paint smell, and it gets everywhere. Extraction on the sanders and sheeting on the doorways makes it much better and never perfect
Cutting in is done by hand, not with tape — Tape lifts, bleeds and takes twice as long. A straight line by hand is the actual skill in this trade and it is the thing worth paying for
Some rooms
Photograph rooms in ordinary daylight rather than staging them, and include one that isn't a feature wall. Most decorating is a hall, a landing and a spare bedroom.
★★★★★
“He talked me out of the colour I'd chosen, in the nicest possible way, by putting it on the wall and asking me to look at it on Sunday evening. He was right.”
A client, hall and landing
What it costs
A room, decorated
$680 typical
- Walls, ceiling and woodwork
- Filling, sanding and caulking included
- Two coats, or three where needed
- Paint at trade, passed on
With the wallpaper off
$1,150 typical
- Stripping, and it is always worse than it looks
- Making good the plaster underneath
- Lining paper where the wall needs it
- Then decorated as above
By the day
$260 a day
- One wall, a repair, a door
- Snagging after building work
- Half days are half days, not a minimum
- Materials at cost on top
The middle one is marked because it's the honest one — Almost every room that has paper on it costs the middle number rather than the first, and quoting it as the first is how a job ends in an argument on day two
Quotes are itemised by surface — Ceiling, walls, woodwork, radiators, and making good listed separately. Compare three quotes on those five lines rather than on the total
We don't ask for money up front — Materials are bought by us and invoiced at the end with the receipts. A decorator asking for a deposit on a one-room job is asking for something unusual
Nothing is charged for the sample stage — Bringing pots, painting the tests and coming back to look at them with you is part of the quote, not an extra
Quotes are itemised by surface — Ceiling, walls, woodwork, radiators, and making good listed separately. Compare three quotes on those five lines rather than on the total
We don't ask for money up front — Materials are bought by us and invoiced at the end with the receipts. A decorator asking for a deposit on a one-room job is asking for something unusual
Nothing is charged for the sample stage — Bringing pots, painting the tests and coming back to look at them with you is part of the quote, not an extra
What we won't do
Paint over damp — It comes back through in weeks and then it's your money gone and the damp still there. Find the cause first — that's usually somebody else's trade and we'll say which
Paint over silicone, grease or nicotine without treating it — None of them take paint. There's a proper step for each and skipping it is exactly the kind of invisible saving a cheap quote is made of
Work below about ten degrees — Paint doesn't cure properly and the finish never recovers. In an unheated house in January we'd rather move the date than deliver a job that goes chalky
Two coats where three are needed — Even where the quote said two. If we got the covering wrong, the extra coat is ours, and that is the correct way round
Woodwork and walls on the same day — Dust from sanding the woodwork lands in wet emulsion. It's an ordering rule and it's why a room takes the days it takes
Quote properly from a photograph — A rough figure, gladly, on the phone. A real number needs somebody to run a hand over the walls, because what's under the last coat of paint is the whole question
Paint over silicone, grease or nicotine without treating it — None of them take paint. There's a proper step for each and skipping it is exactly the kind of invisible saving a cheap quote is made of
Work below about ten degrees — Paint doesn't cure properly and the finish never recovers. In an unheated house in January we'd rather move the date than deliver a job that goes chalky
Two coats where three are needed — Even where the quote said two. If we got the covering wrong, the extra coat is ours, and that is the correct way round
Woodwork and walls on the same day — Dust from sanding the woodwork lands in wet emulsion. It's an ordering rule and it's why a room takes the days it takes
Quote properly from a photograph — A rough figure, gladly, on the phone. A real number needs somebody to run a hand over the walls, because what's under the last coat of paint is the whole question
Ask about a room
A rough figure on the phone, and a real one after a look. Both free, and neither comes with anybody ringing you again afterwards.
Ask about a room
"Yes, from a card" is the answer most people give, and it's the reason the four tests are at the top of this page rather than the bottom.
Live preview — every color, word and block is editable after you pick it.