About Bay Decorating
Napier and Hawke's Bay painters you'd actually want in your home.
Who we are
We're Nicole and Tim Howell, a husband-and-wife team painting homes across Hawke's Bay since 2019. We're both still on the tools most days, alongside a small crew we've built carefully over the years.
We started Bay Decorating to be the kind of painters we'd want to hire ourselves. Anyone who's had work done knows the feeling: the trade who turns up late, leaves a mess, or goes quiet when you ask a question. A paint job means someone is at your house for days or weeks, so who that person is matters as much as the finish they leave behind. Being people you're comfortable having around, who do what they said they would when they said they'd do it, is the part we care about most.
Our story
Bay Decorating started in 2019, but the way we quote goes back further than that.
Years ago, Nicole had a bathroom renovation run thousands of dollars over what she'd been quoted, with the extra costs only surfacing once the work was underway. It's a horrible spot to be in as a homeowner, and it shaped how we run things. So we quote with everything itemised up front: windows, weatherboards, eaves and fascia, all broken out separately, with the paint always included. You see the full job before you commit to it. More on how that works on our painting services page.
Meet the Team
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![A woman with dark hair in a bun painting a wall white while smiling at the camera.]()
Nicole - Co-owner
Nicole runs the business side: the quoting, the invoicing, the site visits, and a quality check on every job before it's called finished. She's the first point of contact for clients and crew, and the one who makes sure each job is set up to go right the first time. On the tools she prefers interiors and new builds, and she'll be the first to admit she'd rather not be out in the cold. If you've spoken to anyone at Bay Decorating, it was probably Nicole.
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![A man painting the exterior weatherboards of a villa style house with white paint, using a paintbrush. He is wearing sunglasses, a cap, and a hoodie.]()
Tim - Co-owner
Tim takes on the work no one else wants to touch: the technical, hard-to-reach jobs and the fiddly detail most painters would rather skip. He's also our plaster man, and the closest thing the team has to a jack-of-all-trades; there isn't a job we can't hand him. He trained in Wellington on big heritage villas, and that's where his eye for detail comes from. He'll happily spend a full day on one detailed section, getting it perfect before he moves on.
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![A person wearing protective gear, including a respirator, safety glasses, earmuffs, and gloves, using a paint scraper tool on the exterior weatherboards of an old villa during daytime.]()
Jesse - Lead Painter
Jesse is our longest-standing painter and second-in-command when Nicole and Tim are off-site. He's been painting for 17 years, across boats and houses in New Zealand and Australia, and his passion is exteriors, especially restoring big old villas. As he puts it, you're "turning something that's so old and haggard into something beautiful again." He's also our paint-shaver specialist, running the strip-back tool that takes failing weatherboards right back to bare timber.
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Cherie - Painter
Cherie brings 18 years of painting behind her, most of it spent specialising in villas in Australia. She's our villa expert and a genuine all-rounder who's just as strong on new builds. Her fine prep is the best we've seen in years — so detail-oriented that she'll be the one telling us a finish isn't right yet when we'd have happily signed it off.
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Zane — painter
Zane came to us from a background in road marking, so he already understood the thinking behind good prep. He's a fast learner with a sharp hand; his cutting-in and fine trim work stood out from his very first jobs. We've deliberately had him spend plenty of time on prep, because prep is what makes a paint job last, and he gets that. Quiet, respectful, and the kind of painter who just gets on with the job without any fuss.
How we work
We're not the cheapest painters in Hawke's Bay, and we're upfront about that. What you get instead is the prep and the honesty that make a paint job last.
Everything itemised, paint included. Our quotes break the job down line by line, so there are no surprises once we start. (You can see what a repaint typically costs on our blog.)
Prep done properly. On a typical exterior, around 70% of our time goes into prep — washing, treating mould, scraping, sanding, filling and priming — before a single topcoat goes on.
Honest about how long it lasts. We use Resene's CS1–CS4 condition scale to tell you, before you spend a cent, what kind of lifespan your home's surface can realistically give you.
Windows done right. Re-puttying sash windows is a standard line in our quotes. We don't tack it on as an extra later.
The right gear. Our Paint Shaver Pro lets us strip old, failing or lead-painted weatherboards back to bare timber cleanly and safely.
Connected locally. We work within a trusted network of Hawke's Bay builders, plumbers and rot-repair specialists, so renovation jobs run smoothly across trades.
Why homeowners trust us
We've built Bay Decorating on word of mouth: homeowners who pass our name to a friend, and builders who book us job after job.
13 five-star Google reviews (and counting)
A name builders rely on, from new builds to full heritage repaints — like the $18,000 villa exterior we restored on the Napier hill, wooden windows and all.
Painting Napier, Hastings, Havelock North and across central Hawke's Bay, and happy to travel further for the right job.
Work with painters you can trust
If you're after painters who are easy to deal with, do what they say, and take real pride in the finish, we'd love to hear from you. Get in touch for a no-obligation quote and we'll walk you through exactly what your home needs.