Guide
How much paint do I need?.
The rule of thumb: measure the perimeter of the room (all four walls), multiply by the ceiling height, and knock off roughly 2 m² per door and 1 m² per window. That's your paintable wall area. Quality emulsion covers about 12 m² per litre per coat, and two coats is the standard for a solid, even colour — so a typical 4 m × 3 m living room needs around 5–6 litres of wall paint.
Fresh plaster changes the maths: it needs a mist coat (emulsion watered down 20–30%) before the first proper coat, and it drinks more paint throughout. Deep colour changes — dark grey to white, say — often want a third coat. Rather than guess, use our paint calculator: it does the deductions, coats and tin sizes for you in seconds.
Guide
Choosing the right finish for each room.
Sheen is a trade-off between looks and toughness. Matt hides imperfections beautifully and gives that soft, expensive look — but the cheapest matts mark easily, so hallways and kids' rooms want a durable or 'scrubbable' matt. Silk bounces light and wipes clean, which suits kitchens, but it highlights every bump in an old wall.
For woodwork, satinwood is the modern default: a soft sheen, tough, and it doesn't yellow like traditional gloss. Bathrooms need moisture-resistant formulations — ordinary emulsion will flake off a steamy ceiling within a year. Exterior masonry wants breathable paint, always; sealing an old wall with the wrong coating traps damp inside it.
Guide
How the pros prep a wall.
Watch a good decorator for a day and you'll see more sanding than painting. The sequence: wash off grease and dust; scrape back anything loose or flaking; fill cracks and holes (twice, because filler shrinks); sand flat; caulk the gaps where skirting and frames meet the wall; spot-prime filler, stains and bare patches. Only then does the colour go on.
Skipping any step prints through the finish. Paint over a hairline crack and it reappears in weeks; paint over gloss without keying it and it peels in sheets. If a wall is more filler than paint, the honest answer is a plaster skim — cheaper than fighting a bad surface every coat, and we'll always tell you when that's the case.
Guide
When to repaint your home's exterior.
The signs it's due: chalky residue when you rub the render, hairline cracks spidering from windows, green organic growth on shaded walls, or bare timber showing at sills and fascias. Caught early, a repaint is straightforward; left for years, water gets behind the surface and the prep bill grows.
Timing matters as much as the paint. Exterior coatings need dry surfaces and temperatures reliably above 10°C to cure properly — in Britain that means late spring to early autumn, in a settled dry spell. A painter who'll happily do your render in December is telling you something about their standards. We schedule exterior work around the forecast and say so honestly when a job should wait.
Guide
Wallpaper or paint?.
Paint wins on cost, speed and flexibility — a repaint refreshes a room in a day or two and changing your mind later is cheap. Wallpaper wins on impact: pattern, texture and depth that paint can't fake, and quality paper on a well-prepped wall can outlast three or four repaints.
The practical answer is often both: one papered feature wall for the drama, painted walls everywhere else for easy upkeep. Two honest warnings — cheap paper on a bumpy wall looks worse than cheap paint, because seams and bubbles catch the light; and stripping old paper properly (rather than painting over it) is non-negotiable if you want the next finish to last.
Guide
Colours that add value to your home.
Estate agents keep saying it because it keeps being true: buyers pay for bright, neutral, well-finished spaces. Warm whites and soft neutrals photograph well, make rooms feel bigger and let viewers imagine their own furniture. A crisp white ceiling and clean satinwood woodwork signal a cared-for home before anyone checks a single fixture.
That doesn't mean beige everywhere. Deep, confident colour in a dining room or study reads as premium; a sage or navy front door lifts a whole facade for the price of a tin. The rule is deliberate contrast against a calm base — colour that looks chosen, not leftover. Selling soon? We spec neutral schemes that photograph well; staying put? It's your home — paint it the colour that makes you happy every morning.