Planning Your Project

Choosing a color is often the most stressful part of a renovation, mainly because a swatch under a shop's lighting looks completely different from how it'll look in your own living room. A trick we use: paint a large piece of cardboard with the candidate color and move it around different spots in the room at different times of day. Morning daylight, midday light and evening artificial light noticeably shift a shade — sometimes enough that a "warm beige" looks distinctly yellow by night.

As for scheduling, a typical 90-square-metre apartment, without needing to fully empty the rooms, is usually completed in 4 to 6 working days. That figure is significantly affected by the condition of the existing walls — how much filling is needed — and by the number of different shades being used, since every color change on an adjacent wall or ceiling requires careful masking.

Before work starts, it's worth discussing with your contractor which furniture will be moved out of the room entirely and which will be covered in place. In rooms with large, heavy furniture (bookcases, wardrobes), we usually prefer to cover it thoroughly with plastic and work around it, rather than risk damage while moving it.

Finally, set realistic expectations about smell and ventilation: even eco-friendly, low-emission paints need good airflow for the first 24-48 hours after application to fully cure.