Case study — Commercial fit-out
We delivered the decoration package on the fit-out of the Pembroke Club in Belgravia for main contractor Vascroft, across the club's members' rooms and back of house.
Client
Vascroft
Location
Belgravia, London
Sector
Fit-out
Scope
Club interiors
We were appointed by Vascroft to carry out the decoration package on the fit-out of the Pembroke Club in Belgravia. The works covered the members' rooms and circulation together with back of house areas, including gilded plasterwork, hand-hung wallcoverings and hand-finished joinery.
A private club is decorated to residential standards and used at commercial intensity. The finishes have to look hand-made in low evening light and then take service traffic, furniture movement and nightly cleaning without patching up badly. Dark, deep colours were specified through much of the club, which are the least forgiving finishes to apply and the least forgiving to touch in.
Members' rooms, bar and dining spaces
Staircase, cloakrooms and circulation
Hand-finished joinery, panelling and bar fronts
Deep and dark colours to designer specification
Sample panels and colour approval in situ
Walls and ceilings were finished in flat, low-sheen emulsions chosen to hold deep colours evenly, with water-based eggshell to joinery, panelling and bar fronts built up in thin coats over fully filled substrates. Dark colours show every roller mark and every touch-in, so they were applied wet-edge in single sessions per elevation rather than broken across days.
A club has to look hand-made at eight in the evening and survive being a working restaurant the rest of the time.
Deep colours show every lap mark and every touch-in. Elevations were completed in single wet-edge sessions and lit for inspection before sign-off rather than patched afterwards.
The club is used after dark under lamps and wall lights, which rakes across a wall differently to site lighting. Sample panels were approved under the finished lighting scheme.
Behind the residential appearance the specification has to take furniture movement, service routes and nightly cleaning, so contact surfaces were finished in harder-wearing systems.
No lay-down space, a single stair for every trade and residential neighbours either side. Materials were called off in small loads and the stair kept protected and clear.
Decoration sits at the end of a fit-out sequence and absorbs the slippage in front of it. With the opening fixed, we re-sequenced around the trades ahead of us and worked concurrent floors where the programme tightened.
What operators, designers and fit-out contractors ask us before appointing a decorator on a hospitality project.
Yes. On a trading venue we work overnight or between services, with the space protected, ventilated and returned ready to open. Where a room can be closed for a short block we will usually recommend it — a continuous run gives a better finish in dark colours than a dozen broken sessions.
Dark colours show every lap mark, every roller edge and every touch-in, so each elevation is completed in a single wet-edge session rather than broken across days, over a substrate that has been fully filled and sanded. The wall is then lit and inspected before sign-off instead of patched afterwards.
Under the finished lighting scheme, not site lighting. Lamps and wall lights rake across a wall completely differently to temporary festoons, so sample panels are viewed in place, after dark where that is how the room will be used, and signed off then.
Behind the residential appearance a club has to take furniture movement, service routes and nightly cleaning. Contact surfaces — bar fronts, door faces, corridor walls, service routes — are specified in harder-wearing systems than the front-of-house walls, which is invisible to a member and obvious to a maintenance manager.
We are CHAS and SSIP accredited with a 100 per cent RIDDOR-free record across our sites, and work to the standards fit-out contractors expect on hospitality projects. Policies and certificates are available for your prequalification pack.
See the sectors we work in →Talk to the team that decorated the Pembroke Club.
GSD London Ltd
Company Number: 10543768
VAT Number: 261280131
Head Office
40 Bowling Green Lane,
EC1R0NE, United Kingdom
