Interior Painting near you

The honest way to compare two decorating quotes is to compare their preparation, because that is where the difference in price almost always sits. A thorough decorator washes down surfaces that have collected cooking grease or nicotine, fills cracks and dents, cuts out and renews failed caulk where the skirting boards and architrave meet the wall, sands filler and any glossy surface so the next coat has something to grip, and spot-primes bare patches, stains and knots before a finish coat goes anywhere near them.

New plaster is a special case in Britain and worth asking about directly. Fresh plaster is porous and still giving up water, so it takes a thinned first coat, usually called a mist coat, before full-strength emulsion. Skipping it is the classic cause of paint that peels away in sheets months later, and it is the kind of shortcut that is invisible on the day the decorator leaves.

Under the 2012 VOC regulations a product may not be placed on the market with a VOC content above the limit value set for its sub-category in Schedule 2, and the label must state the sub-category, that limit value in grams per litre, and the maximum VOC content of the product ready for use. Schedule 1 defines the sub-categories, and the split is the one you meet in a decorating merchant: matt coatings for interior walls and ceilings, glossy coatings for interior walls and ceilings, trim and cladding paints, woodstains, primers and performance coatings.

The numbers are worth knowing because they are not evenly spread. Schedule 2 caps matt coatings for interior walls and ceilings at 30 grams per litre, whether water-borne or solvent-borne, and glossy interior wall and ceiling coatings at 100. Interior and exterior trim and cladding paints are allowed 130 grams per litre water-borne but 300 solvent-borne. In other words, the wall paint is the low-solvent part of almost any job, and the woodwork is where the choice between a water-based and a solvent-based product makes a real difference to the air in a closed-up room.

Lead is a hazard created by the work rather than by the wall. Public health guidance is clear that exposure is only likely if the paint is deliberately removed or sanded during redecoration, and it notes that children with elevated blood lead levels may have inhaled dust and fumes from old paint removal during redecoration of older properties. Sound, intact paintwork that nobody disturbs is a different situation from the same paintwork attacked with an orbital sander on a Saturday morning.

That is why the method is the whole question when old woodwork is being taken back. The Health and Safety Executive lists stripping or preparing leaded paint from doors and windows among the tasks that create lead exposure in construction, advises against overheating leaded paint with blow lamps or gas torches, says to keep hot air guns and infrared equipment below 500 degrees Celsius, and points towards wet abrasive paper with a scraper, or on-tool extraction using an H or M class unit, rather than methods that throw dust and fume into the room.

There is a legal frame around this for anyone working on your house. The Control of Lead at Work Regulations 2002 provide that an employer shall not carry out work which is liable to expose any employees to lead unless a suitable and sufficient assessment of the risk has been made, and the regulations go on to cover prevention or control of exposure, eating, drinking and smoking, air monitoring, medical surveillance, and information, instruction and training. If old paintwork is coming off in your house, ask the decorator how, not whether.

The request to make a textured ceiling flat is one of the most common decorating jobs in Britain, and it is the one most likely to stop dead. The Health and Safety Executive states that asbestos may be part of any commercial or domestic building built or refurbished before the year 2000, that asbestos was widely used until it was banned in 1999, and it lists textured decorative coatings, commonly referred to as Artex, among the materials that may contain it. The instruction where asbestos is suspected is blunt: stop work immediately, confirm what it is or assume it is asbestos, and carry out a risk assessment.

Being non-licensed work is not the same as being unregulated. HSE treats most work on textured coatings as non-licensed provided workers have had appropriate information, instruction and training, and its asbestos essentials task sheets cover exactly these jobs, including drilling and boring through textured coatings, inserting and removing screws through them, removing textured coating from a small area such as one square metre, and cleaning up debris after a coated ceiling has collapsed. Non-licensed work still requires a risk assessment, proper controls and trained operatives, and the legal control limit for asbestos fibres in air still applies. Sprayed asbestos coatings, by contrast, need a licensed contractor.

A stain that keeps coming back through fresh emulsion is telling you something that another coat will not fix. Government guidance on damp and mould in the home separates the causes usefully: condensation, where moisture generated inside the home cools and condenses onto colder parts; penetrating damp, where water enters from outside through defects in walls, roofs, windows or floors; rising damp from the ground; and traumatic damp from leaking pipes, overflowing baths or sinks. Each has a different repair, and none of them is paint.

The same guidance stresses that simply removing surface mould will not prevent damp and mould reappearing, and that the underlying causes have to be identified and tackled. It also notes that the health effects predominantly affect the airways and lungs, and that people with pre-existing conditions such as asthma, people with weakened immune systems, pregnant women, children, older people and those who are housebound are more vulnerable. A decorator who wants the cause traced before covering a patch is protecting you, not stalling the job.

Walls are the easy decision; woodwork is where British decorators disagree. Modern water-based trim paints are low in odour, quick to recoat and stay white for longer, but they are less forgiving of poor preparation and can feel softer for the first weeks. Traditional solvent-based gloss and eggshell flow out differently, give a harder film sooner and remain popular on period joinery, at the cost of a much stronger smell for much longer and, as the VOC limits show, considerably more solvent leaving the film.

Sheen is the other half of the decision, and it is largely about how much you want the wall to hide. A flat matt on a ceiling or a quiet bedroom conceals undulations that a mid-sheen would pick out, while kitchens, hallways, stairwells and children's rooms take a wipeable finish because they get touched and cleaned. Long hallways and any wall facing a window are the hardest cases, because low British daylight rakes across the surface and shows every filled patch.

Paint that feels dry is not finished. Most finishes keep hardening for days or weeks after they stop feeling tacky, so give woodwork time before doors are shut hard against their frames, before tape goes on a skirting board and before anything is pushed back against a wall. Keep the ventilation going: opening windows periodically is worth far more than any amount of airing on the final afternoon, and it matters most with solvent-based finishes on the trim.

When you want quotes, LokalMatch takes the details once. You describe the rooms, the surfaces, the age of the property and anything you suspect about old paintwork or a textured ceiling, and matched decorators covering your postcode get in touch with you directly. The professionals pay for the requests they receive. LokalMatch does not carry out the decorating, does not set prices and does not vet, rank or recommend any decorator, so the preparation, the insurance and the references are still yours to compare.