Bedroom decorating in Cambridge, from ceiling to skirting
Our decorators handle every part of bedroom decorating: the ceiling, the walls, skirtings and door frames, built-in wardrobes and any wallpaper. It's one of the rooms covered by our wider interior decorating service. Graham visits first to look at the room, ask how you use it and talk through colours, then sets out the whole job in a written quotation.
A bedroom is the room you spend most time lying down in, looking up. That shifts the priorities. The ceiling deserves more attention than it would get in a hallway, and the wall finish matters more than people expect, because low light from a bedside lamp rakes across the plaster and picks out every ridge and patch.
Calm finishes for a room you rest in
Most people want a bedroom that feels quiet, so we usually steer towards flat or very low-sheen matt emulsion. A flat finish hides small wall imperfections that a sheen would catch in lamplight. Farrow & Ball Estate Emulsion gives a soft, chalky look. Little Greene Intelligent Matt Emulsion looks similar but is washable, which helps behind a headboard that rubs or in a child's room.
Muted colours are the usual choice, though not a rule. When we stripped, skimmed and repainted a Cambridge bedroom, the walls and ceiling went in Farrow & Ball Skimming Stone, one feature wall in Cinder Rose, and the window in Fired Earth Turkish Blue eggshell. A deeper shade on the wall behind the headboard is a common way to bring in colour, and if you'd prefer pattern there, see our page on feature wall wallpaper.
Bedroom ceilings, including dark ones
Ceilings in older bedrooms often have hairline cracks around the light fitting or along plasterboard joins. We rake these out, fill them and sand them flat before painting, because a crack you can see from the pillow is the one that keeps bothering you.
Textured ceilings are a separate matter. HSE guidance says textured coatings such as Artex in buildings built or refurbished before 2000 may contain asbestos, so the ceiling should be sampled and tested before anyone sands, scrapes or drills it. Asbestos removal is a job for a specialist contractor, not a decorator. If the test is clear, our plasterers can skim it smooth; the Artex removal page explains the options.
White isn't the only choice overhead. In a Victorian house in Histon the front bedroom ceiling was finished in two coats of Dulux Sapphire Salute, a deep navy. A dark ceiling shows every flaw, so the making good beforehand has to be thorough.
Built-in wardrobes and bedroom woodwork
Fitted wardrobes are often the largest painted surface in a bedroom after the walls, and they're handled every day. We clean and degrease the doors around the handles, sand to give the new paint a key, fill dents, prime bare or knotty timber with Zinsser and finish in a hard-wearing eggshell or satin. Handles and hinges are removed or masked, and doors are left to dry properly so they don't stick to the frame.
Skirtings, door frames and picture rails get the same preparation. If the old wardrobes are coming out instead, our carpenter can take them down: on one whole-house renovation he dismantled the old fitted wardrobes and fitted new skirting boards before the decorators painted.
Children's rooms and nurseries
Children's bedrooms take more knocks and fingerprints than any other room upstairs. A washable matt on the walls and a tough satin on the woodwork make wiping marks off far easier. Colours picked for a five-year-old rarely last into the teenage years, so some parents keep the walls neutral and put the character into one wall, a painted wardrobe or a paper that's easy to change later.
For a nursery, the sensible approach is to decorate well before the baby arrives and keep the room aired while the paint dries. Simon Durkin from Potton wrote: "Graham did an amazing job of my daughter's room. Attention to detail, workmanship and reliability were first rate."
Working round where you sleep
You can share a kitchen with a decorator for a few hours. A bedroom is harder, because you need it back at night. Where we can, we decorate one bedroom at a time on a multi-room job, finishing and clearing each before starting the next. Furniture is moved to the middle and sheeted, and anything you'll want at bedtime is set aside first.
We tidy up at the end of every working day. Water-based emulsion smells far less than old oil paints, and keeping a window open helps it clear. If anyone in the house is sensitive to paint smell, mention it at the visit so the order of rooms can be planned around them.
What affects the price of decorating a bedroom
Two bedrooms of the same size can need very different amounts of work, so there's no set figure. These are the things that change it:
- The size of the room and the height of the ceiling
- Wallpaper to strip, and the state of the plaster underneath
- Cracks, stains or Artex on the ceiling
- Built-in wardrobes, shelving or panelled doors to paint
- A big colour change, which can mean an extra coat
- Lining paper on poor walls
- Whether we supply the paint or you do
Booking a bedroom redecoration
Call or message us and Belinda will arrange a time for Graham to see the room. It's the moment to raise anything you're unsure about: a colour, the wardrobes, whether the ceiling needs a plasterer. The quotation follows in writing, usually by email, and our guide to decorating costs explains how prices are built up.
When the work is finished we walk round the room with you, and you don't pay until you're happy with the finished work. We decorate bedrooms across Cambridge and further out, including Ely, where Graham Burrell wrote: "It was a pleasure to have professional people decorating our bedroom."
