Office painting in Cambridge by a qualified team
We are office decorators as well as house painters. Our team paints and decorates offices in Cambridge and the surrounding area: open-plan floors, meeting rooms, reception areas, kitchens and corridors. The decorators are the same City & Guilds and NVQ qualified people who work in our customers' homes, and Graham visits first to see the space and talk it through with whoever looks after the building.
Office painting services vary a lot in scope. Some jobs are a single tired meeting room before a client visit. Others are a whole floor after a lease change, or a refresh when a team moves desks. The approach is the same: understand how the office is used, then plan the decorating so it fits around that.
Working around the people who use the office
The hardest part of commercial office painting is rarely the paint. It is making sure staff can still do their jobs. On the visit, Graham will ask which rooms are busy when, which can be closed off, and whether there are dates to avoid, such as a board meeting or an audit. We then agree an order of rooms and talk through timings that keep disruption down.
Inside working areas we use low-odour water-based paints where the finish allows, sand with Mirka dust-free sanders that extract at the source, and keep our kit in one agreed place. Desks and equipment near the walls need clearing before we start. Most offices prefer their own staff or IT support to move computers and screens, and we protect whatever stays in the room.
Finishes that stand up to office wear
Office walls take a beating from chair backs, trolleys, bags and people leaning on them. A cheap contract matt marks the first time it is wiped. For corridors, kitchens and meeting rooms we usually suggest a washable, scrubbable emulsion, and on doors and frames a harder eggshell or satin. On a whole-house renovation we finished the woodwork in Tikkurila satin, a finish that suits busy office doors just as well.
Dark colours and strong brand shades show scuffs differently from pale ones and often need an extra coat to cover evenly. Painting tester patches on the actual wall, under your office lighting, is the only reliable way to judge them.
Brand colours, feature walls and meeting rooms
Many businesses want their own colours on a reception wall or in a meeting room. If you have a paint code, a Pantone reference or a sample, we can have it mixed. On a whole-house renovation we used a Pantone colour mixed in Dulux for a feature wall, and the same approach works for a logo colour.
Meeting rooms often have their own problems: holes from old screen brackets, whiteboard fixings and cable runs. These are filled, sanded and spot-primed before painting, so the old positions don't show through. Old water marks from a past roof or radiator leak are sealed first, as we describe on our stain-blocking page.
Doors, frames and fire doors
Office doors and frames are handled all day, and they wear at the edges and around handles. We sand them back, fill dents, prime any bare timber and apply hard-wearing top coats. More detail on the process is on our internal door painting page.
Fire doors need extra care. The intumescent strips and smoke seals around the edge, and any certification label or plug, should not be painted over, because paint can stop the seals working as intended. If you're unsure which doors in your building are fire doors, check with whoever manages your fire safety before work starts, and we'll mask accordingly.
What shapes the price of an office repaint
The written quotation sets out every cost. What moves it most:
- Floor area and the number of rooms, doors and frames
- Condition of the walls, and how much filling and making good there is
- Ceiling heights and any access equipment needed
- Colour changes, especially pale to dark or the reverse
- How the work is phased around your staff
- Choice of finish and paint brand
Arranging a survey of your office
Get in touch and Graham will arrange a time to walk round with you or your office manager. You'll then receive a written quotation, usually by email, which your finance team can approve before anything is booked. Belinda organises the work and keeps one contact on your side informed. We can send a copy of our £5 million public liability insurance for your records, and you don't pay until you're happy with the finished work.
For larger buildings, colleges or mixed sites, our commercial painting page covers the wider service. If your business has a public-facing shop or cafe too, see shop and restaurant painting.
