Painting Communal Areas in London Flats: Hallways, Staircases and Management Companies

Painting Communal Areas in London Flats: How It Actually Works

The communal hallways, staircases, and landings of London's mansion blocks and period conversion buildings are often the most neglected decorating job in any given property portfolio. They're not anyone's living room; no individual leaseholder owns them outright; and the process of organising and paying for the work can seem complicated. The result, in too many buildings, is a shared entrance hall that looks tired, scuffed, and uninviting — a poor first impression for residents and visitors alike.

This guide covers the practical reality of communal area painting: who's responsible, how to organise it, what the work involves, and what makes a good result in a high-traffic shared space.

Who Is Responsible for Communal Area Decoration?

In most leasehold flats, responsibility for the repair and decoration of communal areas — entrance halls, staircases, lift lobbies, external common areas — sits with the freeholder or the management company acting on their behalf. This obligation is typically set out in the lease, which will specify maintenance and redecoration obligations and the intervals at which they apply.

In buildings where leaseholders have formed a residents' management company (RMC) and taken over management from a third-party agent, the residents are effectively the freeholder's representative and bear that responsibility collectively.

Where no management company exists — as is sometimes the case in older, informally managed conversions of two or three flats — the individual leaseholders share responsibility and need to act cooperatively to get the work organised.

The practical implication is that getting communal decorating done usually requires coordinating with at least one other party: a managing agent, a freeholder's representative, or fellow leaseholders. We deal with all of these on a regular basis.

Working with Managing Agents and Management Companies

If your building is managed by a professional managing agent, the route to getting communal areas redecorated typically involves raising the work as a maintenance issue or scheduled maintenance item. Management companies operating under the RICS Service Charge Residential Management Code are obliged to obtain multiple quotes for significant works, consult leaseholders where required by Section 20 of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985, and keep records of expenditure.

Section 20 consultation is required where works cost more than £250 per leaseholder. In a building of, say, ten flats, any communal works costing over £2,500 in total triggers this requirement. The process involves a notice to leaseholders, a response period, and a final tender process. While this adds time, it ensures transparency and protects leaseholders from unexpected charges.

We are experienced in working within Section 20 processes and can provide the detailed written specification and pricing that managing agents require for their tender documentation. Where requested, we can also attend site meetings with managing agents or leaseholder representatives to discuss the scope of work.

The Scope of Communal Area Painting

A typical communal areas contract in a London mansion block or period conversion covers:

Entrance hall and ground-floor lobby. Often the most intensively used and most visible area. High-traffic zones need durable, washable paint finishes — a mid-sheen emulsion rather than a flat emulsion, applied to all walls. Skirting boards and dado rails in gloss or satinwood.

Staircase and landings. The staircase presents the challenge of continuous traffic during works. We typically work upwards floor by floor, maintaining access at all times. Handrails and balusters need careful preparation — often multiple layers of old paint have obscured the profile of the timber. We sand back to a stable surface and apply a durable satinwood or eggshell.

Communal doors. Front entrance door (inside face), flat entrance doors if included, fire doors throughout. Fire doors require particular attention: they must close properly after decoration, which means the paint film should not be built up excessively. We keep coats thin and maintain clearances.

Any decorative plasterwork. Older mansion blocks may have original cornicing and ceiling roses in the communal areas. This plasterwork is worth preserving and painting carefully — a coat of emulsion applied without masking the profile turns sharp mouldings into blobs of paint.

Colour and Finish Choices for Shared Spaces

Colour in a communal hallway needs to work for every resident and every taste — which effectively means it needs to be uncontroversial. Most management companies and leaseholder groups default to neutral schemes: off-whites, warm greys, stone colours. Within that constraint, there's more latitude than people assume.

A well-chosen warm off-white — Farrow & Ball's Clunch or Little Greene's Portland Stone — is much more welcoming than a stark brilliant white, particularly in the limited daylight common in London entrance halls. If the building has a period character, a richer colour on the lower walls below a dado rail can be very effective: a deep green or warm Tuscan red above a stone or cream dado.

For the paint finish, we recommend:

• Walls: Scrubbable mid-sheen emulsion. Flat emulsions mark too easily in high-traffic corridors and cannot be wiped clean.
• Woodwork (skirting, dado rail, architraves, doors): Satinwood or hard eggshell. Avoid high gloss in period buildings — it looks incongruous and highlights imperfections in the surface.
• Ceiling: White or a very pale tint of the wall colour in a flat emulsion.

Minimising Disruption to Residents

The principal challenge of communal area work is that residents need to access their flats throughout. We programme communal painting projects carefully: we work systematically from the top floor down, we keep one side of the staircase accessible at all times, and we keep drying times in mind to avoid residents touching wet paint.

We always use low-odour, water-based products in communal areas to minimise disruption to residents and to meet the requirements of buildings with shared air handling or poor ventilation. We leave the area clean at the end of each working day.

For buildings where residents need to be notified of the works, we can provide a standard works notice letter that managing agents or residents' committees can distribute.

Getting a Quote

If you manage a London mansion block, period conversion, or leasehold building and need communal area decoration — whether as part of a scheduled maintenance programme or as an overdue catch-up — we're happy to visit, produce a detailed specification, and provide a written quote that satisfies managing agent and Section 20 requirements. Get in touch to arrange a site visit.