Pools & Spas

A pool room is a hard place to finish. The air is warm, damp and, over a pool, chlorinated, which is why grout discolours and paint lifts around a pool long before either would give trouble anywhere else in the house.

Marmorino has done most of this work for us. It is naturally mildew resistant and waterproof, and it goes on as one continuous surface, so there is no grout line for the damp to get into and nothing to rake out and redo in three years. It has gone round the pool areas at The Arches in Port Erin and at Ballamenagh, and through a plunge pool room.

A pool room is usually somewhere people sit, too, so the walls can do more than simply survive. At The Arches there is Intona and banded work alongside the Marmorino, and a glitter feature wall was added a couple of years after the pool area itself — the same finishes that would go into a living room, put somewhere that would normally only ever get tiled.

The other thing a pool room tends to have is curves: a rounded end wall, a vaulted ceiling, a column. Polished plaster will follow a curve without a joint anywhere in it, which is a job in its own right and part of why these rooms take longer than their size suggests.