Art for interior designers, painted to the swatch and the wall

When you have a wall and a scheme but no painting yet, send what is pinned to your board: a photo or elevation of each wall with its width and height, the sofa, bed or sideboard below it, the fabric and paint references, and a line on the client's taste (collects modern abstracts, dislikes florals, wants the bedroom calm). For each wall we pick a few works and say whether each would be painted as shown, recoloured or redrawn to a new proportion.

Most works' pages show them hung in a furnished room, which helps a client judge scale; for a mock-up of their own room, place the work's image into a photo of the wall or into your render. To browse yourself, start with living room, bedroom and dining room art, or a mood such as calming.

Send references a painter can mix to, rather than adjectives: the paint brand with the colour name or number, and photographs of the fabric, stone and timber taken by a window in daylight with a white sheet in the frame, so we can correct for the camera.

Then decide what the painting should do in the room. Carrying two or three colours from the board, with one accent of its own, looks chosen; matching every swatch looks like a sample card. For a starting point close to the scheme, browse beige, terracotta, green or grey works.

When the palette is the whole point, order one small canvas in the new palette first and hold it against the fabric in the room: a colour test is an ordinary one-piece order.

Rules of thumb designers use, with sizes given as width × height:

The catalogue sizes are sizes a work has been painted at before, not a limit. Give us the dimension from your elevation and the painter redraws the composition to it, so a vertical piece can become a long panoramic for a low sofa wall, and you approve the new layout before paint goes on. Say whether your figure is the canvas or the outside of the frame: a moulding adds several centimetres on every side, which matters in a joinery niche. A double-height wall or a stairwell has its own page: oversized and custom-size art.

Trade art for designers has to work for one canvas as well as forty: volume pricing starts at 10 pieces in one order, which a whole-house scheme reaches quickly. Each piece is priced on its own line, so you can offer the client a size down, or a rolled canvas for your own framer, without re-quoting the scheme.

What moves a residential quote is mostly what you have already decided: the canvas area, a heavy knife or plaster surface, the finish, and whether the piece is designed for the scheme rather than chosen from the catalogue. Shipping is quoted separately once we know the address.

Pass the art on inside a design fee, with a mark-up or at our price: that is your call, and we speak to the homeowner only if you ask us to.

The painting takes about 10 days, and express shipping 5–7 days more. What pushes residential art past install day is usually something around it:

• A slow sign-off. Each stage waits for an approval, so agree who replies, and by when.
• A late size change. Confirm sizes once the joinery and the sofa have been measured, not from the first drawing.
• The framer's queue. A rolled canvas reaches you fastest but still has to be stretched and framed, so book the framer when you order.
• Several pieces at once. A larger order may travel by air or sea freight, with its own date in the quote.

Put the install date in your first message and we plan the order back from it.

Treat the catalogue as your own library: keep the codes that have worked in your schemes, by style and by room, and each new client starts from a shortlist you already trust. Every repeat is painted afresh by hand, an original in its own right, with the small differences hand-painting brings. Put the project or house name in each enquiry and we use it on the quote, so several jobs running at once stay apart. For quiet, tactile schemes, start with Wabi-Sabi, minimalist and textured works.

Schedule the art like the joinery: room by room, with a size and a finish for each piece, and volume pricing across the lot. Villas and whole-house projects walks through it. A show apartment answers to a launch date rather than a client: see show homes. If you advise collectors rather than design rooms, see art consultants.