Pumpkin Patch Childcare Centre, Douglas

Repainted every three months. Not any more.

A little taster of the walls we did at Pumpkin Patch childcare centre in Douglas. Our client was tired of repainting the walls every three months, because the emulsion kept getting marked and scuffed. So we applied our Ilumitextra with some lovely bright glitter for the children, and finished it with an anti-graffiti, hard-wearing and washable gloss top coat which will last for a very long time. Even the skirting boards and coat hooks got a coat.

This is the clearest case we have for the argument behind the whole range. A nursery corridor takes more punishment in a week than most hallways take in a year, and it takes it at exactly the height where small hands, coat zips and wellington boots live. Emulsion has no answer to that; it simply gets repainted. A lacquered flake finish has a very good answer: it wipes clean, it takes a scrub, and it does not mind.

The glitter was chosen for the children rather than for us — bright and lively rather than tasteful and restrained. And because the coating goes on as a continuous film, we could take it across the skirtings and over the coat hooks themselves, so there is no painted edge left anywhere for a fingernail to start picking at.