Painting & Decorating in Colindale

Painting & Decorating in Colindale: what is different here

New plaster, developer paint and the first redecoration

Colindale's newer flats, in Beaufort Park, Colindale Gardens and the rebuilt parts of Grahame Park, are mostly plasterboard on metal studs, finished at handover with a developer's matt emulsion. That finish marks easily and does not wipe clean, so by the end of a first tenancy the hallway and living room walls usually need more than touching up. Patching with a fresh coat on a few spots tends to show as shiny patches, so we paint whole walls, corner to corner.

New buildings also dry out and settle in their first years. Hairline cracks appear at ceiling edges, along board joints and above door frames. We rake them out, fill or use flexible caulk at the joints that move, and then paint. If a crack is wide, growing or in a concrete wall, show the developer or the managing agent rather than painting over it, particularly inside the first two years.

Turning round a Colindale void

Private renting accounts for 43.5% of households in Colindale South, and agents here work to short gaps between tenancies. Send us the check-out report and the move-in date. We price from it, repair scuffs and dents, fill fixing holes left by the last tenant's shelves and TV bracket, and repaint in a neutral finish that the next tenant is unlikely to mark straight away.

A typical two-bed flat takes two to four days. We book the lift and the concierge, protect the corridor floor from the lift to your door, and take all empty tins and sheeting away with us, because block bin stores do not accept decorating waste.

Flat entrance doors: paint them, but do not alter them

The front door of a flat in a block is a fire door. In residential buildings with storeys above 11 metres, the Fire Safety (England) Regulations 2022 require the responsible person to check communal fire doors every quarter, to make every reasonable effort to check flat entrance doors every year, and to tell residents not to tamper with doors or their self-closing devices. Painting the inside face of your front door is normally fine, but we keep paint off the intumescent strips and smoke seals in the edges, never paint over the certification label, and leave the closer and hinges as they are.

The outer face, onto the corridor, is often specified by the building and may be the freeholder's to finish, so check your lease before changing its colour.

What stays with the building

Communal corridors, stairwells, balconies, railings and the outside of the block are maintained by the freeholder through the service charge. We decorate inside your flat only. If a balcony soffit or the corridor outside your door needs attention, report it to the managing agent; our photos of the flat's condition at the end of the job help if there is ever a question about who caused a mark on the communal side.

Mould and condensation in sealed new flats

New flats are built to be airtight, and bedrooms with drying laundry, closed trickle vents or a switched-off extract fan can show black mould on cold corners and window reveals. We do not investigate damp. Where the cause is known and has been dealt with, such as a fan repaired or ventilation restored, we clean down the affected areas, seal any staining and repaint with a mould-resistant finish.

Barnet's HMO standards and shared flats

For a Colindale flat licensed as an HMO, Barnet's licence conditions require fire precautions in line with the council's HMO standards and the LACORS fire safety guide, and those precautions must be kept in working order. When we decorate a shared flat, internal fire doors keep their seals and closers working, alarm heads are covered only while we paint and uncovered before we leave, and nothing is painted shut. The conditions also say repairs and improvements must be done by a competent person, and our before-and-after photos show what was done and when.

Official sources

• GOV.UK fire doors fact sheet, 2022 Regulations
• Barnet licence conditions, July 2022 (archived)
• NHBC Buildmark cover
• Census 2021 tenure, Colindale wards (Nomis)
• Census 2021 accommodation type, Colindale wards (Nomis)

Last reviewed October 2026 by EliteShires Property Services.