Feature Walls & Ceilings

A feature wall is the smallest way to change a room. One wall out of four — or the ceiling, which nobody thinks of — taken from painted plasterboard to something with depth and movement in it, and the other three walls left alone. It is the most common thing we are asked for, and it is the largest set of work on this site.

More than half of it sparkles, and the sparkle is not all one product. Sealed Flake is sprayed flake sealed under lacquer — bold, and hard enough for a hallway or a child's bedroom, because it can be scrubbed. Crystal Brush is a fine glitter in a brushed glaze, subtler, shifting from dark to light as you cross the room. Glitter Flake is the unsealed version, rougher and brighter. Which one is right has more to do with the light the wall gets than with the colour you pick.

Where a wall wants depth rather than shine, the answer is usually Marmorino — black Marmorino behind a kitchen, the walls of the Haus showroom, the feature fireplaces at Palm Winds. It reads as stone rather than as decoration.

Chimney breasts and media walls come up again and again, and for the same reason: they are already the thing you look at, and they are already framed. The curved, backlit panel at the top of this page is Venetian plaster; the home cinema wall is Cadoro.

Ceilings are the part people forget. The domed ceiling at The Arches in Port Erin is polished Lucidato, and a conservatory ceiling was finished in white and gold. A ceiling takes the same materials a wall does — it simply takes longer to get them on.

Then there are the one-offs: a phoenix worked in glitter flake, a wall in pure nickel, gold foil laid over textured panels. If you arrive with a shape or an idea rather than a finish, that is bespoke work, and it starts with a conversation rather than a sample.