Interior decorating

Which Richmond interior each page is written for

The whole-house page is for a family interior taken as one commission: a formal front room, bedrooms, a kitchen and any later space, ordered around the people who will remain in residence. The 2016 village planning guidance is used on that page only as a note of architectural character, not as a conservation boundary or as current planning policy. It describes large Edwardian semi-detached houses in Character Area 10 and substantial Victorian villas in the neighbouring Richmond fabric. That is the kind of house the family page expects you to describe. The hallway page is narrower. It runs from the front door to the upper landings, and it includes the case where more than one household uses the same entrance. A Georgian townhouse is not in this group. Its joinery, its proportions and the question of what may be changed sit with the period-house pages, even when a family is living there. If the house is Georgian and occupied, use the period-house page for the fabric and the family page for the order of rooms, and say which instruction leads. Central Richmond's appraisal describes a linear commercial core, with Victorian cottages and villas often in terraces or pairs, and older fabric sometimes surviving behind a later frontage. A private home in that setting is still a family-house brief when the whole interior is in play. The shopfront, if there is one, is a different question and should be named separately rather than absorbed into the room list.

Sources: Richmond Council: Richmond and Richmond Hill village planning guidance; Richmond Council: Central Richmond conservation area appraisal

Where the whole-house page ends

The family-house page stops being the right lead when the question is no longer which room can be released. If the real issue is a failed external coating, open the exterior page. If the only work is the staircase, open the hallway page and mention adjoining rooms only when they are genuinely in the same visit. Within its own boundary the family page asks for a room list, for the spaces that must stay available, and for a believable way to move furniture. Ceilings, skirtings, doors and fitted joinery belong in that list when you want them painted, and they should be left off it when you do not. A hairline crack where an original room meets a later extension is worth pointing out, because new plaster and a long-painted wall are not prepared in the same way. The page will not choose a product for a wall nobody has seen, and it will not treat a shared entrance as though one household could pick the colour for everyone else. Home working, children, pets and anyone who needs a predictable path to a bathroom belong in the note, because they change the sequence. They do not change the identity of the page. Dust from rubbing down joinery travels. Agree which doors to finished rooms stay closed. That is a housekeeping decision inside this brief, not a reason to move the job onto another service.

Sources: Richmond Council: Richmond and Richmond Hill village planning guidance

Where the hall and the shared entrance take over

Open the hallway page when the surface you need painted is the route itself: the entrance, the stair, the landings and the joinery people touch on the way up. That covers a private Richmond house in which the hall is the whole instruction, and a converted house in which several households share the ground-floor entrance. The page asks you to separate timber you want painted from a handrail, a newel or a string you want left in another finish. A general wish to 'do the staircase' is not enough, because a polished handrail and a painted baluster are different decisions. It also asks who may approve the work when the stair is common, and how residents will pass while a tread is still wet. It does not set a colour for every bedroom. If those rooms are included, the family-house page has to be read as well, and the enquiry should keep the two scopes visible. Listing can apply indoors. Council guidance confirms that listed-building controls concern interior as well as exterior alterations, and painting may need consent where it affects special interest. An old stair is not automatically ordinary maintenance. Agree any removal of an older coating before it happens. Materials should not be stood on a landing that is also the way out. If a proposal would alter an escape arrangement, that needs appropriate advice and is not a decorating detail to be settled on the day.

Sources: Richmond Council: listed buildings and consent; Richmond Council: listed-building painting guidance

What to send with each interior enquiry

For the family-house page, send the TW9 or TW10 address, a list of rooms and a note of who will be at home. Say which bedroom, kitchen and bathroom must stay usable, and where furniture can stand without blocking the stair. A wide view of a room and a closer view of worn paint in the same room are more useful than a colour name on its own. Name any later extension so its plaster is not assumed to match the older house. For the hallway page, send photographs from the front door and from the top landing, and mark the handrail, balusters and strings that are to stay unpainted. If the entrance is shared, name the person who can approve the scope and say how the other households will be told. You do not need a finished specification. You do need the pages kept distinct when both apply: one note for the rooms and one note for the route, even if they arrive in the same email. A finishing date can be discussed only after those constraints are visible. In ordinary practice, recoat intervals follow the product chosen and the conditions in the house. A surface that looks touch-dry is not automatically ready for furniture, curtains or a child's room overnight.

Sources: Richmond Council: listed-building painting guidance

• Family-house note: rooms, occupation and furniture, with extensions named separately
• Hallway note: landings, painted versus retained timber, and who may pass
• Shared entrance: the approver, and how neighbours will be told
• Both pages, if both apply, kept as two scopes in one enquiry