Painting & Decorating in Northolt

Painting & Decorating in Northolt: what is different here

Decorating as part of Ealing's three inspections a year

Northolt landlords with a selective or HMO licence must inspect the property at least three times a year and keep the records for the life of the licence. Ealing's HMO inspection checklist includes the plain question of whether the internal decoration is in good condition. Scuffed hallways, flaking bathroom ceilings and marked kitchen walls are the items that turn up again and again. Treating them after each inspection, and photographing the result, keeps the record clean and avoids a full repaint when the tenant leaves.

Voids in interwar semis and 1950s estate houses

The interwar houses around Northolt Park tend to have deep skirtings, picture rails in the front rooms, curved bays and stairs with spindles that take longer to paint well than their size suggests. The early-1950s houses on the Racecourse Estate are plainer inside, so a repaint goes faster, but older layers of gloss on doors and frames often need keying or stripping before a water-based finish will stick. We quote the void as a room list, ceilings, walls, woodwork, so you can see where the time goes.

Ex-council flats: inside is yours, the landing is not

Ealing's handbook for council leaseholders puts the internal decoration of a flat squarely on the owner, and the decoration of the communal hallways, stairs and outside of the block on the council. That means we paint inside your front door and stop there. The same handbook limits work in council blocks to 8am to 5pm, forbids leaving materials or rubbish in communal areas or bin stores, and warns that the council can issue a fixed penalty and recharge for any mess.

We bring dust sheets for the stairwell, take every tin and offcut away, and keep to the hours.

Fire doors: do not paint the seals

Many Northolt HMOs have fire doors on bedrooms, kitchens and living rooms, because Ealing's standards require self-closing FD30S doors with intumescent strips and cold smoke seals in any shared house of two or more storeys. Paint on a smoke seal stops the brush or fin from closing the gap, and heavy paint build-up on the edges can stop the door closing into its frame. When we decorate an HMO we mask the seals and leave the frame clearances as they were, and we tell you if any seal is already painted over or missing.

Condensation marks and what we will not cover up

Black mould spots around a bathroom ceiling or a north-facing bedroom window are common in Northolt's purpose-built flats over the winter. In an Ealing council block, the handbook treats condensation and mould as the leaseholder's to deal with at the cause, while rising damp is the council's. We can clean down, apply a stain-blocking primer and repaint once the cause is fixed, typically better ventilation or an extractor fan our electrician can fit, but we do not carry out damp investigations and will not simply paint over a problem that is still active.

Outside work and the village conservation area

Exterior work on a Northolt house, such as front doors, window frames and fascias you can reach from the ground, is something we can quote for. Ealing's selective conditions also expect fences, boundary walls and outbuildings kept in good order, so a garden fence or a gate often goes on the same list. If the house is in the Northolt Village Green conservation area, like-for-like repainting is normally fine, but check with Ealing's planning team before changing the colour or material of anything visible from the street.

Official sources

• Ealing Council: selective licence conditions
• Ealing Council: HMO Standards, April 2025 (fire doors, alarms, sockets, splashbacks, PAT, certificate table)
• Ealing Council: Homeowners' handbook for council leaseholders, October 2025 (repair responsibilities, fire doors, alterations, letting)
• Ealing Council: Northolt conservation areas (Northolt Village Green)
• Ealing Council: Northolt conservation area update addendum, July 2020

Last reviewed October 2026 by EliteShires Property Services.