Case study — High-end residential
We delivered the decoration package on the refurbishment of the American Embassy residence in Regent's Park for main contractor Piperhill, working across the principal rooms and private accommodation.
Client
Piperhill
Location
Regent's Park, London
Sector
High-end
Scope
Principal rooms and accommodation
We were appointed by Piperhill to carry out the decoration package on the refurbishment of the American Embassy residence in Regent's Park. The works covered the principal rooms and private accommodation, including hand-finished joinery and decorative plasterwork.
A residence of this kind is decorated to a standard closer to furniture than to building work. Surfaces are inspected in raking light, joinery is finished by hand where a sprayed face would read wrong, and every colour is signed off against a sample panel in the room it belongs to rather than off a card. The tolerance for a defect is effectively nil, and the programme has to allow for that.
Principal reception rooms — walls, ceilings and cornice
Staircase, hallways and circulation
Guest accommodation and bathrooms
Hand-finished joinery, panelling and metalwork
Sample panels and colour approval in situ
Walls and ceilings were finished in flat, low-sheen emulsions that hold a soft face under chandelier and daylight, with eggshell to joinery and panelling built up in thin coats over fully prepared and filled substrates. Metalwork took a hand-applied finish rather than a sprayed one, and existing decorative plasterwork was cut in by hand to keep the profiles crisp.
On a residence at this level the finish is inspected at arm's length, in daylight, by people who look at good work for a living.
The majority of the labour went into preparation — filling, sanding and inspecting in raking light before any finish coat. On surfaces read at this distance, nothing else recovers a poor substrate.
Every colour was signed off from a sample panel viewed in the room it belonged to, under its own light, rather than from a colour card in an office.
The work was carried out by a small, consistent team of our own operatives — the same faces from start to finish, which matters on a site with security clearance and on a finish that has to look continuous room to room.
Existing floors, decorative plasterwork, fittings and contents were protected and worked around rather than stripped out, with protection checked daily as trades moved through.
On diplomatic and private residential work, what we do not publish matters as much as what we deliver. We work to the client's confidentiality requirements and agree in advance what can be photographed and what can be said.
What contractors and private clients ask us before appointing a decorator on a sensitive residence.
Yes. We work room by room with contents and finishes protected, agreed access hours and a clean, quiet site at the end of each day. On a residence in use the discipline around protection and tidiness matters as much as the decoration itself.
We work to the client's confidentiality requirements and agree in advance what may be photographed, named or published. Operatives are directly employed, vetted and briefed, and we keep the same small team on site from start to finish so the faces passing through security do not change week to week.
Closer to furniture than to building work. Substrates are filled and sanded, inspected in raking light and built up in thin coats, and joinery is hand-finished where a sprayed face would read wrong against adjacent detail. Most of the labour on a job like this goes into preparation, not application.
From sample panels made up and viewed in the room they belong to, under that room's own light, and signed off before we proceed. A colour card under site lighting tells you very little about how a finish will read under chandeliers or north-facing daylight.
We are CHAS and SSIP accredited with a 100 per cent RIDDOR-free record across our sites, and carry the public and employer's liability cover main contractors require. Policies, certificates and insurance details are available for your prequalification pack.
See the sectors we work in →Talk to the team that works on London's most sensitive residences.
GSD London Ltd
Company Number: 10543768
VAT Number: 261280131
Head Office
40 Bowling Green Lane,
EC1R0NE, United Kingdom
