Decorating Your Home -- Online?

New reports show that a little bit more than 3% of the Australian economy is now online, with more Aussie businesses getting onto the web than ever before.

You still can't get your house painted online. You'll need physical paint and painting tools, plus actual human beings to accomplish that. But you can get more information beforehand than ever before. You can compare painters (check us out at Courtney & Wise.com.au ), and you can also look at more colours, finishes, and wallpapers than ever before.

This means that today's householders are better prepared and better educated than in the past, so you're more likely than ever to get just what you want in your home decorating projects.

Here are some of the most useful places online for preparing for your Sydney painting project:

Master Painters Australia NSW Association	Dulux Australia
Trades Monitor	Coloraction International
Housing Industry Association	Office of Fair Trading
Chatswood Chamber of Commerce	Murobond Paints
Paint Solutions and Associates	Feast Watson Timber Finishes
Wattyl	The Rohm and Haas Paint Quality Institute
Sikkens Woodcare Products	House Painting Info

Textures, Materials, and Painting

This Sydney home, painted by Sydney Master Painters Courtney & Wise, uses neutral shades of grey and white throughout. Different textures keep the look lively, fresh, and anything but neutral.

The variety of materials also brings challenges for painting. You can see below that there is a textured stucco finish, brick, glass, wooden shingles, and the simple wood of window casements and trim. Choosing just the right shades to spotlight the architectural features is key to getting this kind of look, but choosing the right paint for each material is also essential. Each material also has to be prepped correctly to get a good, long-lasting finish. 

The variety continues at ground level, as you can see below. Concrete, stone, the cheerful metal bistro table and chairs, planters, and tile add even more texture.

When you want a nearly monochromatic look, be sure to use lots of different textures to keep warmth in your final effect. This building has a very welcoming, charming air. Nothing stark about it.

Painting the Office Building

The look of your office can make a difference to your morale and productivity, the impression you give to customers and shareholder, and even to how you sound on the phone. Making your office into a beautiful, welcoming, impressive space is certainly a worthwhile investment.

So often, when we think about trends in office decorating, we think only of that stunning corner office, like the one above in a Sydney workplace decorated by Courtney & Wise. The corner office should look great, no question, but brightening up one office won't get as much effect as creating a cohesive decorating scheme for the entire workplace.

The corner office above uses red-orange, deep blue, and bright white along with leafy green plants inside and out to make a lively yet calm space.

The large, shared workrooms have cubicles in chrome and biscuit shades, lots of pipes and other industrial elements, and a fair amount of unavoidable clutter, with boxes and products and machinery about. Carrying the peaceful blue and the plants into these spaces makes them more attractive, happier places to work.

Suede finish paint on the dividing wall partitions gives a softer look.

 

This wall carves out a semi-private workspace. This can be a great way to mark off a reception area. The colour draws attention and encourages visitors to stop here with their questions. 

 

This wall  provides some colour for a busy shared space. Clear panels keep the space light and airy and encourage collaboration among the workers, while still helping to keep noise down and giving each worker a sense of personal space. The bright white of the workstations contrasts with the brilliant blue.

Investing in a few touches of colour and texture throughout your entire workplace pays off in higher productivity and a greater sense of well-being.

Paint Prep: Protection

When we think about the prep work for painting, we think first about preparing the surface.This is one of the most important factors in getting a really professional result on a painting job.

That's not all the prep work that needs doing, though. In the picture above, a beautiful heritage job by Courtney & Wise, you can see the surface preparation, but you can also see the other type of preparation: covering and protecting the owner's property.

The floors are covered with drop cloths and the chandelier is well covered, too. Window treatments have been removed. The ladder is set up on a protected surface, not on a bare floor (and not on plastic, if you want to avoid falls). The paint pan is set on a drop cloth, not on some nice piece of furniture. In fact, the furniture has been removed from the room.

Home painters sometimes push the furniture into the middle of the room and trust to luck or figure they can clean up afterwards. When we do a painting job, though, the only way you know we've been is the beautiful new paint, not the splashes and smears on your prized possessions.

Take a leaf from the professionals and protect your belonging as part of your prep work.

Courtney & Wise in the Movies!

This gorgeous Sydney home had to be as beautiful as the stunning ocean views it commands.

What is Scaffolding and Why Should You Care?

Your mental image of painting a house may be one bloke on a ladder, but scaffolding will make all the difference in the job.

You can see some scaffolding in the picture above, taken at the worksite of a job done by Sydney painters Courtney & Wise. Unlike ladders, scaffolding is a fairly solid structure built around the building being painted. In the snap below you can see the stable platforms workers can stand on.

You can also see a ladder in this picture, because we do use ladders. If you're going to paint a building with upper stories, though, or do some strata painting, you need scaffolding.

Here's why:

• It's safer. A study of Australian ladder accidents found that 42% of those who fell from a ladder ended up in hospital, with 13% suffering severe trauma. Nothing slows down a painting job like severe trauma. While most of the people injured in ladder accidents were homeowners, there's no point in choosing a dangerous way to do a job when there's a safer one available. One of the reasons tradies are less likely to get hurt is that we don't take those chances. 
• It's faster. Not only can you get a crew on the scaffolding instead of just the one man, you also don't spend all that time climbing up and down and moving the ladder. 
• It gets better results. Since you don't have to concentrate on keeping your balance or getting as much done as you can before climbing down and moving the ladder (s-t-r-e-t-c-h, anyone?), you can concentrate on getting the most professional finish. 

When your painters set up a scaffolding, be glad. It shows that they're a professional firm of painters, and it means a safer, better job for you. 

Brush or Roller?

It's one of the first questions that comes up when you start a painting job: should you use a brush or a roller?

In the photo above, you can see a situation in which a roller is your best friend. The surfaces being painted are large and flat, and it's all one color. The roller will make quick work of those areas.

In the photo below, you see the kind of work that really requires a brush. The area being painted is small and anything but flat. A roller won't paint this evenly, and a brush is a must to get a good finish. 

What about a paint sprayer? If you have a really enormous, really flat surface to paint and you're not concerned about how much paint you use, a sprayer can speed up the job. For ordinary exterior painting, the set up and clean up take up as much time as you save by spraying, the sprayer is wasteful, and the finish doesn't look as smooth as the work of a good painter.

So what's the verdict on roller vs. brush? It's easy: you have to have both. Nearly every painting job is a combination of big flat areas and little fiddly bits, even if the fiddly bits are just the places where the wall meets the ceiling.

Use the right tool for the job, and you'll get the best results.

Details Make the Difference

Details make all the difference in home decorating, and paint can pick out the details in a very beautiful way.

Here's a heritage project Courtney & Wise did last year. Let's look at some of the special details.

The lamp's a beaut, and the medallion, picked out in fresh white paint, shows it off to perfection.

The scrollwork in the window, in white with the light behind it, is a delicate touch.

The trim around the arched doorway has enough depth of  texture to stand out in gold against the white that lightens the arch.

White on the stairway completes the look: a charming gold and white confection that points out all the special details in the room.

Free Wall Art Downloads

No, not that kind of wall art. We're talking about patterns for DIY embellishments for your walls!

You've seen clever handpainted murals or stenciling, but these patterns are made for you to try on your own. 

• Wattyl has a fun collection of Loony Toons wall art ideas for kids' rooms. Download the simple templates for free and follow the suggestions to create geometric designs in multiple loony moods.
• A poodle silhouette from Elle Decoration makes a fun accent or a pretty stencil pattern all over the walls. Again, a child's room seems like the obvious place for this, but it would make a perfect pattern for a dog groomer's shop or for a light-hearted touch in a dog-fancier's den.
• A quatrefoil stencil to print and cut will give you a sophisticated yet fun all-over pattern for a wall. 
• Wall & Mural Stencils offers a number of free stencil designs in styles ranging from art deco and art nouveau to naturalistic looks and Asian-inspired designs.
• Crafty Moods has a tree pattern designed to be cut from wallpaper and adhered to the wall. This pattern is printed out on multiple pages of ordinary printer paper, and there is a step by step tutorial.

What if you fall in love with a design but your first attempts convince you that DIY isn't for you? No problem! Call your local painter -- in Sydney, that Courtney & Wise at 9958 1099. In most cases, the photos you admire show walls painted by professional tradesmen, so your local painting contractor will be able to get similar results. 

Metallics without the Glitz

Metallics are big this year! That's great news for you if you like a glitzy look. You can have gold lamé curtains, chrome furniture, upholstery with metallic threads, glimmering metallic candles, and polished brass bibelots this season, and you'll be completely in style.

If you're not the glitzy type, you can still enjoy metallics in a more understated way. Here are some suggestions to consider:

• Go with an understated colour or shade. An example is Kirrily Johnston's Pewter Illusion from Dulux paint's Design Metallic range. The colour is classic and anything but glitzy. You can paint trim or even a focus wall without making anyone think "bling."
  
  
  
• Try  a colour you already have in the room, but in a metallic finish. Design Metallic paints come in 14 colours, and there are even more metallic paint options available from other paint companies. You can complement your chocolate brown leather upholstery with chocolate brown metallic paint or echo the deep red of your draperies with subtle metallic sheen in red wall paint. 
• Use metallic paints in small doses: the wall behind open shelving, the risers on a staircase, moulding at floor and ceiling heights, a chair rail. Just enough to give a luxe look without making the room glittery.
• Use brushed finishes on metal rather than polished for a matte look. Pair some metals in furniture or decorative objects with matte finish walls and your room will just have a subtle glow.

The New Work Health & Safety Regulations

This year, new Work Health & Safety rules replaced the old OH&S regulations. At Courtney & Wise, we've always taken the health and safety of our workmen and of our customers very seriously, and we're fully compliant with the new regulations, just as we were with the older ones.

Here are the major changes affecting painters:

• Tradesmen licensed for asbestos removal must now have a certified safety management system.
• More comprehensive risk management plans for lead risk work will be required. 
• Falls from two metres, rather than the previous three metres, will require safe work methods. 

Make certain that your painters and decorators, and any other tradesmen, are in compliance with the new regulations, for your safety as well as theirs. 

Choosing Quality Paint

The price of any service is based on the time and skill involved in performing the service. The costs of the materials used in the service are also taken into account, but you're not just buying the materials, so that won't be the largest part of the expense.

This is as true of painting as of anything else. The price of the paint is not the most important part of a professional painting job. Paying for the skills and experience of a professional painter and then jibbing at the cost of the paint they suggest is short sighted. You'll end up paying for the same skills and experience but the job won't last as long and you'll have to pay for it again sooner than if you'd used high quality paint.

What is high quality paint?

One of the most important factors is the pigment used in the paint. Mineral pigments like titanium dioxide make paints perform better, last longer, and look better. Chalk is cheaper, but it doesn't reflect light in the same way, and the results will be different.

The amount of solids in the paint is another factor. For example, Dulux exterior paint contains 52% solids: that's how much of the paint is left after it dries. More liquid means less colour on the walls. However, some cheap paints contain fillers to give them a creamier consistency in the can.

Just as you'll get better results with better quality paint, you'll get better results from any paint if it's applied correctly. Do some research on your painter and on your paint and you'll be happy with your results.

Like Oil and Water

Choosing paint for your home or commercial building can be more complicated than it seems at first. Often, the colour is the first thing you think of. When you find a colour you love, you feel that you've found the right paint.

 However, paint can be custom-mixed to match that perfect colour. The first think to consider is actually whether you want oil or water based paint.

Your house isn't as solid and unchanging as it seems. It expands and contracts with changes in temperature. When you hear an old house creaking or settling, you're hearing this take place, but even newer, quieter buildings go through this process. Water-based paints breathe, expand, and contract with your home.

Water-based paints also allow moisture to go through. This may sound like a bad thing, as though it won't protect your home adequately from moisture. However, moisture can come from under the paint, from the walls rather than from the outside weather.

Oil-based paints create an impermeable layer like plastic. Moisture that builds up under oil paints can lead to cracking and blistering.

Since water-based paints are also usually lower in VOCs (volatile organic compounds), water-based paints are generally the best bet for house painting. Oil paint's chemicals are fat soluble, which means they can be absorbed by the lungs and are therefore less wholesome.

When would you choose oil paints?

• When you want to work slowly. Water-based paints dry more quickly than oil-based ones. If you're doing a complicated faux finish and want to be able to work slowly and use special effects on paint that require a slower drying finish, oil paints may be indicated.
• When you're painting over oil paints. You don't always have to remove paint down to the bare surface. If the underlying paint is in good condition, you may be able to paint right over it. Many painters prefer, in such cases, to match the original paint.
• When you want a very hard finish. Oil based paints can create a very hard, durable finish. They can have better coverage over stains, too. Some painters like oil based paints for the trim of a room for these reasons. 

Your professional painters and decorators can advise you on the best paint for your circumstances. If you're in Sydney, call Courtney & Wise at 9958 1099 with any questions.

Tone on Tone Painting

We don't know the origin of this cartoon (please let us know if you do, and we'll credit it), but it seems like a good way to clarify the idea of tone in interior painting.

A basic colour, like red or blue, is a hue. Take a red hue and add white to it and you'll end up with a tint. In this case, you'll get a lighter red and then, as you add more white, a pink tint. Finally, you'll have a colour that looks almost white with just a blush of the original red.

Add black to the hue instead and you'll get shades. Deeper reds will end up at last looking nearly black.

When you add both black and white, or grey, to a hue, you get a tone. Tones often have a more sophisticated or muted look.

Consider that you can mix hues to get a complex colour like purple or teal and then add white or black or both, and you can see that one colour family can include many different colours.

When you paint a wall in a single colour such as green and then paint the trim, or perhaps stencil a pattern on the wall, using the same green with a bit of white or black or both, you have tone on tone painting. This can be very subtle, with two shades of biscuit, or very bold with a dark and a light chartreuse. Either way, it's an alternative to using more than one colour. You get the variety without the risk and complexity of using multiple colours.

If you like to change your furnishings and accent pieces often, consider tone on tone painting for an option that's more interesting than using a single colour, but which still gives you the versatility of the monochrome colour scheme.