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Where Artistry Begins
We are a polished plaster specialist working across London, on everything from one wall in a Victorian terrace to a whole apartment in a new tower. The material is authentic Italian plaster, tinted to your colour at our Birmingham studio, and the people who tint it are the people who lay it. That matters in London, where access is booked by the hour and the finish has to be right first time.
London is stucco fronted terraces, brick Victorian houses cut into flats, interwar mansion blocks, converted warehouses in the east, and towers of new apartments along the river. The period stock is solid walled and lime built, so breathability decides the product. Mansion flats bring high ceilings, deep cornices and ceiling roses to cut around. Warehouse conversions bring uneven brick, steel and long sightlines. New towers bring flat, dry board and tight programmes.
Most of our London work is residential and most of it is one or two rooms rather than a whole house. A hallway and stairwell in a terraced conversion. A drawing room chimney breast. A bathroom in tadelakt where the client wants no tiles and no grout lines. We are usually working alongside an interior designer or a main contractor, sometimes with the client still living there, so we plan the job around the rooms you still need to use. Walls are protected, floors are sheeted, and we take our waste with us. Polished plaster is a wet trade, but it is a quiet and low dust one compared with most of what comes before it.
London’s older stock is solid brick with no cavity, originally finished in lime, and it needs to keep breathing. Trap it behind an acrylic bound plaster and the moisture finds another way out, usually through the finish. On those walls we specify lime based Marmorino or limewash and we check the substrate before quoting, not after. New build and converted apartments are the opposite problem. Plasterboard is dry and stable but jointed and prone to hairline movement, so joints get reinforced and the base coat does the flattening. Lower ground floors and old vaults get a moisture reading first. If a wall is not ready for a mirror finish, we say so before you have paid for one.
Alongside private homes we work on commercial interiors, and London is where most of that sits. Our past work in the city includes a boutique spa in Knightsbridge and a penthouse in Chelsea. Wet rooms, steam rooms and spa walls are the strongest case for this material anywhere, because a seamless lime or tadelakt surface takes the water without a grout line to fail. Commercial work also brings its own rules, with night and weekend windows, method statements, fire and slip requirements on adjacent surfaces, and a programme that will not wait. We would rather price honestly for the hours we are actually allowed on site than promise a daytime run we cannot have.
Nothing gets ordered until you have held a sample. We make them on board in the colour you want, in the finish you want, and we send them to the address the work is going into. London light decides more than people expect. A north facing mansion flat room with tall sash windows will read a polished plaster two shades cooler than a lit showroom does, and grazing light across a long wall shows every ripple in the base. Approve the sample in the room, under the lamps you will actually live with. If you would rather buy the material and have your own team lay it, we supply it tinted and ship it tracked.
Microcement comes up more in London than anywhere else we work, usually because a client has seen a seamless bathroom or a continuous floor and wants no tiles and no grout lines. It is a different material from Venetian plaster. It is thinner and cement bound, laid over a primed and reinforced base, and sealed rather than burnished. It will go on floors, stairs and worktops, which lime plaster will not. The base is everything. On a timber floor or a flexing screed it needs an uncoupling layer and a mesh, or it will crack along the line that moves. We survey the substrate first and tell you honestly whether the floor is a candidate, because microcement laid over the wrong base fails visibly and cannot be patched invisibly.
A good share of our London work comes through interior designers, architects and main contractors, and we are used to working to a specification rather than selling one. Send us the finishes schedule, the colour reference and the drawings, and we will come back with the system, the build up and sample boards made from the batch that will go on site. Conservation and listed interiors need more care again. A breathable lime finish is usually the only honest answer on a solid wall in a listed building, and anything going onto original fabric should be reversible and consented before it is ordered. We will not put a hard acrylic system on a wall that needs to breathe because it is quicker to lay.
London is around two and a half hours from our Birmingham studio. Material is tinted here and travels with the team or ships ahead to site. We price in the congestion and ULEZ charges, loading bay times and permit parking, and we book service lifts and concierge access before the first day. A single room is usually three to five days, including drying between coats and lifting our own floor protection at the end.
Beyond Venetian plaster we take on decorative plastering of most kinds, including limewash walls in period rooms, Marmorino and lime finishes on solid brick, microcement for floors and wet rooms, and Liquid Metal on joinery and feature panels. If you have searched for polished plaster near me and found general plastering services, the difference is that this is the whole of what we do. We tint the material ourselves and we lay it ourselves. We are glad to work alongside your decorator or builder, and we will say plainly when a wall needs ordinary plastering first.
Polished Plaster · Marmorino · Liquid Metal
Polished plaster suits London’s formal rooms and hotel standard bathrooms, where a deep marble sheen earns its cost. Marmorino is the lime answer for period walls that must breathe, and it holds a softer, matt look. Liquid Metal is for the single feature wall, joinery panel or bar front that has to carry a whole room.
See the colour libraryIt is priced by the square metre, and what moves it is the state of the wall and the finish you pick. A flat, dry, boarded wall in a single Marmorino colour sits at the bottom of the range. A mirror polished finish over a wall that needs levelling first, or Liquid Metal, sits well above it. Send photographs and rough sizes and we will price it properly.
Yes, and wet rooms are one of the strongest uses for it. Inside a shower or steam room we use tadelakt or a lime system finished with soap and wax, which gives a seamless surface with no grout joints to fail. Outside the wet zone, polished plaster with a wax finish is fine. What decides it is the tanking and the substrate underneath.
All of it, and the surrounding counties. We travel from our Birmingham studio, so the postcode changes the access plan more than it changes the price. Central boroughs mean congestion and ULEZ charges, permits, and loading bays booked in advance. Outer London is usually simpler and cheaper to run. Tell us the address and we will be straight about both.
A single feature wall is normally two to three days and a whole room three to five, including drying time between coats. We work one room at a time, sheet the floors, and lift our protection at the end of the job. If you are living there through the work, say so when we quote and we will plan the order of rooms around you.
If you are in London and want to see the material before you commit, we will make a sample in your colour and send it to the site. Call 07592 929191 and tell us the room, the light and the deadline. Buying the plaster to lay yourself? See our Venetian plaster supplier page for London.
For a quote, email photos and measurements of your walls to sales@zavore.co.uk or call 07592 929191.
Alongside Venetian plaster, our team installs tadelakt, microcement, bas relief, artificial rock, gilding, lacquer, mosaics and cornice work in London. See every installation service.
We also work in Venetian plaster Birmingham, Venetian plaster Essex, Venetian plaster Glasgow, Venetian plaster Kent, Venetian plaster Liverpool, Venetian plaster Manchester, Venetian plaster Nottingham and Venetian plaster Surrey. See every area we cover.
We also supply the trade by post, wherever you are: the shop ships tracked UK wide, and the Academy teaches the finishes in Birmingham, London and Manchester. Plasterers working in London can join the approved installer list.
Decorative finishes specialist in London · Polished plaster in London · Marmorino in London · Microcement in London · Limewash in London · Tadelakt in London · Clay plaster in London · Concrete effect plaster in London · Liquid metal in London · Sculptural plaster in London · Bas relief in London · Murals in London · Mosaics in London · Gilding in London · Lacquered walls in London · Cornice and coving in London · Artificial rock in London · Travertino in London
Providing luxury finishes for the most prestigious addresses in the world
Venetian plaster, limewash, microcement, tadelakt, metallics, sculptural plaster and gold leaf, supplied and installed by our own team, with Venetian plaster taught at our Birmingham studio.
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