New Build Exterior & Interior Paint — Marewa, Napier
This was a brand-new architect-designed home in Marewa, in central Napier, and we painted the whole thing, outside and in. New builds are some of our favourite work: a clean slate, no old paint to fight, and the chance to set the finish up right from the very start. Outside pairs red vertical Duragroove cladding with white Coloursteel and trim. Inside is a warm scheme built around a deep brown, in a house detailed so finely that there was nowhere to put a bad line.
Prepping new cladding properly
Even on a brand-new build, the prep is what makes the finish last. We filled all the nail holes with PAL Contract Filler, sanded everything back, and gapped where it needed it, then primed over the filler so none of it telegraphs through the topcoat later on.
A brushed and rolled finish in Resene Lumbersider
We brush and roller our exteriors rather than spray them. It takes longer, but it means any future touch-up blends in cleanly instead of needing a whole section re-coated. For this home we laid down two coats of Resene Lumbersider Low Sheen, a durable waterborne finish, with the red cladding standing out against the white trim.
Painting An Interior with no skirtings or architraves
This house was detailed with negative details rather than trim. Where most homes have a skirting board covering the join between the wall and the floor, and an architrave framing every door and window, this one has a clean shadow line instead. The wardrobe doors are flush, flat panels with a shadow gap between them, painted to match the wall they sit in.
That detailing is most of the reason the inside took the time it did. Trim exists partly to hide things. A skirting covers a wall that doesn't quite meet the floor square, and an architrave covers the gap around a frame. Take all of it away and every junction in the house is the finish, on show, with nothing over the top of it. The window reveals run straight into the wall, so the paint has to stop exactly on the timber and stay sharp the whole way down.
That work is done by hand with a brush. It is slow, it is the part of a job you cannot rush, and on a house like this one it is the finish.
The interior colour scheme
The scheme is built on a deep chocolate brown. It runs as a feature wall in the bedrooms against a soft cream, with the wardrobe doors picked up in the same cream and warm off-white through the rest of the house.
Two colours meeting on an internal corner with no trim between them means the cut-in is the detail. There is no bead, no scotia, nothing to land the edge against. It either reads straight from across the room or it doesn't.
Through the open-plan kitchen and living the palette stays quiet, warm off-white on the walls against the plywood joinery and the timber-lined ceiling over the outdoor room, so the timber and the brown do the work.
Got a new build that needs painting, inside or out? Get in touch and we'll sort it.
