Hotel corridor artwork, hand-painted floor by floor

Walk a typical floor plan from the lift and mark every stretch of wall that can hold a canvas with clear space either side; each mark is a position. A piece on every wall between doors gives a gallery feel; one on every second wall keeps the corridor calm and halves the count.

Number each position with its floor, such as 5-03 for the third on floor five. The number goes on the plan, the quote and the back of the canvas, so the installer knows where every piece belongs. Volume pricing from 10 pieces is counted across the whole building.

The wall between two guest-room doors is nearly always taller than it is wide, which is why corridor work is vertical. A canvas that fills the gap from frame to frame looks squeezed; one that is too small vanishes as guests walk past.

One size and one line per floor. Use a single size for the between-door positions and hang every canvas to the same centre line, so tops and bottoms run level down the corridor. The installer can then set out a whole floor from one template.

Measure around what is already there. For a typical position, send us the width between the door frames, the height of the door heads and the ceiling, the corridor width, and anything fixed to the wall: room-number signs, switches, card readers, handrails, extinguisher cabinets.

Every canvas is painted to order, so the size follows your wall. For narrow formats, browse vertical works and the corridor and hallway collections.

Walking a corridor, a guest sees three or four canvases at once. Repeats are noticed straight away; unrelated pictures read as leftovers. In a family, every canvas is its own original, yet the run looks made for this floor by one hand.

What stays the same: the palette, the kind of mark (smooth blending, knife-laid paint or plaster relief), the horizon or main line, and the size. What changes: where the subject sits, how much of it is shown, the crop and the weather.

Plan the hanging order. We number the canvases in a family and suggest an order for your plan, alternating busier and quieter compositions so the eye keeps travelling. Open subjects, such as a horizon, a stem or a stand of trees, make the longest families; a recognisable landmark is better kept for one lift lobby.

Send the floor scheme and a corridor photo, and we shortlist source works from the catalogue's ready designs, or design a series for the building if the project calls for its own.

The Recolour route keeps a composition and paints it in a new palette, so each floor gets its own colour story while the series stays one idea: sea blues on floor two, sage on floor three, ochre on floor four. The lift lobby carries the colour at full strength; the corridor canvases carry it more quietly.

• Start from the finishes. Send paint codes, or the carpet and wall samples snapped by a window with a white sheet of paper in shot. You check the mix in the stage photos.
• Keep a similar depth of colour, so the floors feel like one building.
• On tall buildings, work in blocks. Four or five colour stories repeated in blocks of floors are easier to tell apart than twelve shades of one colour.

The colour supports your room-number and exit signs rather than replacing them. Browse blue, green, terracotta or grey works.

Each canvas is priced by its size, its surface (knife-laid texture and plaster relief take more paint and time) and its finish. On a corridor programme the finish is multiplied by every position, so it moves both the shipping bill and the day the work goes up.

Rolled

The lowest shipping cost and the quickest dispatch: canvases travel in tubes. Choose it when a framer or installer on the fit-out will stretch the run on site, and allow a few days for that.

Stretched

Boxed flat on its stretcher and straight onto the wall: the usual choice for a frameless run hung floor by floor.

Framed

The bulkiest to ship and the slowest to prepare, but ready the day the box opens, in gold, silver, black, white or wood. In a narrow, busy corridor a frame also takes knocks from luggage and trolleys that would otherwise land on the canvas edge.

A common split is rolled or stretched for the run and framed for the lift lobbies. Plaster relief and heavy knife texture travel stretched or framed, unless you agree to a thinner texture that can roll. A large run may go better by air or sea freight; we compare routes for your address and confirm the cost before dispatch.

Hotels refurbish a wing or a few floors at a time, and because every canvas is painted to order, a series stays available as long as you need it.

• One damaged canvas. Order position 6-04 again. It is painted against the final photograph you approved for the original, so it sits with its neighbours.
• A new wing or added floors. Extend a family with fresh compositions in its palette, or start one in a colour the building does not use yet.
• A new scheme. When carpets and walls change, the same families can be recoloured to the new finishes.

File the schedule with the hotel's FF&E records: its codes, sizes and palette references are all we need to quote a reorder.

Residents walk the same corridor twice a day for years, so their families are calmer and longer-lived than a hotel's: landscapes, botanicals and soft abstracts more often than bold statements. Lift lobbies matter even more at home, where neighbours wait and visitors meet the floor first. Student housing takes brighter palettes; senior living often asks for recognisable, peaceful subjects and a clear colour on each floor.

For a whole building, apartments and amenity rooms included, see build-to-rent and multifamily; for the rooms off a hotel corridor, hotel guest-room programmes.