Boutique Hotel Redecoration, King's Road

The Challenge

Working in an operating hotel demands an entirely different discipline to residential or empty-building projects. Noise restrictions applied strictly during early morning and evening hours — no power tools before 9am or after 6pm, no audible work in corridors adjacent to occupied rooms at any time. Materials and equipment had to be stored off-site at our depot and brought in daily via the service entrance, with all movements coordinated through the hotel's back-of-house manager. Dust, odour, and visual disruption in guest corridors needed to be eliminated entirely — even the sight of dust sheets in a hallway was unacceptable to the hotel's management. The design specification was also technically demanding: the hand-printed wallpapers from de Gournay, costing upwards of £800 per panel, required expert hanging on imperfect plaster walls that had not been lined, with no margin for error on pattern alignment across panels that depicted continuous scenic landscapes. The Bauwerk limewash finish in the bar demanded a specific layered application technique — five coats minimum — to achieve the designer's desired depth of colour and tonal variation, and any inconsistency in brush stroke or coat thickness would be immediately visible under the bar's carefully designed downlighting. The lacquered joinery in reception, specified in Mylands' high-gloss finish in a deep teal shade, required an effectively dust-free environment that was extraordinarily difficult to maintain in a working building with constant foot traffic, opening doors, and HVAC systems circulating air.

Our Approach

We established a strict operational protocol with the hotel management, documented in a twelve-page method statement that covered every aspect from material storage to emergency procedures. Guest rooms were decorated in blocks of four, working along one corridor at a time, with dust screens and HEPA air filtration units maintaining the adjacent guest experience. All materials were delivered before 7am via the service entrance and waste removed after 10pm by the same route, with protective floor runners maintained along every corridor we used. The de Gournay wallpapers were hung by our senior wallpaper specialist, who spent a full day at de Gournay's Battersea studio with their technical team before the project to master the specific wheat-paste adhesive formulation and the delicate trimming technique required for their hand-painted silk panels. Each premium suite took a full day of wallpaper hanging alone, with panels carefully sequenced to maintain the continuity of the scenic design across chimneybreast returns and alcove walls. For the limewash feature walls in the bar, we built a full-scale sample panel off-site in our workshop, refining the application technique over five coats until the designer approved the colour depth, tonal variation, and texture. The approved technique was then documented with photographs so our team could replicate it precisely across all bar and dining room surfaces. The lacquered joinery in reception was spray-finished in a purpose-built temporary enclosure constructed from timber framing and dust-proof polyethylene sheeting, using a Graco HVLP spray system with fine-finish tips, with three coats of Mylands high-build lacquer hand-flatted with 1200-grit wet-and-dry paper between applications to achieve a mirror-smooth, furniture-grade finish.

The Result

The hotel maintained full occupancy throughout the ten-week project with no guest complaints related to the works — a point the general manager highlighted as exceptional and, in her experience, unprecedented for a refurbishment of this scale. The completed design has been featured in Condé Nast Traveller's 'Best New Hotel Interiors' round-up and on the hotel's own marketing materials, with our lacquered reception joinery and de Gournay wallpapers in the premium suites drawing particular praise from guests and design press reviewers. The hotel reported that room rates for the premium suites increased by 15 percent following the refurbishment, with the de Gournay wallpapered rooms becoming the most requested by returning guests. The hotel has since engaged us on a rolling annual maintenance contract covering touch-ups, seasonal colour refreshes in the bar area, and ongoing care of the lacquered joinery surfaces. The general manager has recommended us to two other independent hoteliers in central London.