Interior and exterior painting across Kent
A-Z Decorators paints homes and business premises throughout Kent, inside and out. Our team has more than 30 years in the trade, and the painting we take on covers walls and ceilings, staircases and spindles, doors and skirting, kitchen cupboards, windows, fascias, weatherboarding, render and brickwork.
We work across the county, from Maidstone and Sevenoaks to Tunbridge Wells, Ashford and the Medway towns. We take on a single room as readily as a whole house, and larger jobs can be done in stages so you can carry on living there while we work.
Every job starts with a free, no-obligation quotation. We come and look at the rooms or the outside of the house, talk through what you want, and write down the materials, labour and time frame so you know exactly what you are paying for before anything starts.
How we paint a room or a house
Good painting is mostly preparation. Paint shows every crack, dent and patch of flaking underneath it, and a fresh coat over a poor surface starts failing within months. Before any colour goes on we fill and sand walls and ceilings, rub down and fill woodwork, scrape back loose paint, wash greasy surfaces and prime bare plaster, timber and repairs. Our guide to preparing walls for painting goes through the same steps in more detail.
Inside, we protect floors, furniture and fittings first, then work from the top of the room down. Ceilings come before walls, walls before woodwork, so drips only ever land on surfaces that have not been finished yet. Ceilings take the most care, because low light across a ceiling shows every roller line, and we have written up how to paint a ceiling without marks for anyone curious about why. Doors and frames get two thin finishing coats rather than one heavy one, laid off along the grain, which is what we explain in the best way to paint doors.
We use trade paints, which are made to be applied by decorators and usually go further and wear better than the retail versions. Which brand depends on the surface and the finish you want, and our post on what paint professionals use in the UK covers the names you will see on our jobs. If you are still deciding on colours, test patches on the actual walls are worth the small cost of sample pots, as our guide to choosing paint colours explains.
The British Coatings Federation's guide to VOCs in paint explains that what paint gives off as it dries affects the air indoors during and shortly after painting, and needs ventilation, especially in enclosed spaces. We keep windows open where we can and use water-based products wherever they suit the job.
What can we provide?
We have been providing painting and decorating services throughout the local area for years.
Painting the inside and the outside of your home
Inside work can go ahead in any season. Outside work needs dry weather, so it is usually booked for the warmer months.
Interior painting
Living rooms, bedrooms, hallways, landings and kitchens make up most of our interior decorating work. Hallways and stairwells need more thought than most rooms, because the height of a stairwell needs safe access and the walls there take more knocks than anywhere else in the house.
Kitchen and bathroom walls need paints that cope with steam and cleaning, which our bathroom paint guide looks at, and the units themselves are a job of their own. We paint kitchen cupboards, built-in wardrobes and other fitted furniture as a separate service, set out on our furniture painting page and in our post on how to paint kitchen cupboards.
In older houses, sanding old paintwork needs care. According to the British Coatings Federation, lead pigments were taken out of most decorative paints in the early 1960s, but some paint sold up until the 1990s may still contain lead. Where old layers could date from then, we check before sanding anything back.
Exterior painting
Outside, paint protects the building as much as it changes how it looks. We paint rendered walls, brick, weatherboarding, fascias and soffits, windows, doors, garden rooms and fences, and our exterior decorating page covers that side of the work in full.
A good masonry paint lasts for years. Dulux, for example, says its Trade Weathershield smooth masonry paint gives 15 years of protection and is shower resistant within 30 minutes. Older houses with lime render are different. Historic England's advice on redecorating historic homes is that lime render and stucco may need a breathable coating such as limewash, so moisture can still leave the wall. On a period property we find out what the walls are made of before choosing a paint.
Exterior work depends on the weather, so we plan it for dry spells and keep an eye on the forecast. Homes near the coast have their own problems with salt and wind, which our tips for coastal homes in Kent go into.
Booking your painting
You can see more of our finished work in the gallery, and a list of everything else we take on, from wallpapering to tiling, on our services page. When you are ready for a price, contact us by phone, email or WhatsApp to arrange your free quotation, or read what customers say about A-Z Decorators on Google first.
