DH Painter & Decorator provides shopfront painting in Northampton and nearby towns for shops, offices and estate agents. Dean and the team work outside trading hours, match brand colours, prepare carefully around signage and keep the pavement safe for passers-by. With over 30 years of experience, we offer free quotes for commercial frontages.
Your shopfront is the first thing a customer judges you on. Faded fascia boards, flaking window frames and a scuffed stallriser suggest a business that has stopped caring, even when the service inside is excellent. Our shopfront painting in Northampton is planned around your trading, so the frontage looks sharp again without costing you a day’s takings.
Our commercial work includes repainting an estate agent’s shopfront, the kind of business where the window display and frontage do a lot of the selling. Shopfronts are part of our wider commercial painting service, and you can see examples in our work gallery.
Shopfront painting in Northampton outside trading hours
Most businesses cannot close for a repaint, so we agree working times with you before we start. Where we can, that means planning the messiest stages for quieter times or a day you are closed. Where work has to overlap with opening hours, we do the entrance first or last so customers can always get in, and we put up wet paint signs wherever a hand could brush the new coat.
Exterior paint still needs dry weather and reasonable temperatures, so we keep a close eye on the forecast. If rain is due, we would rather move a shift than put a coat on that will be spoiled.
What a shopfront repaint usually covers
- The fascia board and cornice above the window.
- Pilasters and corbels either side of the frontage.
- Window frames, glazing bars and sills.
- The entrance door and frame.
- The stallriser below the window, which takes kicks, splashes and dirt.
- Render or masonry above and around the shop, where it belongs to the unit.
Matching your brand colours
If your business has set brand colours, send us the reference, whether a RAL, British Standard or NCS code or your brand guidelines, and we will have the paint mixed to it. Colours can look quite different outside than they do on screen or on a swatch indoors. For that reason we suggest a small test area on the frontage itself before committing.
Sheen matters as much as colour. A gloss fascia and a satin door in the same shade can look like two different colours in daylight. If you are updating your look rather than matching an existing scheme, our colour consultation can help choose shades that work on the street and suit the building.
Preparing around signage
Signage needs more care than anything else on a shopfront. Vinyl lettering is masked off tightly, or removed and replaced by your sign company if the board is being fully repainted. Built-up letters and projecting signs are worked around. Hand-painted signwriting is never painted over unless you have agreed it and arranged for it to be redone.
For illuminated signs, the power must be isolated before we work close to them, arranged by you or your electrician. The areas around signage often hide the worst deterioration, because water sits along the top edge of the board and behind fixings. We scrape these back, fill, spot-prime and seal them so the new paint is not undermined from behind. It is the same careful approach we take on exterior painting for homes, adapted to a busy street.
| Surface | Typical prep | Typical finish |
|---|---|---|
| Timber fascia and pilasters | Sand, fill, spot-prime, seal joints | Exterior gloss or satin in brand colour |
| Timber stallriser and sills | Check for rot, fill, prime | Hard-wearing exterior finish, often a darker shade |
| Aluminium frames | Clean, degrease, key | Suitable primer, then top coat |
| Render above the shop | Fungicidal wash, stabilise | Breathable masonry paint |
Pavement safety
A shopfront is painted in public, and people walking past come first. We set out barriers or cones and signs, keep a clear route along the footway for pushchairs and wheelchairs, and never leave a ladder unattended. Dust sheets and drip trays protect the pavement, and everything is cleared at the end of each shift.
If a tower or scaffold has to stand on the public footway, a licence from the highway authority may be needed, which is West Northamptonshire Council for Northampton itself. We will tell you at the quote stage if that applies.
Permissions to check first
If your premises are in a conservation area or the building is listed, a change of colour can need consent, so check with the council before choosing something new. Many shop leases also say who is responsible for the frontage and may require the landlord’s approval for colour changes. Like-for-like repainting is normally simpler.
Shopfronts across Northamptonshire
As well as Northampton, we paint commercial frontages in nearby towns, including Wellingborough, Kettering and Rushden. If you are after a commercial decorator near me who understands how a high street works, Dean can visit before or after you close to look at the frontage.
Call 07539 779 036 or book a free shopfront quote.
