Homes and private clients

Decorating a house you have just bought, before it fills up

The window between exchange and moving your belongings in is the easiest a house will ever be to decorate. Empty rooms mean no dust sheets over furniture, no working around a bed, and no compromise on which wall gets painted first. Once boxes land, every job gets slower.

Empty living room with dust sheets ready before furniture moves in

Ceilings before anything else touches the floor

With no furniture to protect, ceilings can be done properly in one visit rather than in awkward sections around a sofa. Any cracking or old distemper shows clearly in an empty room, so it is the moment to deal with it rather than paint over it and hope.

Ceiling cracks and old stains checked room by room while access is easy
Any artex or textured coatings assessed before a smooth finish is promised
Light fittings taken down rather than cut round

Deciding which rooms actually need doing first

Not every room needs the same attention on day one. Bedrooms you will sleep in from night one usually come first, kitchens depend on whether appliances are already fitted, and a spare room can wait. We plan around your moving date rather than a fixed room order.

Flooring and decorating order

If new flooring is going in, walls are usually painted first and skirtings finished after, so the flooring fitter is not working around wet paint and the decorator is not repainting a skirting that gets scuffed by carpet gripper. Confirm the flooring date before booking decorating.

Skirting undercoat before flooring, top coat after
Radiators off the wall if pipework is being altered at the same time
Door linings painted before new doors are hung, where doors are being replaced

What an empty survey actually shows

Vendors decorate to sell, not to last, and a fresh coat can hide a lot. Walking an empty house lets us spot filler over movement cracks, mismatched patch repairs and damp shadowing that furniture would otherwise cover for the next three years.

How we work on this

We walk an empty property room by room before quoting, rather than pricing from photographs alone
We sequence work around confirmed flooring and kitchen fitting dates where these are already booked
We flag vendor cover-up decorating honestly rather than repainting straight over it

Questions we are asked about this

Should we decorate before or after moving furniture in?

Before, wherever your completion date allows it. An empty house takes less time to decorate and protects nothing you cannot afford to have splashed, so the job moves faster and costs less in dust sheeting and care.

How long before moving day should we book decorators?

As soon as you have keys, even if completion and moving are weeks apart. Empty-house slots are easier to plan around than trying to fit work in with a moving van booked for the same week.