Mayfair Drawing Room De Gournay Installation and Painted Scheme

The Challenge

The drawing room's ceiling height of 3.8 metres meant panel drops extended to full room height, placing extreme demands on vertical alignment and paste-out technique. The hand-painted silk panels were mounted on a delicate tea-paper backing that cannot be over-wetted, requiring a carefully controlled application of conservation-grade adhesive. Any paint overspray or adhesive contamination on the panel surface would have been catastrophic. The client's interior designer had specified a bespoke Farrow & Ball colour — a warm stone shade matched precisely to the background wash of the De Gournay design — which required on-site colour calibration before sign-off.

Our Approach

Before any work began, we installed temporary protective screens around the perimeter of the wallpaper walls to allow the painting of ceiling and joinery first, eliminating any risk of paint contamination during the final papering phase. The ceiling was finished in two coats of Farrow & Ball Estate Emulsion in the agreed bespoke stone tone, with all cornice and architrave picked out in Farrow & Ball Estate Eggshell in Wimborne White. Once all painted surfaces were fully cured, we prepared the three wallpaper walls with a double layer of heavyweight lining paper, hung horizontally then vertically, to create a dimensionally stable substrate. Each De Gournay panel was paste-applied using conservation-grade methyl cellulose, with every seam carefully aligned to continue the cherry blossom motif without interruption. Seams were pressed with a damp natural sponge and lightly rolled with a bone folder to achieve invisible joins.

The Result

The drawing room now has the quality of a museum interior, with the De Gournay panels flowing seamlessly across three walls and the painted surfaces acting as a perfect foil to the wallpaper's warmth and detail. The interior designer noted that the colour calibration between the bespoke ceiling shade and the De Gournay background wash was more precise than she had dared hope. No seams are visible under any lighting condition, and the client reported the room as the most admired space in the house during a subsequent dinner party.