Interior and Exterior Painting

Because render, brick, pebbledash, timber and metal all behave differently. Masonry needs a coating that lets moisture out, timber moves with the seasons and needs something flexible, and metal needs its own primer to stop rust bleeding through. Treating the whole building as one surface is the usual reason cheap exterior work fails within a couple of winters.

It survives if the surface was sound, dry and properly prepared when it went on, and if the coating suits what it was applied to. Most exterior failures are not the paint giving up, they are moisture getting behind a coating that was applied over something loose, damp or unstable.

Work stops. Exterior coatings need a dry surface and a sensible temperature to form properly, and pushing on through a wet spell shortens the life of the finish. Dates move around the weather rather than the other way round, and that is built into how the job is planned.

Late spring through early autumn, when surfaces get a chance to dry out and overnight temperatures stay reasonable. Work outside that window is possible in a settled dry spell, but the calendar has to stay flexible.

Yes, because paint is not a repair. Cracks and defective render are cut out and made good, loose and failing coating is removed rather than covered, and timber is checked for rot at the joints and end grain first, since those are the places that go before the face does.

Yes. Textured surfaces need more material and take longer than a flat wall, because the coating has to reach into the texture rather than bridge across it. That extra time and material is priced honestly rather than discovered halfway through.

Anything above safe ladder height needs proper access arranged, whether that is a tower or scaffolding. It is priced separately and clearly, because it is a real cost and hiding it inside a headline figure helps nobody.

Yes, and they are worth doing while access is already up rather than as a separate visit later. Each gets the preparation and coating suited to what it is made of, which is not the same for timber as it is for uPVC or metal.

No, and it can make it worse if the wrong coating traps moisture in the wall. Damp has a cause, usually a defect, a bridge or a failure somewhere in the fabric, and that needs identifying and fixing. Painting over it is money spent on hiding a symptom.

By matching against the existing paintwork or a sample rather than off a screen, and by checking the match on site in daylight. Colours read completely differently under a shop light, a phone screen and an overcast Surrey afternoon.

Yes, though the first job is identifying what is already on it. Older properties often carry several generations of coating, and some of those need a breathable system over the top rather than a modern impermeable one that seals moisture into the wall.

Yes, though it is treated as its own job rather than folded into exterior painting, because uPVC needs different preparation and coatings to render or timber. See the uPVC Spraying page for the detail: refreshing a faded finish or changing colour entirely, without replacing the frames.

Yes, and it usually works out better that way. The outside is done while the weather allows, and interior work picks up once access equipment is out of the way, rather than treating them as two separate call-outs months apart.

It depends on the size of the property, how much repair and preparation the surfaces need, how access is arranged, and the weather. A realistic range is given in the quote, along with what would push it to the longer end.