Decorating Riverside and Old Town Homes in Kingston

Kingston gives a decorator two demanding briefs in one town. The Old Town around All Saints — the church yard where coronations were witnessed in the tenth century, the Clattern Bridge that has carried traffic since 1293 — holds the borough's densest run of protected older buildings. A few hundred metres north, Charter Quay and the riverside apartments are barely two decades old but sit right on the Thames, taking the exposure that comes with it. The two need opposite instincts, and both reward a decorator who asks which one they're standing in.

Old Town: the substrate is the specification

In the conservation streets, the first question is what the walls are made of. Lime plaster over solid brick wants breathable systems — limewash or mineral silicate paint — so moisture moves the way the wall was built to let it. Modern impermeable paints on those substrates trap damp and eventually bubble off in the corners nobody checks. Where historic fabric has been patched with modern fillers over the decades, each repair zone behaves slightly differently under a finish, and the preparation plan has to account for it room by room.

Sash windows and panelled doors are the other Old Town constant. Painted-shut sashes mean someone before us was in a hurry. Proper work means easing beads and cords, raking out failing putty, resealing, and painting in the right order so everything still moves when we hand the keys back. It is slower than a casement, and it is the difference between windows that open and windows that decorate.

Riverside: resilience and sequencing

The newer riverside buildings flip the brief. Substrates are modern and stable, so the finish can be chosen for exposure and for how the room is used: scrubbable low-sheen systems for halls and stairs that take coat-water and riverside walks, precise colour matching for the glazed, light-flooded rooms that face the water. North bank light changes hour by hour; sheen and depth need testing on the actual wall at the actual light before litres get mixed.

Sequencing is where riverside flats are won or lost. Lift bookings, agreed working hours, parking in the one-way system — the logistics are part of the craft. We stage materials once, order rooms so the flat stays liveable, and keep drying windows honest, because a rushed final coat on a balcony-facing wall shows every seam in raking evening light.

What both Kingstons share

Preparation discipline. Old Town rooms need their history handled; riverside rooms need their exposure respected — but in both, the finish you see in year five is bought in the preparation nobody sees in week one. We price that work explicitly and do it properly, whether the wall predates the Coronation Stone's plinth or went up last time the riverside was redeveloped.