Art for luxury homes, hand-painted for every wall of the house

Walk the house in the order a guest would. The entrance hall and the staircase set the key; the sofa, fireplace and dining walls come next, because people look at them for hours; then the master suite, the children's rooms, the guest suites and the study. Not every landing or bathroom needs a painting.

Number each wall on the floor plan, photograph it straight on with a tape measure across it, and note what stands below it. Mark the three or four walls the owner cares about most: they take the larger, stronger pieces, and the rest support them. A five-bedroom villa often comes to 15 or 20 pieces; a residence with a cinema room and a pool house can pass 40.

Leave some walls bare on purpose: book-matched marble or a window onto the garden is already doing the work.

In an open-plan house the living-room canvas, the dining piece and the landing painting are seen from one spot, so unrelated purchases show. Three threads that work:

• The house's own materials. Colours taken from the stone, the timber and the main fabric. The Recolour route repaints a catalogue composition to your samples, so a marble-veined abstract downstairs and a blossom over the master bed share the same greys, creams and gold.
• A subject from the family's life. The sea for a coastal villa, mountains for a chalet, the garden, a favourite city.
• One way of painting. Knife-laid impasto throughout, or soft Impressionist brushwork, while the palette shifts.

Keep the thread tight downstairs, quieter in the master suite and playful in the children's rooms, as long as one colour comes back. For two canvases facing each other across a fireplace, the Vary route paints a related pair from one work.

These are often the pieces a family keeps longest: the children on the beach, the dogs on the lawn, the view from the terrace, the house in its first summer. Send the photos with the schedule; they are painted by hand, approved stage by stage and delivered with everything else (see paintings from your own image).

Send the largest original file, not a screenshot, with faces in daylight. Several photos can become one scene, so the dog can join the family group, and the composition is agreed with you before painting starts. Painted in the soft brushwork of the bedroom landscapes, a portrait sits inside the house's thread.

Portraits usually belong in the private rooms; the view and the house can greet guests in the hall.

The final word often sits with someone rarely on site who does not want forty messages. Tell us how decisions run, and we follow it piece by piece:

The owner

Sees the pieces that matter most: usually the entrance, the living room, the master suite and every portrait.

The designer or project manager

Approves the rest against the scheme, the samples and the sizes, and relays the owner's comments.

The PA or house manager

Receives the photos for a busy principal and returns the answer.

Discretion. We deal with whoever places the order; when that is the designer or the family office, the owner's name need not appear on it. Beyond the delivery address, we ask only for the wall photos and measurements the paintings need, and stage photos go only to the people you name.

Send each wall's width, height and what stands beneath it; over a sofa, a sideboard or a bed, a canvas a little narrower than the furniture looks settled. A double-height wall takes one tall canvas or two panels hung one above the other, which also keeps each piece small enough for the stairs (see oversized and custom-size art).

Framed pieces are the bulkiest to send and rolled ones the lightest, so most houses mix all three; we talk through the shipping cost of each choice before you decide.

Families with several residences rarely want the same art in each: darker, stronger work for the city apartment, soft blues and sand for the coastal villa, greens and greys for the mountain house. What carries over is the way of working, and a supplier who knows the family's taste. Each approved piece keeps its code and final photograph, so a favourite can be painted again for another house, in a new size or palette.

Dressing many villas at once for a resort is a different job: see art for resort villas and beach hotels. For one or two pieces in a client's room, see residential interior designers.

A yacht is a private residence at a smaller scale, and many owners want the art on board to continue the story of their houses ashore. Four things change:

• Sizes from the drawings. Send the panel dimensions from the interior plans or the yard's survey. Bulkheads between windows or above a berth are often small or oddly proportioned, so expect narrow verticals and long, low horizontals.
• Curved walls. A canvas is flat: size it to the flattest part of a curved bulkhead, or use smaller panels that step along the curve.
• To the yard or the marina. We ship to the shipyard, its agent or the marina office you name, on the yard's date: rolled for joiners who stretch and fix the work themselves, stretched or framed for the crew to hang.
• The yard decides placement and fixings. The canvases are made as for a house, without marine certification, so the designer and the yard decide where each piece hangs and how it is secured at sea.

The same applies to owners' suites in a cruise refit. Seascapes and minimalist works suit most yacht interiors.