Build-to-rent art, hand-painted for the whole building

Prospects make up their minds during a twenty-minute tour, so plan the art along its route rather than room by room:

1. Arrival. The wall facing the doors is seen first and photographed most: it takes the building's largest canvas.
2. The leasing desk. Where the conversation happens: a painting of the neighbourhood works harder here than another abstract.
3. The amenity floor. Each room with its own character, so the walk feels like a home rather than a showroom.
4. Lift lobby and corridor. A short walk that still tells the prospect which floor they are on.
5. The show apartment. Dressed as a resident would, at the sizes a real flat would hang.

The marketing photographer shoots the same walls, so a canvas with visible brushwork earns its place twice: on the tour, and in every picture of the building afterwards. Start with the lobby and reception works.

A painting of the corner café, the canal or the view from the roof tells a prospect where they would be living, and no competing building can have it. The material is often on file already: drone shots, brochure photography, an old photograph of the site.

• What to send. Several daylight photographs of each place, and a note of what must appear: the bridge, the market hall, the tree in the square.
• How it is composed. The painter combines the photographs into one composition at the size of your wall and in your palette, and you approve it at each stage before painting continues.
• A street for every floor. Corridor families can take their subjects from the neighbourhood, so floor 3 is the riverside and floor 7 the market, and residents can name their floor by its paintings.

Use photographs you own or have permission to use. To see the manner first, browse the cityscapes, or read how paintings from your own image are made.

Corridors are the biggest line in most buildings: sizes between doors and how a family is varied without repeating are on corridor art series. Furnished homes follow the pack-per-unit-type method for serviced apartments; the show apartment is covered under show homes and sales suites.

Statements

Lobby, leasing suite and lounge: size and a frame are worth paying for, because these walls sell the building.

Runs

Lift lobbies, corridors and furnished homes: one size per run, frameless, families varied from a single work, so seventy canvases take one decision instead of seventy.

Finish by zone

Rolled canvas is the cheapest to ship and suits a long unit run when your contractor's framer stretches it on site; stretched suits corridors; framed suits the lobby and the lounge. Plaster relief and heavy knife texture travel stretched or framed, unless you agree to a thinner texture that can roll.

Volume

Volume pricing from 10 pieces, counted across every zone of the building.

Shipping

Priced separately. A whole building usually travels in batches, by express or by air or sea freight; we compare routes and confirm the cost before each batch ships.

Student accommodation and co-living are bought the same way, on one schedule to an opening date, but the budget moves towards the rooms people share.

• Common rooms and social spaces. Big, bright and graphic: this is the room in every open-day photograph. Browse the colourful and vibrant works.
• Study rooms. Calmer and simpler, so the wall rests the eye between screens: see the minimalist works.
• Cluster kitchens and co-living households. Give each cluster or household its own colour, so a flat of eight feels like a home of its own inside the building.
• Bedrooms and studios. One smaller stretched canvas per room, one or two designs per building in a few colourways: light, glass-free and quick to hang.

Time it to the academic year: order art for a September opening while the fit-out is still running, and refresh bedroom pieces over the summer, between one year's residents and the next.

A for-sale tower buys public-area art to a hotel standard, and purchasers notice whether the finished lobby keeps the presentation suite's promise.

• Record the launch pieces. Each one's code, size and palette go on the schedule, so at occupancy it can be painted again at the lobby's scale, or varied into a family for the lift lobby on every floor.
• A higher specification. Larger statement canvases (see lobby statement art), gold, silver or wood frames, deep plaster relief, and master works by senior partnered artists for the principal wall, kept exactly as painted and quoted individually.
• Purchaser packages. Homes sold furnished, or with an art package, take unit pieces from the same series, priced per home.

The presentation suite itself is covered under show homes and sales suites; for a mixed-use tower with office floors, see commercial landlords' lobbies.