Painting Communal Entrance Halls and Staircases in London Apartment Buildings

The Communal Area Problem: Everyone Uses It, Nobody Owns It

The entrance hall, staircase, and landing of a London mansion block or period conversion is the most used and least loved space in most residential buildings. Every resident passes through it multiple times a day, guests form their first impression of the building from it, and the standard of its maintenance signals something about the pride that residents take in their home. Yet the communal area is perpetually neglected — because no single resident feels ownership of it, because the process of organising and paying for its maintenance is complicated, and because it is difficult to agree on what the result should look like.

This guide addresses each of these problems directly. It explains who is legally responsible for maintaining communal areas, how the decision to repaint is made and paid for, what a well-specified communal area decorating project looks like technically, and what colours and finishes actually work in the varied and often challenging conditions of a London apartment building entrance.

Who Is Responsible and Who Pays

In a leasehold apartment building — which describes the overwhelming majority of London's mansion blocks and period conversions — the freeholder is typically responsible for the maintenance and repair of the common parts of the building. This responsibility is set out in the leases, and it is funded through the service charge that each leaseholder pays annually.

The managing agent acts on behalf of the freeholder to commission, oversee, and pay for maintenance works, drawing on the service charge fund. In residents-managed buildings — where a resident management company (RMC) or right to manage company (RTM) has taken over the management functions from the freeholder — the responsibility is effectively the same but the decision-making sits with the residents' directors rather than an external landlord.

The service charge fund is held in trust by the managing agent and can only be spent on items that the service charge provisions in the leases permit. Decorating the communal areas is almost always a permissible service charge expenditure — it falls under the heading of maintenance and repair of the common parts.

The Section 20 process applies when the cost of a single decorating project exceeds £250 per leaseholder. Under the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985, the freeholder or managing agent must follow a formal consultation process before committing to works above this threshold: issuing a Notice of Intention, inviting leaseholders to propose contractors, obtaining at least two competitive quotes, and providing leaseholders with an opportunity to review and comment on the quotes before a contractor is appointed.

This process is often the source of delay and frustration for residents who want to see the communal areas repainted and cannot understand why it takes so long. The practical answer is that Section 20 compliance is not optional — a freeholder who fails to follow the process correctly cannot recover the full cost of the works from service charge, and leaseholders who challenge a non-compliant process can limit the recoverable cost to £250 per flat.

Managing Agent Contractors vs Independent Quotes

Many managing agents maintain a panel of approved contractors — decorating companies with whom they have an established relationship and from whom they obtain quotes for communal area work. This panel arrangement has advantages: the managing agent knows the contractor's standard of work, the insurance and health and safety documentation is already on file, and the quotation process is faster.

The disadvantage is that panel contractors are not always the most competitively priced, and they are not always the most appropriate for specialist work. A managing agent's standard panel decorator may be adequate for painting a plain magnolia staircase in a modern apartment block, but may lack the experience to specify and execute a decorating scheme for a Victorian mansion block with original plasterwork, a stained glass fanlight, and a mosaic floor lobby.

Leaseholders have the right to nominate contractors. The Section 20 process specifically includes a stage at which leaseholders can nominate contractors they wish to be considered for the work. This right is often not used because leaseholders are not aware of it, or because they do not know which contractors to nominate. We work with a significant number of residents' management companies and individual leaseholders in this role — being nominated as an independent contractor in a Section 20 process, providing a competitive quote that is then considered alongside the managing agent's panel quotes.

If you are a leaseholder in a building where communal area maintenance is overdue, you can raise a formal request with your managing agent and, if you are not satisfied with the response, request that the residents' management company board considers alternative contractors. You can also nominate us directly in the Section 20 consultation process.

Durability Requirements for High-Footfall Areas

Communal entrance halls and staircases in occupied apartment buildings are among the most heavily used painted surfaces in any residential context. The entrance hall of a building with twenty flats receives a minimum of forty to sixty passes per day — residents coming and going — plus deliveries, visitors, and trades. The staircase receives similar traffic distributed across its surfaces: the handrail, the balusters, the newel posts, and the wall surfaces at contact height.

The durability requirements for communal area paint are correspondingly higher than for any private residential space, and failing to specify appropriately results in paint that marks, scuffs, and deteriorates rapidly — leaving the building looking neglected within a year of redecoration.

For wall surfaces in communal areas, we specify a scrubbable paint rather than a standard emulsion. Dulux Trade Diamond Matt has excellent washability for a matt-finish product. For areas of high contact — beside doorways, along the wall at elbow height on the staircase — we upgrade to a satin or low-sheen eggshell finish that can be cleaned without losing its surface integrity.

For woodwork in communal areas — skirting boards, architraves, banister rails, newel posts, and balusters — we always specify an oil-based or waterborne alkyd product in eggshell rather than gloss. Gloss on communal woodwork shows every scuff and knock and looks worn very quickly. An eggshell finish — Little Greene Oil Eggshell or Teknos Futura 40 in an eggshell variant — produces a surface that is durable, cleanable, and appropriately sophisticated for a period entrance hall.

For handrails, durability is the absolute priority. The handrail is touched by every resident every time they use the staircase, and it is subject to more aggressive abrasion than any other painted surface in the building. We typically specify a hard-wearing satin finish with a dedicated primer — Zinsser Bulls Eye 1-2-3 followed by Johnstone's Aqua Guard or Dulux Trade Diamond Satin — for handrails. In buildings with a very high specification, we recommend discussing whether a painted finish is appropriate at all on the handrail, or whether a clear lacquer over stripped and restored timber would be more durable and more attractive.

Fire Doors: What the Rules Say

This is the aspect of communal area decorating that is most frequently misunderstood, and where getting it wrong has the most serious consequences.

Fire doors in a communal area — the flat entrance doors and any fire doors within the common parts — are life-safety components. They are tested and certified to provide fire resistance for a specific period (typically thirty or sixty minutes) when closed, giving residents time to evacuate and slowing the spread of fire through the building.

The fire rating of a door relates to the whole door assembly: door leaf, frame, intumescent strips, fire-rated hinges, and door closer. Painting the door changes its properties — specifically, the total thickness of the paint build-up affects how the intumescent strips (which expand when exposed to heat to seal the gap between door and frame) perform.

CRITICAL: Fire doors cannot be painted shut. The most dangerous outcome of painting a fire door incorrectly is that the door no longer closes properly and latches fully. A fire door that is held open — or that does not close because the paint has sealed it to the frame — provides no fire protection at all. We test every fire door for free movement and correct closure before and after any painting work in communal areas.

Paint build-up on fire doors. If the paint on a fire door has built up over many cycles to the point where the door no longer closes freely, the correct solution is to strip the door back to the timber and repaint from a clean substrate. This is more work than simply adding another coat, but it is the only safe approach. We will not add further paint to a fire door that does not close and latch correctly.

Intumescent strips. These strips are fitted into the edges of fire doors and the frame rebates, and they must not be painted over. Painting over intumescent strips significantly reduces their ability to expand under heat. We tape over intumescent strips before any painting of the door edge and remove the tape after the paint has dried.

Getting a fire door compliance check. Before any decorating work in a communal area, we recommend that the managing agent confirms that the fire doors in the building have been inspected by a competent person within the last twelve months. Door inspections are a specific legal obligation under the Fire Safety Order 2005 for multi-occupancy residential buildings, and we will flag any door that does not appear to meet its requirements when we carry out our site inspection before quoting.

Colour Choices for Dark Entrance Halls

The communal entrance hall of a Victorian mansion block or period conversion is almost always dark. It may have a north-facing front door, it may have limited or high-set windows, and it may have significant shadow from the staircase above. The temptation is to paint it magnolia — a reflex choice that produces a surface that reads as neither white nor cream in dim light, but just dull.

There are better approaches.

Genuine warm white rather than off-white. The difference between Farrow & Ball Wimborne White and a generic off-white in a dark entrance hall is the difference between a space that reads as elegant and one that reads as neglected. A genuinely warm, high-quality white reflects the available light more effectively than a flat, uninspired off-white, and it ages better — the slight warmth in the base means the first scuffs and dirt accumulation are less visible.

Mid-tone rather than pale for dado and below. The tradition in Victorian entrance halls was to use a darker, more robust colour below the dado rail and a lighter colour above — a scheme that concealed the inevitable lower-height scuffing from bags, pushchairs, and furniture movement. We often recommend continuing this tradition: a warm stone or greige below the dado (Farrow & Ball Purbeck Stone, Little Greene Bone or French Grey) with a lighter warm white above. The dado rail acts as a visual speed bump that organises the space and gives the hall a sense of considered decoration rather than institutional magnolia.

Dark and confident in a grand entrance. For mansion blocks with original tiled floors, stained glass fanlights, and plaster ceiling mouldings, a darker, more confident colour palette can be very effective — and often more durable in appearance than a pale scheme that shows every mark. Farrow & Ball Elephant's Breath or Mole's Breath on the walls, with warm white cornice and ceiling, and deep-coloured woodwork produces an entrance that reads as deliberately and confidently decorated rather than minimally maintained.

Getting a Quote for Communal Area Work

We have extensive experience of communal area decorating in London mansion blocks and period conversions, including the Section 20 consultation process and the fire door compliance requirements that apply to occupied residential buildings.

We carry out free site visits and provide detailed written specifications that include material recommendations, preparation methodology, and colour schemes. Our quotes are suitable for use in Section 20 consultation processes and include all the relevant insurance, health and safety, and compliance documentation that managing agents require.

Contact us to arrange a site visit, or visit our interior painting service page for more detail on what our process involves.